England: journalist’s conviction over newspaper payments using 13th century law quashed

The reporter, who cannot be named, was the first journalist to be convicted by a jury over payments made to newspapers for information.

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (pictured) also quashed the convictions of two others – a prison officer and his friend.

Prosecutors were ordered to decide whether they want a retrial by tomorrow.

Giving his ruling in the Court of Appeal, Lord Thomas said that judge Charles Wide had misdirected the jury at the trio’s trial by failing to tell them the threshold for conviction was high.

The lord chief justice said jurors required to be satisfied the defendants’ conduct was not merely a breach of duty but that it had done real harm to public interest.

Lord Thomas said: “This is without doubt a difficult area of the criminal law. An ancient common law offence is being used in circumstances where it has rarely before been applied.”

He added the CPS had failed to supply the trial judge with the latest developments in the case law on misconduct.

Lord Thomas added: “The judge was entitled to far more help by the prosecution than he was given.”

The ruling comes after a jury recently cleared four Sun journalists as well as a former soldier and his wife of similar offences in the Old Bailey.

Lord Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Cranston and Mr Justice William Davis said jurors required to be directed to consider the context of the alleged offending when deciding on their verdict.

The ruling added that the media played an important role in a democratic society “in making information available to the public when it is in the public interest to do so”.

And while public officials might be in breach of their duty to their superiors, the judges said: “… information is sometimes provided by such persons in breach of that duty where the provider of the information may benefit the public interest rather than harm it.”

They added: “The jury must judge the misconduct by considering objectively whether the provision of the information by the office holder in deliberate breach of his duty had the effect of harming the public interest.”

A CPS spokesman said it was using “an extremely difficult and rarely visited area of the law” and that it was considering the judgment “very carefully”.

The spokesman added: “The Court of Appeal considered that the jury needed greater direction on how serious the offending must be to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust than was given in this case and therefore could not be certain that the jury would have reached the same verdict had that direction been given.”