CPS drops prosecutions of 9 journalists

Prosecutions against nine journalists including Andy Coulson, the prime minister's former director of communications, were dropped on Friday following a review by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The journalists, mostly from The Sun and Mirror newspapers, were all due to face trials or retrials in the coming months on charges brought under Operation Elveden, one of the Metropolitan Police's biggest ever investigations, which examined allegations of corrupt payments by journalists to public officials. The police investigation began after the phone-hacking scandal erupted in 2011.

However, subsequent trials of more than 20 journalists have so far resulted in acquittals and hung juries with only two convictions of journalists by a jury. One conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal last month and a second reporter was granted permission to appeal against their conviction.

Among those acquitted of Elveden charges are former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, John Kay, the paper's chief reporter, and Geoff Webster, its deputy editor.

In a Court of Appeal ruling last month, Lord Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice, questioned the use of an obscure 13th century common law offence - misconduct in a public office - to prosecute the journalists.

The ruling also found that an Old Bailey judge had failed to direct jurors properly and that more consideration should be given to the potential harm, or lack of it, to the public interest in the disclosure of information.

On Friday the CPS issued a statement saying it had reviewed the prosecutions in the light of the Court of Appeal decision. It followed the latest acquittals of three more journalists by an Old Bailey jury on Friday, as well as four senior Sun journalists who were cleared after a trial last month.

The CPS said that its decision to drop the cases "should not be taken as an indication that payment to a public official by a journalist is acceptable behaviour or immune from prosecution".

However, it said it had concluded it was not in the public interest to prosecute nine journalists and it would offer no evidence against them.

The nine include Mr Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, and Clive Goodman, the paper's royal reporter, who faced a retrial after a jury were unable to reach verdicts on charges at last year's high profile phone hacking trial.

However, the CPS said that prosecutions against Sun reporter Anthony France and a retrial of Chris Pharo and Jamie Pyatt, journalists at the paper, would go ahead. It will also continue with the prosecutions of seven public officials.

The CPS said that the Operation Elveden investigation "revealed corruption in areas where the public should generally expect confidentiality" and 21 public officials had been convicted after receiving corrupt payments totalling £180,000.

The decision to drop the Elveden cases caps a difficult week for Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, who had already been criticised over continuing with the prosecutions of the journalists despite the lack of jury convictions.

Ms Saunders has also come under pressure following the CPS's decision on Thursday that Labour peer Lord Janner should not face child sex abuse charges because the severity of his dementia makes him unfit to stand trial.

News UK, the publisher of The Sun, said it was "pleased" with the decision to drop some prosecutions, but "obviously disappointed" by the continuing proceedings against a number of individuals. Trinity Mirror declined to comment.

Evan Harris, associate director of campaign group Hacked Off, said it was "quite clear that juries are not willing to convict journalists of making corrupt payments to public officials . . . when the practice was clearly facilitated, condoned and encouraged by the newspapers".

Executives at major newspaper groups could still face criminal prosecutions, he suggested.

"For us, it's never been about prosecutions of individual journalists. It's about a culture at some newspapers set, at the very top, that makes some reporters feel that they're above the law," he added.

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