Lawyers ‘never told Coulson phone hacking was illegal’

Coulson, 46, faces up to two years in prison after he was found guilty last week of conspiring to intercept voicemails at the News of the World (NotW) following a marathon trial at the Old Bailey.

In mitigation, his lawyer, Timothy Langdale QC, claimed it was clear from the trial that Coulson was not alone in being ignorant of the fact that phone hacking was illegal.

He said: “No one at the NotW or the newspaper industry at large in 2000/06 realised that interception of voicemail messages was 
illegal, in the sense of criminal.”

He said the NotW’s own legal department, whom Coulson consulted frequently, never advised him that it was a crime. Mr Langdale accepted that hacking was widespread when Coulson was editor between 2003 and 2006 but rejected the prosecution statement that the newspaper “became a thoroughly criminal enterprise” under Coulson’s editorship.

Immediately after Coulson’s conviction, Prime Minister David Cameron issued a full and frank public apology for hiring him.

The shamed No 10 spin doctor, from Charing in Kent, will be sentenced on Friday alongside three of his former colleagues and private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who all admitted their part in the phone hacking plot last year.

The prosecution has also asked for £750,000 costs to be paid following the 139-day trial.

NotW news editor Greg Miskiw, 64, from Leeds, chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 52, of Esher, Surrey, and James Weatherup, 58, of Brentwood in Essex, have all admitted one general count of conspiring together and with others to illegally access voicemails between October 2000 and August 2006.

Mulcaire, 43, from Sutton in south London, was first convicted of phone hacking with NotW royal reporter Clive Goodman in 2006 and served a prison sentence.

Following a renewed police investigation, he admitted three more counts of conspiring to hack phones plus a fourth count of hacking the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002 – an act which eventually led to the downfall of the NotW in 2011.

Coulson’s co-defendants Rebekah Brooks and managing editor Stuart Kuttner were cleared of all charges.