Phone Hacking Trial: Defence to begin on 19 February 2014 with Rebekah Brooks’ case

The defence case in the phone hacking trial will begin on Wednesday 19 February 2014, which is week 14 of the trial.  Each of defendants presents his or her case in the order that their names are on the indictment: Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, Clive Goodman, Cheryl Carter, Mark Hanna and finally Charlie Brooks.

The defence cases will begin with the case of Rebekah Brooks who is “first on the indictment”.  It seems likely that Mrs Brooks will give evidence first and that her case will take several weeks. The judge has indicated that he expects the defence cases conclude in May with the jury considering their verdicts in the middle of that month.

The nature of the defence case is considered by James Doleman in The Drum  – on the basis of the points put by defence counsel in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.

The #pressreform blog will continue to provide links and live tweets.  This blog had a post on 7 February 2014 with links to the latest reports and information about the trial.

The comprehensive tweets from @peterjukes will continue to be collated in the “Trial Summary” on his blog. Peter Jukes has written about how his coverage has been crowd-funded: How the Kindness of Strangers Crowd Funded My Hacking Trial Coverage.

The case is also being live tweeted by a number of other journalists. We mention, in particular:@jamesdoleman and @lisaocarroll.

It seems likely that the evidence of Mrs Brooks will attract much wider mainstream media coverage than most of the previous 13 weeks of the trial – which has received comprehensive coverage only on the BBC and in the broadsheet newspapers.

We had a post on 6 February 2014 on the conclusion of the prosecution case and the various reports available.  We also referred there to James Doleman’s short summary of the prosecution case.  Martin Evans of the Daily Telegraph has also provided a summary of the prosecution case: “Phone hacking trial – the story so far as the prosecution case closes”.

Meanwhile, two other “Operation Elveden” trials have now been fixed (see Lisa O’Carroll’s report in the Guardian):

• On 6 October 2014 there will be a trial of John Edwards, the Sun’s picture editor; reporter Jamie Pyatt; Ben O’Driscoll, a former deputy news editor at the Sun; and Graham Dudman the former managing editor of the Sun who are charged with paying bribes to officials from Broadmoor Hospital, Thames Valley police, Surrey police and Metropolitan Police, the British armed forces and HMP Swaleside over a period of nine years between 2002 and 2011. Mr Dudman also faces a charged of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office between September 2001 and September 2002.
• On 13 October 2014 there will be a trial of Lucy Panton, the former News of the World crime editor and Tom Savage,  Daily Star Sunday deputy news editor along with two public officials – Scott Chapman, a former prison officer at HMP Woodhill and his former partner Lynn Gaffney.  Mr Chapman and Ms Gaffney face four counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. Ms Panton and Mr Savage are charged with one count each of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office.