The former editor of the now-defunct ‘News of the World’ in the UK was on Wednesday cleared of perjury after a judge said that the alleged lies he told under oath were not relevant to the trial involving phone hacking at the tabloid owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Andy Coulson was on trial in Scotland in relation to evidence he gave in the 2010 trial of former Member of Scottish Parliament Tommy Sheridan. The prosecution had alleged that Coulson, the former communications director of UK PM David Cameron, lied about his knowledge of phone hacking at the erstwhile newspaper. However, the case at High Court in Edinburgh collapsed on Wednesday after his defence team successfully argued there was no case to answer.
Judge Lord David Burns ruled that the prosecution had not shown Coulson’s evidence was relevant in the Sheridan trial. Speaking after he was acquitted, Coulson said he was “delighted” by the verdict, and described the case against him as a “waste of money”.
Explaining his ruling, Burns told the jury that “not every lie amounts to perjury.”
He said the Crown, who was the prosecutor in the case, needed to prove that Coulson’s allegedly false evidence in the 2010 Sheridan case was relevant to the issues in that trial, and that was for him as a judge to decide rather than the jury.
Burns said that after two days of legal submissions the Crown had not satisfied him that Coulson’s evidence had been relevant.