Rebekah Brooks Acquitted, Former Lover Andy Coulson Guilty: U.K. Jury System Works?
Rebekah Brooks was acquitted on Tuesday of all charges in the notorious phone hacking trial which has lasted for some seven months. Her colleague and former lover, Andy Coulson, was the only one of the five defendants to be found guilty by a jury of eight women and three men after eight days of deliberation.
Draw your own conclusions about the U.K. jury system!
Brooks, former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper empire, had been charged with authorizing phone hacking and bribery. Coulson, an editor and former sometime lover, was found guilty of guilty of conspiring to intercept messages to break news about royalty, celebrities and victims of crime.
After leaving Murdoch, Andy Coulson went on to become media advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron, which meant that Cameron today found himself in the embarrassing position of having to apologize for the fact that he had ever employed Coulson.
This has been one of the most expensive trials in British legal history. Given that Rebekah Brooks and 3 others were found not guilty, and Coulson’s punishment can’t be more than two years in prison (realistically only one), one could be forgiven for thinking: What was the point?
Brooks walked from the court holding the hand of her husband, Charlie, who was also cleared. Her lawyer, Jonathan Laidlaw, said the authorities’ decision to take her to court was like a medieval witch hunt. Not an unreasonable claim, in the circumstances.
Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson were both former editors of he News of the World, the 168-year-old tabloid which Rupert Murdoch closed in July 2011 to satisfy the baying for blood of other media outlets who were doubtless thinking deep down “there but for the grace of God….”
Actually, it was quite extraordinary how all other newspapers became suddenly ” holier than the Pope” overnight. Probably they understood that Murdoch’s people were only guilty of breaking the 11 th Commandment — ” Thou shall not get found out!”
Police alleged there were probably more than 1,000 victims of hacking, including Queen Elizabeth, Princes William and Harry, and Kate Middleton.
In an attempt to find exclusive stories for the News of the World, Politicians, celebrities, prominent sporting figures, and even rival journalists were all targeted. In retrospect, it is reasonable to ask: In all the decades preceding this affair, why did no-one question the sources of the incredible stories which the newspaper featured week after week, month after month, and year after year? Was it simply a case of ” See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil?” Perhaps it was that they didn’t know because they didn’t WANT to know!
Outside of the specifics about the phone hacking, probably the most dramatic revelation during the trial concerned the affair that Brooks and Coulson had had on and off over nine years from the time they began working together on the News of the World in 1998.
Prosecutors argued that “pillow talk” would have ensured that any actions of Coulson would have been known by Brooks. They did not take into account that couples involved in extra-marital sexual liaisons have other priorities when it comes to discussing things in bed.
It seems that, in the case of Rebekah Brooks, the jury understood that far better than the police.
