Andy Coulson’s former deputy at the News of the World has walked free from court after being cleared of masterminding a campaign of phone hacking at the defunct tabloid.
Neil Wallis, 64, who was deputy editor of the Sunday paper, was cleared by a jury of seven men and five women after a three-week trial at the Old Bailey. Behind the glass wall of the court six dock, Wallis mouthed “thank you” to the jury.
He also took no time in branding the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) “a disgrace”, and said his prosecution had been politically motivated.
He sobbed and hugged his solicitor as he left court, going on to tweet his followers:
Thanks so so much to all those who stood by me - so grateful #StillStanding
— Neil Wallis (@neilwallis1) July 1, 2015
Wallis was the last of the journalists from the tabloid to face legal action over hacking.
Speaking outside court, he said: “Four years. Four years after I was arrested, I finally walk out of here a free man. It’s cost me and my family most of our life savings.
“It’s ruined my life all because of a vicious politically driven campaign against the press launched by [the former director of public prosecutions] Keir Starmer and [his then principal legal adviser] Alison Levitt.
“This is the culmination of a political drive by the police and the CPS. It’s a disgrace.”
Wallis went on to thank his legal team, and said: “I just want to say I will never get over this. I’ve been virtually unable to work for four years … It’s taken my health, my family’s health and all because of a campaign against journalists.”
Asked by a broadcaster if he blamed his former boss at NoW, Andy Coulson, for landing him in the dock, he replied: “I believe the people who got me into this situation were the CPS and Operation Weeting detectives, who when I was arrested talked to me about Milly Dowler – basic detective research would have shown I was not even working.”
Wallis left with his legal team, saying he was “going off to have a drink”.
Coulson, along with three former news editors, the chief reporter, features editor, royal editor and a feature writer, have all either been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to phone hacking.
Wallis was accused of overseeing the routine hacking of phones belonging to celebrities, politicians and sports stars by the paper’s senior journalists and editors.
The jury, however, rejected the prosecution case, and a volley of allegations by the crown’s chief witness, the paper’s former features writer and self-confessed hacker Dan Evans.
The verdict is a blow to the CPS, which has yet to make charging decisions on individuals alleged to have been involved in hacking at Mirror group titles where Evans worked before he joined the NoW.
Coulson handpicked Wallis, a veteran newsman, as his deputy when he became editor of the News of the World in January 2003.
The jury sided with Wallis, who told the Old Bailey he was oblivious to the illegal practice, and that it had been hidden from him because he was a “stickler” for the rules.
The verdict brings to an end Wallis’s four-year battle to clear his name, having been arrested in a dawn raid in July 2011 at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.
He was arrested and interviewed under caution on four occasions as part of the Metropolitan police’s Operation Weeting, and at one point was told he would not face prosecution.
Wallis, who left the paper two years before it closed to become an an adviser to the Met’s then-commissioner, Lord Stevens, bounced back with gusto, making numerous appearances on the BBC and other media outlets as a commentator.
He also immersed himself in Twitter, where he describes himself as an “Operation Weeting survivor” with his biography marked with the hashtag #stillstanding.
After Evans gave evidence in the Coulson trial last year, however, the CPS decided that it did , after all, have a case against Wallis.
Last July, he was charged, along with the paper’s former features editor Jules Stenson, with conspiring with five other journalists from the paper, the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and “other persons unknown” to illegally intercept voicemail messages “of well-known people and those associated with them” between 1 January 2003 and 26 January 2007.
Wallis said he was devastated that the charges had been brought against him and said it was “perhaps inevitable that after being such an outspoken critic of the collateral damage and pain” caused by Operation Weeting that the “ire has been turned on me”.
An unreconstructed old-school journalist in the mould of the Sun’s former editor Kelvin MacKenzie, Wallis acted as Coulson’s enforcer, barking expletive-laden orders to staff and earning a reputation as an uncompromising taskmaster with an abrasive manner.
Nicknamed the Wolfman, a badge he wore with pride, Wallis maintained he was no different to any tabloid editor operating in the toughest and most competitive newspaper market in the world, where scoops and chutzpah were a sign of success.
When a reporter at the Daily Star, he reportedly asked to forgo a pay rise in return for a new byline that read “The World’s Number One Reporter”, although Wallis laughs off that story.
Poached by the Sun in 1986 as investigations editor, Wallis worked his way up to No 2 on the paper. He got rid of his beard after MacKenzie, in a spoof piece of advice, told him Rupert Murdoch detested unshaven men.
His acquittal almost certainly brings to an end proceedings against staff from the former News UK title. It will also almost certainly unleash a fresh torrent of criticism of the Met by Wallis.
In a fiery statement during his police interviews, Wallis complained of an “extraordinarily vindictive campaign of persecution”, describing himself as “the pre-eminent and most high-profile campaigner exposing the Metropolitan police’s abuse of the arrest process”.
During his evidence, Wallis broke down in tears as he revealed his marriage had fallen apart under the stress of prosecution.
Prosecutor Julian Christopher QC said it was inconceivable that Wallis had not known about the hacking, given his hands-on style of working and position in the heart of the newsroom. “There was an awful lot of phone hacking going on,” he said.
“The practice was so widespread at the News of the World that it is inconceivable that the editor above him, Mr Coulson, should have been involved, and those below him should have been involved, without him also knowing about it and being involved,” Christopher said.
Coulson was convicted and jailed for 18 months last July.
News editors Greg Miskiw, James Weatherup and Ian Edmondson, chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, royal editor Clive Goodman, feature writer Dan Evans and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire all admitted their involvement.
Stenson pleaded guilty after being charged alongside Wallis and is awaiting sentence.
Wallis remained adamant that he was not part of the conspiracy from the time he joined in January 2003 to the arrest of Mulcaire and Goodman in August 2006. “At every point the legality and legal issues of what we were doing were paramount,” he told the court. “I didn’t know about voicemail interceptions.”
The prosecution case relied heavily on the evidence of Evans, a self-confessed hacker who gave evidence that the practice was rampant at the News of the World.
He claimed that Wallis was among the executives who tried to poach him from the Sunday Mirror in 2004, telling him: “I know you can screw phones.”
He was an unreliable witness for the crown, however, and the defence barrister Neil Saunders exposed his evidence as riddled with inaccuracies.
Evans also claimed he played a hacked voicemail of Sienna Miller confessing her love for fellow actor Daniel Craig to Coulson and Wallis, the latter grabbing him by the arm and congratulating him with the words: “You’re a company man now.”
Wallis denied the incident ever took place, telling jurors he was at the Labour party conference on the day Evans claimed it had happened. “Dan Evans never played me that tape. He never played me a voicemail of Sienna Miller,” he said. “It never happened. It is a lie.”
Wallis was also accused of knowing a story that then home secretary David Blunkett was having an affair with a married woman had come from hacked voicemails.
He told jurors that Coulson had kept that information from him, knowing that he was a senior figure at the Press Complaints Commission who always stuck to the rules.
“Everyone at the News of the World knew him before his arrival, and if they didn’t then soon after he joined they would find out he was a man who followed the code,” Saunders said. “He is not someone who would bypass the code.”
Wallis funded his own defence when News International refused to bankroll him. Under new rules he will not be able to recover any of his costs.
Wallis was defended by Neil Saunders, the husband of the director of public prosecution Alison Saunders, who has been under sustained attack for her original decision not to bring charges against Lord Janner over child sex abuse claims, a decision overturned this week.