I’m not certain how many times I said that Operation Elveden was flawed. But the Crown Prosecution Service has finally acknowledged the fact by abandoning the prosecutions of nine journalists arrested by the Metropolitan police.
But it is still, remarkably, going to pursue three Sun journalists in retrials. Why? Where’s the public interest in doing so?
Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is surely wrong not to drop every case involving alleged illegal payments to public officials.
Look at the record: 29 journalists charged under Elveden and just two convictions (which will surely be appealed).
Consider also that jurors have been regularly clearing journalists of this absurd charge of conspiring and/or aiding and abetting officials to commit misconduct in a public office.
Thirteen journalists have been declared not guilty after lengthy trials. Enough is enough. Similarly, the CPS should also give careful consideration to showing sympathy towards the journalists’ sources, some of whom have either been found guilty or who have pleaded guilty to offences.
Almost 30 of them - police officers, prison officers, civil servants - have gone to jail. Their sentences should be reviewed too.
If these people broke their contracts of employment by leaking information to reporters, that’s a civil matter, not a criminal one. To go to jail for having done so is a travesty of justice.
The law under which the journalists have been tried was unknown to the journalists, their editors and their publishers. And it has proved so controversial that at least one judge failed to appreciate its nuances.
Hence the lord chief justice’s overturning of certain convictions in a trial conducted by Judge (Charles) Wide. The appeal court decided that he had “misdirected” the jury on a key aspect of the ancient common law offence of misconduct in a public office.
I have been convinced of the innocence of the journalists for more than two years. I first met the Sun’s Whitehall editor, Clodagh Hartley in October 2012 and listened carefully to the reasons for her arrest.
I spent a couple of weeks mulling over what she told me. I later read the evidence against her. I couldn’t see that she should have been charged, although I also took some legal advice that suggested she should. I ignored it, thankfully, and gave evidence on her behalf.
I am delighted to say the the jury in her case found her not guilty. She is therefore one of the 13. I won’t say lucky 13, however, because all these journalists have been through the mill since the Metropolitan police launched Operation Elveden. None have been lucky.
Saunders needs to take account of the fact that juries just don’t agree with the arguments her legal teams have been advancing. Journalists may not have a high standing with the public, according to opinion polls, but jurors cleared them all the same.
Why? Because jurors obviously saw that there was a public interest in the disclosure of information.
Counsel for one of the defendants in the most recent trial, in which four journalists were cleared of such charges, was right when he described Elveden as a “misconceived witch-hunt”. I could not put it better.