Doughty Street’s Anthony Hudson…nice try

Not since Richard Nixon’s secretary ‘accidentally’ erased five miles of  audio tape have we been asked to believe tosh like this.

 

Yesterday in the High Court, an extraordinary argument was mounted by Murdoch’s defence team as to why Glenn Mulcaire (the banged-up News of the World journalist) should not be required to name other journalists involved in hacking celebrity mobiles phones.

Speaking for a terrified Rupert Murdoch News Group Newspapers, a subsidiary of News International, the press arm of Newsgroup, Anthony Hudson of Doughty Street Chambers found himself faced with a mountain of evidence from various police raids. This showed that phone records from Mulcaire’s home recorded soccer commentator Andy Gray’s voicemail number having been called on 12 occasions in 2005 and 2006.

But living up to the name of his Chambers, Mr Hudson argued that:

“….the evidence does not support that Mulcaire or others listened, took notes from or recorded the mobile phone voicemail messages…..the duration of the calls mean it is impossible to prove messages had been listened to.”

In among the angels on the pinhead of that assertion, there lies a genuine point of law: motivation and access do not prove crime. There are however two large holes in the defence for anyone of sound mind:

1. Mulcaire is not in prison for having an unfortunate tendency to leave nuisance messages on phones; he’s there for hacking into them.

2. Mulcaire had had written down comprehensive details of Gray’s voicemail account. He did the same about other folks too, and he went to prison for hacking their phones.

But Anthony Hudson ploughed bravely on, adding, “This does not mean Mr Mulcaire had tried to access those messages….”

Of course not. He made an exception for Andy Gray – who is his secret lover, perhaps.

The law is forced to be an ass on occasions because the shadow of doubt remains at the core of our legal system. But the doubt re this one is truly homaeopathic, a reality recognised by the judge Mr Justice Vos, who noted with a wry smile:

“To date, the News of the World has provided nothing on which journalists, if any, had worked with Mr Mulcaire allegedly to hack the phone of Mr Gray.There might have been hacking into Mr Gray’s phone for months and months, but there is here, I think, a fairly strong inference that hacking went on”.

This was his politely objective way of saying that Newscorp was being obstructive, and Mr Hudson was trying to fly a lead kite.

The case continues.