News of World features editor sentenced over hacking

Former News of the World features editor, Jules Stenson, pleaded guilty to plotting to hack phones in December

Ex-News of the World features editor Jules Stenson has been given a four-month suspended jail sentence for his part in the phone-hacking scandal.

Stenson, 49, from Battersea, south west London, pleaded guilty in December 2014 to plotting to hack phones.

He is the ninth and final journalist from the now-defunct Sunday tabloid to be convicted for phone hacking.

Mr Justice Saunders also sentenced him to 200 hours of community service and ordered him to pay £18,000 legal costs.

The court also ordered him to pay a £5,000 fine.

Stenson was charged with plotting to hack phones between 1 January 2003 and 26 January 2007.

The father-of-three broke down in the dock when he heard he would not be going to jail and thanked the judge before he left court.

Outside, he apologised to the victims saying: "It was wrong and it should never have happened".

'Blaze of publicity'

In his final sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Saunders said despite public interest "waning" since the widespread public condemnation at the height of the scandal, he must still deliver justice.

"It would be quite wrong for me to say that, as it has gone on so long and public interest is less, those convicted at the end of the series of trials should receive shorter sentences than those who were arrested earlier and sentenced in a blaze of publicity," he said.

However the judge took account of Stenson's guilty plea and acknowledged distinctions between his case and the others.

Former News of the World journalist Dan Evans admitted hacking phones

"He was put in a position of competing with people working on the news desk who he knew were phone hacking and his editor condoned the practice," he said.

"It is likely that if he had not come up with stories, Jules Stenson would have lost his job. Further, the period over which the features department were phone hacking was comparatively short and there was only one person doing it - Dan Evans."

The court heard that hacking was widespread in the newsroom for years before Stenson, under pressure from the then News of the World editor Andy Coulson, brought it to the features department.

Evans was given a 10-month jail sentence suspended for a year for two counts of phone hacking and making illegal payments to officials at the Old Bailey in July 2014. He had pleaded guilty and was a prosecution witness in Coulson's hacking trial.

Earlier the same month, Coulson was jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones.

'Industrial scale'

Stenson helped recruit Evans to The News of the World from the Sunday Mirror, said prosecutor Julian Christopher QC.

Both Coulson and Stenson were at a breakfast meeting with Evans when they discussed phone hacking, said Mr Christopher.

Andy Coulson was jailed for 18 months last year

Mr Christopher added that there was intense competition between the news and features desks, and Stenson took the attitude "if you can't beat them join them".

Phone records showed that in a seven-month period in 2006, Evans intercepted voicemails on 120 occasions.

The celebrities whose phones were hacked included actress Sienna Miller, TV personality Jade Goody, footballers Sol Campbell and Steven Gerrard, manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and boxer Amir Khan.

Mr Christopher said Stenson's knowledge of what was going on was apparent in emails and Evans always told his boss when information came from phone hacking so he could gauge its reliability.

Stenson's lawyer, James Hines QC, called for a suspended sentence as his client had been put under intense pressure by Coulson.

Mr Hines said that while it was prolific, the features hacking operation was nowhere near "the industrial scale" of the news department.