Even though the first phone hacking trial is over, the UK prosecution and police are still looking into phone hacking. This week, a former Mirror reporter has, in fact, been charged in a new case.
Graham Johnson, who left the newspaper in 2006, is accused of phone hacking in 2001, the Guardian reported.
The Mirror declined to comment to iMediaEthics about the charge against Johnson.
“He is the second former Sunday Mirror journalist to have been charged with alleged hacking offences,” the Guardian reported. “Dan Evans pleaded guilty to hacking at the Sunday Mirror and News of the World, and gave evidence in the Rebekah Brooks trial.”
The BBC and Digital Spy, however, reported that Johnson is the first journalist from the Sunday Mirror to be charged. Evans pleaded guilty to hacking while working for both the Mirror and News of the World, a January 2014 report from the Guardian says.
Evans’ cooperation with the phone hacking trial earned him a lighter sentence, as iMediaEthics wrote this summer.
The Crown Prosecution Service published a statement on its website from its senior lawyer Gregor McGill about the charge against Johnson. McGill said:
“May I remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against Graham Johnson will now be commenced and of his right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.
“This decision was taken in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and the DPP’s guidelines on the public interest in cases affecting the media. We have decided there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that a prosecution is in the public interest.”
iMediaEthics has written to Johnson’s assistant for comment.
Earlier this fall, the Mirror acknowledged its staff had phone hacked. The newspaper paid ten victims of hacking and “admitted liability” to four of the victims, as iMediaEthics wrote.