Six Sun journalists have been cleared of an “overarching” nine-year conspiracy with public officials to commit misconduct in public office, but face remaining charges alleging specific unlawful payments in a criminal trial.
The journalists, who include the paper’s former managing editor, news editors and a picture editor, had been accused of paying police, soldiers, prison officials and workers at Broadmoor hospital for a variety of tips and leaks between March 2002 and January 2011.
But at the start of Friday’s proceedings in Kingston crown court, judge Peter Marks instructed the jury to formally find the defendants not guilty of count 1, which accused them of an “overarching” nine-year conspiracy.
The defendants are Chris Pharo, 45, head of news; Ben O’Driscoll, 38, former deputy news editor; Graham Dudman, 51, former managing editor; John Edwards, 50, picture editor; reporter Jamie Pyatt, 51; and John Troup, 49, former reporter.
Marks told jurors that the onus was on the prosecution to provide sufficient evidence that it would be “proper to convict these various defendants of these charges”.
He said that after consideration of legal submissions, he had “reached the conclusion as a matter of law that the prosecution have failed in this regard”.
Marks also told the jury to find Pharo not guilty of a further charge, count 6, which alleged a conspiracy to pay a serving soldier in the armed forces for a tip about Sandhurst between 12 and 30 April 2006.
The defendants still face individual charges relating to allegations of corrupt payments over narrower time periods.
With two charges dropped, Pharo now faces four charges of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. Dudman and O’Driscoll are left fighting three charges while Pyatt and Edwards face two counts and Troup one. All six deny the charges.
