A man arrested and later cleared in the December murder of UK woman Joanna Yeates has filed libel and invasion of privacy lawsuits against six UK newspapers — the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and the Daily Record, reported the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade.
Greenslade noted that he claimed the media’s coverage of Christopher Jefferies’ arrest “amounted to character assassination.” Jefferies was Yeates’s landlord. His lawyer, Louis Charalambous, stated that Jefferies wants “vindication of his reputation for the terrible treatment he received.”
The UK blog Tabloid Watch noted that during the time Jefferies was arrested, the media labeled Jefferies “Mr Strange,” the “nutty professor,” “peeping tom,” “strange,” “obsessed by death,” and “creepy,” among other comments.