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Sun Journalist Spared Jail Over Payments

Sun Journalist Spared Jail Over Payments

The first Sun journalist to be found guilty over payments to a public official has been given an 18 month suspended sentence.

Crime reporter Anthony France, 41, from Watford, cultivated a "corrupt relationship" with Pc Timothy Edwards over four years, his trial at the Old Bailey heard.

While working at Heathrow Airport in SO15 counter-terrorism command, Edwards, 49, sold 38 stories and titbits of information to the journalist in exchange for more than £22,000.

Last week, France was found guilty of aiding and abetting Edwards to commit misconduct in a public office between March 2008 and July 2011.

Judge Timothy Pontius sentenced him to 18 months suspended for two years, describing him as a journalist of "hitherto unblemished character" who was "essentially a decent man of solid integrity".

To date, France is the only journalist to be successfully tried following the controversial Elveden probe and the first since the Crown Prosecution Service's root and branch review last month which led to charges being dropped against nine out of 12 newspaper staff still awaiting trial.

The trial had heard how Edwards passed on details ranging from airline pilots being breathalysed to a drunken model flying into a rage after "catching her boyfriend romping with a woman next to him".

But France denied wrongdoing, telling jurors he had never been advised by anyone at The Sun that speaking to a police officer - or any public official - might be against the law.

Asked what he would have done if he thought talking to Edwards might be illegal, he said: "I would never have got involved with it. I would have told him to get lost. I'm a man of good character not involved in crime."

The jury in France's trial was not told that Edwards pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office and was jailed for two years in 2014.