Ex-Aide to Cameron Guilty in Hacking; Brooks Not Guilty

London: In another dramatic turn in a high-profile case that has transfixed Britain, Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper holdings in Britain, was acquitted on Tuesday of phone-hacking and other charges. Andy Coulson, a former tabloid editor and onetime head of communications for Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty on at least one count.

The verdicts after a week of deliberations by a jury came after lengthy hearings into a scandal at the Murdoch news empire that shook the British police, news media and political elite and forced the closure of a leading Murdoch Sunday tabloid, The News of the World.

Brooks and Coulson had been among seven defendants facing an array of charges including phone hacking and perverting the course of justice. The 130-day trial, tense and at times tawdry, has given a rare view of the inner workings of British tabloid journalism.

Coulson was the only person among the seven found guilty of conspiracy to intercept mobile phone calls and messages. His conviction was likely to reverberate through British political life, forcing Cameron into a humiliating apology in face of opposition taunts that he displayed a lack of judgment by supporting Coulson before the trial.

The phone hacking scandal burst into the open in July, 2011, with reports that the voicemail of an abducted teenager, Milly Dowler, was intercepted by an investigator employed by The News of the World in 2002. At that time Brooks was editor of the newspaper and Coulson was her deputy.

Brooks was cleared of phone hacking and three other charges, including seeking to obstruct justice. Reporters in the courtroom said she was overcome by emotion when the verdict was read and was led away by a court official.

Among the other people acquitted were Stuart Kuttner, a retired managing editor; Brooks' husband, Charlie Brooks; and her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter. Mark Hanna, a former security director, was also cleared.

But the jury was said to be considering further charges against Coulson and Clive Goodman, a former royals editor of The News of the World, on charges related to paying police officers for access to royal telephone directories, British media outlets said.

Throughout the scandal and the trial, much attention focused on the flame-haired figure of Brooks, who had been one of the most powerful figures in British tabloid journalism and was an associate of many influential people, including Cameron and the former prime  minister, Tony Blair.

But the role played by Coulson also had wide political significance because of his role as a key advisor to Cameron, both in opposition and after the Conservative party took power in a coalition in 2010.

Before the trial, Cameron said that if it turned out that Coulson knew about the phone hacking, then he would have lied to the prime minister, among others.

"I have an old-fashioned view about innocent until proven guilty," Cameron told Parliament in 2011. "But if it turns out I have been lied to, that would be the moment for a profound apology. In that event I can tell you I will not fall short."

Asked about those words on Tuesday, Cameron's spokesman said, "They stand entirely."

The case also raised an array of concerns about Murdoch's influence over British public life through his newspapers and about the nature of the relationship between Coulson and Brooks. During the trial, she acknowledged that they had become intimate.

"It's probably very easy to blame work, but the hours were very long and hard and you got thrown together in an industry like that," she said, recalling in particular moving into a hotel close to the office during the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003. "It was wrong, and it shouldn't have happened but things did."

Brooks and her husband left the Old Bailey courtroom on Tuesday in a taxi without offering comment on their acquittals.

Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University in London and a respected commentator on media issues, said many people had expected a conviction.

"People will be outraged that the prosecution couldn't make a good enough case," he said.

But some analysts said the trial had already changed British journalism and humbled a once mighty and swaggering yellow press. Even before the trial began, the hacking scandal had prompted an array of parliamentary, police and public inquiries into the practices and culture of the British press.

"The tabloids have become rather less tabloidy, or at least they stay within the law," said John Lloyd, co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

Given the economics of the industry, these changes are unlikely to be reversed, he said. The tabloids "are losing power all the time," Lloyd said. "Much of what they do - sex scandals and celebrities - is now widely available on several online."

"They are very much a declining force," he said.