No evidence will be offered in cases of nine journalists, including former editor of News of the World, facing trial over leaks from public officials

The director of public prosecutions is abandoning future prosecutions of Andy Coulson and eight other journalists who were facing trial over leaks from public officials.



In a devastating blow to Operation Elveden, the £20m investigation into journalists and their sources that began three years ago, Alison Saunders, the DPP, is throwing in the towel on nine future cases against reporters.

CPS reviews policy of prosecuting journalists over leaks by public officials Read more

The Crown Prosecution Service will now be offering no evidence in the case of nine journalists, who include Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, and the paper’s former royal editor, Clive Goodman, who were awaiting trial.

The prosecution of a further three journalists will continue. These are Chris Pharo, head of news at the Sun, and district reporter Jamie Pyatt, both of whom face a retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict earlier this year, and Anthony France, the paper’s crime correspondent.

The decision came after a review forced on the CPS by an appeal court ruling last month that questioned prosecutors’ use of the charge of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office – an ancient common-law offence – to pursue journalists.

Quashing one of two convictions under Elveden, that of a former News of the World journalist, the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas, said the trial judge, Charles Wide, had misdirected the jury by not telling them that the threshold for a conviction was high. He said jurors had to be satisfied that the actions amounted not just to a disciplinary breach but had done harm to the public interest in order to convict.

The ruling forced the CPS to review the remaining 12 pending trials and retrials of journalists. Lawyers for the CPS contacted the journalists on Friday to tell them they would be offering no evidence in nine of the cases. The decision came on the same day that a jury at the Old Bailey acquitted another three reporters of paying public officials for information.

Operation Elveden: more journalists cleared of paying public officials Read more

In all, 27 journalists have been charged under Operation Elveden and just two have been convicted.

In a statement, the DPP said: “The importance of a free press is paramount in any democracy and the prosecutions against the journalists involved were considered very carefully.

“We have promptly reviewed all the cases within Operation Elveden. At the same time we have updated our guidance. The court of appeal judgment emphasised the high threshold of seriousness required of misconduct in public office.

“It is also said that more consideration should be given to the potential harm, or lack of it, to the public interest in the disclosure of information, as opposed to relying on the strong benefit to the public interest in any resulting story.

“This may result in different considerations when applied to public officials and journalists.”

As a result, the majority of prosecutions against journalists will end, but the CPS will still pursue public officials alleged to have received cash for information. To date, 21 out of 28 public officials, including police, prison officers, health workers and a Ministry of Defence official have been convicted and jailed. Most pleaded guilty.

On Friday, the Sun journalists Tom Wells, 34, Neil Millard, 33, and Brandon Malinsky, 50, and a former Daily Mirror reporter, Graham Brough, 54, became the latest journalists to be found not guilty by a jury of illegally paying public officials for information. They had all denied conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office.

Wells, from south-east London, was cleared of wrongdoing in relation to two prison officers. Members of the jury, which had been out for nearly 42 hours, were unable to reach a verdict on another charge relating to Wells and the former Serco immigration detention centre official Mark Blake and were discharged by the judge.

The CPS was given seven days to decide whether to seek a retrial.



Brough said outside court: “I have protested my innocence since the beginning of this 17-month ordeal. The process has been harrowing but the outcome life-affirming.

“I hope these acquittals will remove the fear currently freezing investigative journalism, which is the lifeblood of any democracy. I am greatly relieved that professional reporters have not been criminalised today.”



It can now be reported for the first time that the journalist whose successful appeal led to the CPS’s review of Operation Elveden was the former News of the World crime correspondent Lucy Panton.

Panton, who lost her job when the News of the World closed in July 2011 under the weight of phone-hacking allegations, lodged an appeal after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit misconduct by paying a prison officer. The appeal court quashed her conviction last month.

Panton, a mother of two, was arrested at dawn while tending to her six-month-old child. She was on bail for more than 19 months before being charged. She was told on Friday that the CPS would not be proceeding against her in a second trial.

Others who have had the threat of prosecution lifted include the Sun reporter Vince Soodin, the former News of the World reporter Ryan Sabey, the Mirror reporter Stephen Moyes, the former Sun deputy news editor Ben O’Driscoll and its executive editor Graham Dudman.

Soodin said: “I felt angry because I had been arrested in a dawn raid for doing my job. I felt angry that the CPS still pursued the case for another two and a half years after that arrest and I felt angry that they continue now to prosecute three more of my colleagues in the misguided witch-hunt against the popular press.”

Soodin criticised the CPS for prosecuting him over a story about a fox attack on a child.

He said: “They had a precedent about the seriousness of this from the late 1970s. A police officer’s conviction for misconduct in public office was quashed when he did not intervene in an attack upon a member of the public so how could they possibly think that a journalist receiving a story about a fox attacking a child at a school premises was above that bar. It’s incredible.”

Coulson faced two counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office in relation to the alleged purchase of confidential royal phone directories in 2005. Goodman was charged in relation to the same offence.

Both were told on Friday they no longer faced trial. Coulson was jailed for 18 months for conspiring to intercept voicemails at the now-defunct News of the World. He was released from prison in November last year after serving nearly five months.

The high-profile Elveden inquiry began in the wake of the revelations of widespread phone hacking at the News of the World. News International, the owner of the Sun and the News of the World, handed documents relating to its staff, including 300m emails to the police. From this information, detectives were given details of journalists and their sources and began a series of raids.

In an explosive statement made to the Leveson inquiry in the middle of the police investigation, Sue Akers, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, gave details of the operation, claiming her officers had uncovered a “network of corrupted officials” and a “culture of illegal payments”.

The journalists arrested were left on bail in some cases for two or more years. The vast majority were cleared, with only two convictions out of 29 charged.

Among those acquitted were the Sun’s former editor Rebekah Brooks, the deputy editor Geoff Webster, the royal editor Duncan Larcombe, the executive editor Fergus Shanahan and the chief reporter John Kay.

Kay successfully argued that the leaks, which included revelations about shortages of equipment for British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and bullying at Deepcut barracks, where four soldiers took their own lives, were in the public interest.

Larcombe called on Friday night for resignations over operation Elveden.

He said of news of the abandoned trials: “It’s bittersweet because I don’t understand how anyone could justify that it could take three years – let alone all the taxpayers’ money wasted – to bring cases to this point.

“The morning I was arrested and after nearly 14 hours of being in custody I went back to my local pub and told one of my best friends ‘I don’t understand how you can arrest journalists like this, it’s ridiculous’ and then it’s taken three years down the line from that and finally that view that I expressed to my friend has sunk in to the CPS.

“If it’s wrong for a journalist to write about special treatment for Jon Venables, a child murderer and later exposed as a paedophile, if it’s wrong for a Sun journalist to expose cover-ups within the MoD about faulty armour, inadequate vehicles – if that’s wrong and if it’s justified that, by writing stories like that, the CPS and police come after journalists then, to quote a front page, ‘Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’.

“It’s revolting. It’s politically motivated and it’s without justification.”

Larcombe called for Saunders and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, to resign over Elveden.

Scotland Yard said in a statement: “We acknowledge and accept the review of current Elveden matters and we continue to work closely with the Crown Prosecution Service in respect of all outstanding cases under Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta.” Operations Weeting and Tuleta are the police investigations into phone hacking and computer hacking.