Rebekah Brooks faced ‘witch-hunt’ in court, says her barrister

Rebekah Brooks has been subject to a “witch-hunt” by prosecutors, her defence barrister claimed in his closing speech to the phone-hacking trial.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the jury that the trial of the former News International executive had not been a “witch trial” but at times the prosecution approach had been that of a “witch-hunt”, adding that it was a feature of a medieval witchcraft trial that the accused “could never win”.

The prosecution’s barrister, Andrew Edis QC, had seized on “every piece of evidence about Mrs Brooks and everything she says . . . as a sign of guilt – regardless of true meaning”, Mr Laidlaw told the court.

“If she comes across as a likeable person, it’s only a cunning mask, if she makes you laugh, she’s telling lies and if her evidence makes sense it’s only because it’s been carefully scripted,” Mr Laidlaw told the court.

He added that, during the past seven months, the jury had “seen all the way around this woman’s life” and if she was, as prosecutors suggested, adopting a “cunning mask” then “Rebekah Brooks must be a witch with truly supernatural powers. What human mask could withstand that amount of scrutiny without cracking?” he contended.

Mr Laidlaw added: “The degree of scrutiny she has been subjected to may well be unparalleled in the history of British justice,” adding that she had been cross-examined by prosecutors for five days and been in the witness box for 14 days.

However, he claimed that the prosecution had fallen “short, woefully short” of proving its case and urged the jury to give Mrs Brooks “no special treatment” but to examine the evidence in the case carefully when reaching their verdicts.

Earlier he described the prosecution case in which she is accused along with others of hiding material from the police as being “beyond ridiculous” and “more of a pantomime” with the former News of the World editor cast as an “arch criminal”.

The prosecution case was a “fantastical tale” and had “lost its grip on reality” in accusing her of conspiring with her personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, to remove seven boxes from News International and with her husband, Charlie, and head of security, Mark Hanna, to hide other material, Mr Laidlaw said.

He said that, if the prosecution claims were true, the “cast of villains” in the prosecution’s “pantomime” would be “extraordinary”, ranging from the “lying husband Charlie” to her “lying PA” and she would have had to persuade each of these people to destroy evidence for her.

He invited the jury to imagine Mrs Brooks having a conversation with her husband that could have started: “Darling, I know you thought I was a really nice person when you married me. I’m in fact a serial criminal. I’m up to my neck in all sorts of trouble. Could you take a few of my electronic devices and you or Mark Hanna chuck them in the river on your way down to London.”

Mr Laidlaw said: “Is it the kind of conversation that Rebekah Brooks could have had with a husband who himself had nothing to do with phone hacking or paying public officials or anything criminal? I suggest it is not. This is just the kind of conversation the prosecution invite you to conclude must have happened.”

He told the jury that Mr Brooks “loves his wife” and wanted to hide his collection of lesbian porn from a police search to avoid embarrassing her.

The prosecution claim that Mrs Brooks conspired with Ms Carter to remove notebooks at the height of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011 was also “absurd” and did not “make any sense” as Mrs Brooks did not use notebooks.

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If she had something to hide she could have destroyed any notebooks in 2006 when the arrests were made for phone hacking as “she did not know what the police were going to do”, he told the jury.

Earlier Mr Laidlaw invited the jury to consider the evidence against Mrs Brooks on one charge of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office where she is said to have sanctioned payments to a public official for payment while she was editor of The Sun. Mrs Brooks has denied the charge and claims she did not know the payments were to a public official.

He said it would be “unfair” to consider 11 emails – which prosecutors rely on – side by side as they were sent over a period of 32 months and were among huge volumes of emails she would have received in the “fast pace” of a daily newspaper. Mrs Brooks also trusted the journalist requesting payment. “She was not policing this man,” Mr Laidlaw told the jury.

Mrs Brooks denies four charges, including one count of conspiracy to intercept voicemail messages, one of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and two of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The trial continues.