Scotland Yard Officer Guilty in Phone Hacking Trial

The officer, Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn, 53, was convicted of a single count of misconduct in public office after a three-day trial. The judge, Sir Adrian Fulford, warned Ms. Casburn that she faced “a real possibility” of a prison sentence, to be decided after he reviewed sentencing submissions from prosecuting and defense counsels in the case.

The verdict carried implications for a battery of other trials expected this year and next as prosecutors work their way through police files on more than 90 people who have been arrested in the scandal.

In many of the cases, the individuals — police officers, newspaper executives, editors, reporters and private investigators working for the newspapers — have offered the same defense advanced by Ms. Casburn and her lawyers: that they were acting in the public interest.

The case revolved around Ms. Casburn’s telephone call to the Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid on Sept. 11, 2010, in which she told a reporter details of a confidential new investigation into allegations that the paper had been involved in a widespread pattern of hacking into the cellphone messages of celebrities.

Ms. Casburn maintained on the witness stand that she was motivated by her anger at a decision by her superiors to assign the new investigation to Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism command, where she headed a unit responsible for investigating terrorist financing. She cited a strongly male bias within the counterterrorism unit, telling the court that there was a “palpable excitement” at the prospect of interviewing celebrities who had said that their phones had been hacked, including the actress Sienna Miller. “I felt very strongly that we shouldn’t be doing hacking,” she said. “Our function was to prevent terrorist attacks.”

The prosecution case, accepted by the jury, was that Ms. Casburn was acting out of personal motives, and had demanded payment in return for the confidential information. After the call, the reporter she spoke with, Tim Wood, wrote an e-mail to his editors, cited in evidence at the court, saying that the officer who called him “wants to sell inside info” on the new police inquiry. Ms. Casburn denied asking for payment.

The investigation Ms. Casburn divulged had been reopened on the basis of a magazine article published in The New York Times, which quoted sources at The News of the World saying that hacking of cellphone messages had been rife. Their accounts contradicted an earlier Scotland Yard finding that the practice had been limited to a single “rogue reporter” and a private investigator, both of whom were sentenced to brief prison terms in 2007 for hacking into the cellphone messages of junior members of the royal family and their aides.

By bringing Ms. Casburn to trial ahead of others who have been charged in the scandal, prosecutors appeared eager to show that Scotland Yard, the pinnacle of policing in Britain, was determined to uproot the wrongdoing in its own ranks exposed by the scandal.

After Ms. Casburn’s conviction, Scotland Yard, formally known as the Metropolitan Police Service, issued a statement saying: “There may be occasions when putting certain information into the public domain — so-called whistle-blowing — can be justified. This was not one of them. Fortunately, this type of behavior is rare, but we hope today’s verdict shows the public can have confidence that the M.P.S. holds itself to account.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/world/europe/scotland-yard-officer-guilty-in-phone-hacking-trial.html?partner=rss&emc=rss