Today the next phase in the ongoing UK legal cases surrounding the Murdoch organisation occurred. DCI April Casburn was found guilty of misconduct in public office.
BBC News - Detective guilty of offering NoW leak for cash
A senior Metropolitan Police detective has been found guilty of offering to sell inside information on the phone-hacking probe to the News of the World.
A Southwark Crown Court jury convicted Det Ch Insp April Casburn, 53, from Essex, of misconduct in public office.
The counter-terrorism officer was the first person to be prosecuted under Operation Elveden, the probe into payments by journalists to officials.
There is yet to be a sentancing, the Judge having to take into consideration the effects on an adopted child.
It will be interesting to watch the spin put on this conviction over the next few days. No doubt there will be a variety of newspaper articles suggesting unreliabilaty of police actions in this, and so implying that action against Reporters is Unjustified. If the result of the case had however been not guilty, then we would equally have seen newspaper articles saying that the Crown Prosecution Service posessed faulty Judgement in Bringing cases, and so action against reporters is unjustified.
In the long term however the result will actually be the opposite. A guilty result will add weight to future prosecutions, A not guilty result would have accentuated what would seem to be dishonesty in evidence from the NOTW.
Does this tell us how future cases will go? No, but it does make a welcome change for a high profile case against a UK police officer to get to court without the paperwork being lost, and from now we may begin to see a steady flow of convictions.