Reporter ‘not guilty’ in police leak case
MILTON KEYNES Citizen reporter Sally Murrer, facing police corruption charges, pleaded not guilty to obtaining police information illegally at the formal opening of the case on March 10.
She is facing three counts of “aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office” – an archaic common law offence that can carry unlimited imprisonment.
It is alleged she helped fellow defendant Mark Kearney, a former detective, to leak police secrets. Mark Kearney and two other defendants also pleaded not guilty to various charges.
Mark Kearney is the police officer who bugged the conversations of Labour MP Sadiq Khan and went public, when the matter came to light, with allegations that he was under pressure to do so.
The charges are not connected to the case but Sally Murrer has said she believes that police embarrassment is a motivating force for the prosecution, calling it “the missing piece in the puzzle”.
She was arrested last May, strip-searched and held for 30 hours. Her home and the Citizen office were searched and police seized documents and a computer. They told the company they were investigating allegations of “police corruption and the leakage of confidential police information.”
The full trial is scheduled to start in November and run for five weeks. The NUJ is helping Sally Murrer’s defence.