LONDON -- Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper holdings in Britain, was acquitted 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 came after a week of deliberations by the jury, and after lengthy hearings into a scandal at the Murdoch newspaper empire that shook the British police, news media and political elite and forced Murdoch to shut down one of his leading Sunday tabloids, News of the World.
The verdict drew an apology from Cameron, who has been under fire from opponents who accused him of poor judgment in hiring Coulson.
"I am extremely sorry that I employed him," Cameron said. "It was the wrong decision, and I am very clear about that."
Brooks and Coulson, both 46, were tried along with five other defendants on an array of charges, including phone hacking and perverting the course of justice.
The seven-month trial uncovered systematic eavesdropping on the cellphones of celebrities, sports figures, politicians, members of the royal family and ordinary people caught up in the news. One defendant said the intercepts were conducted "on an industrial scale."
Coulson, who has denied the hacking charges, was the only one of the seven defendants who was found guilty on any count Tuesday. He was convicted of conspiracy to intercept cellphone calls and messages.
British media reported that the jury was still considering some charges against him and one other defendant -- Clive Goodman, 56, the former royal-news editor at News of the World -- related to accusations of paying police officers for access to royal telephone directories.
Brooks, who has always insisted on her innocence, was acquitted of phone hacking and three other charges, including seeking to obstruct justice.
The other people acquitted were Stuart Kuttner, 74, a retired managing editor; Brooks' former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, 50; Brooks' husband, racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, 52; and Mark Hanna, 51, a former security director.
The phone-hacking scandal came to light in July 2011 with reports that the voice mail of an abducted teenager, Milly Dowler, had been intercepted by an investigator employed by News of the World in 2002. At that time, Brooks was editor of the newspaper and Coulson was her deputy.
During the trial, prosecutors presented phone data relating to widespread hacking during Coulson's editorship of News of the World from 2003 to 2006. There was far less specific evidence of hacking during Brooks' editorship, from 2000 to 2003.
Coulson denied that he had agreed to or had authorized phone hacking, but admitted that he had known it was done in one instance. Brooks said she was unaware of hacking at the paper during her tenure.
Throughout the scandal and the trial, much attention focused on Brooks, who had been one of the most powerful figures in British tabloid journalism, at the intersection of politics and the press. She was an associate of many influential people, including Cameron and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who sought the electoral endorsement of Murdoch's newspapers, particularly of the mass-circulation tabloids.
But the role played by Coulson also had wide political significance because of his position as an adviser to Cameron, both in the opposition from 2007 to 2010 and after the Conservative Party took power in a coalition after the 2010 election.
"David Cameron has very serious questions to answer," Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour opposition, said after the verdict.
"We now know that he brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street," Miliband said, referring to the address of the prime ministerial offices and residence. "This isn't just a serious error of judgment, it taints David Cameron's government, because we now know that he put his relationship with Rupert Murdoch ahead of doing the right thing."
On Tuesday Cameron said: "I take full responsibility for employing Andy Coulson. I did so on the basis of undertakings I was given by him about phone hacking, and those turned out not to be the case."
"I always said that if they turned out to be wrong, I would make a full and frank apology, and I did that today," Cameron said.
In a statement Tuesday, Murdoch's News UK -- the successor company to News International, which Brooks had led -- said there had been many changes since the hacking scandal broke.
"We said long ago, and repeat today, that wrongdoing occurred, and we apologized for it," the company statement said. "We have been paying compensation to those affected and have cooperated with investigations. We made changes in the way we do business to help ensure wrongdoing like this does not occur again."
It went on to say that the company supported a new regulator in Britain, the Independent Press Standards Organization.
A Section on 06/25/2014