This morning, the first sentencing of an individual convicted from the investigation that has come out of the phone hacking case.
For several reasons this result has been particularly anticipated, firstly the Judge in charge of this case is Mr. Justice Fulford, who is the judge in charge of all the major hacking cases, and this will be an early indication of the severity of sentencing that he thinks the cases require. indeed her lawyer, in an attempt to get the sentence reduced tried to get some distance between her case and the other cases from the News International set
BBC News - April Casburn jailed for News of the World leak offer
April Casburn goes to prison as the first person convicted as part of Operation Elveden.
During mitigation, her barrister argued that the exceptional nature of her offence - one 'mad telephone call' - should not lead to a precedent-setting sentence which would affect any future convictions relating to corrupt relationships between police and journalists.
But Mr Justice Fulford made clear she had no excuse for her actions - it was a straightforward and troubling case of corruption.
The Judge seemed to have very little sympathy for this point of view however
The second detail that has drawn interest to this case is that The detective is in the process of adopting a vulnerable child, and people are looking at the smoke signals to see if there is any similarity between that and Rebekah Brooks surrogacy case, and so will we have to adjust expected sentences in that case compared to other people, if she is found guilty
Senior Met officer sentenced to 15 months for phone-hacking leak | Media | guardian.co.uk
A senior Metropolitan police officer has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for trying to sell information about the Met's phone-hacking inquiry to theNews of the World.
Detective chief inspector April Casburn, 53, was found guilty last month of misconduct in public office, after making a phone call to the now-defunct tabloid in September 2010 to tip it off about Scotland Yard's decision to launch a new investigation into phone hacking.
Handing down the jail term on Friday morning, Mr Justice Fulford said "the sentence would have been three years", but he had taken into account the fact that a "vulnerable child" which Casburn and her husband were in the process of adopting would be left without her mother while she served her sentence.
From the wording in the judges sentencing report, it appears that this is one specific case because of the particular status of the particular child, however an eye needs keeping on this as we have to remember the sickness case in the Operation Motorman trial, there one individual was conditionally discharged, due to severe illness, and this was taken as a precedent for sentencing for all other defendents. Hopefully it's the Three year sentence that is seen as the precedent, rather than the lesser total.
There's an interesting article on Exaro news, which is infortunately subscription only, but here's a summary from the Guardian discussing how the case came about from the point of view of the Journalist who was the witness in the case.
Ex-NoW reporter blasts News Corp for role in jailing of detective | Media | guardian.co.uk
The formerNews of the World reporter whose evidence contributed to the jailing of a senior anti-terrorism police officer has launched a scathing attack on the paper's owner,News Corporation, for its role in the case.
Tim Wood is furious that News Corp, the ultimate owner of the now-defunct tabloid, handed over an email he had written, which Justice Fulford said was crucialto Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn's conviction and imprisonment for 15 months.
Wood was the journalist who took the call when Casburn phoned the News of the World early one Saturday morning on September 2010 to tip off the paper that Scotland Yard was launching a new phone-hacking investigation.
Hetold the Exaro News website that the decision by News Corp's management and standards committee to hand over the email about the details of his phone conversation with Casburn to the Met was a "betrayal" of one of the most basic principles of journalism, which is "always to protect the source" of a story.