Reporter Jailed For Hacking Royal Phones

A British tabloid journalist who hacked into royal officials' voicemail was sentenced Friday to four months in prison, and his editor resigned.

The judge said he had no option but to hand a prison sentence to Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News of the World, describing his crime as "reprehensible in the extreme."

Goodman's accomplice, the 36-year-old private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, was sentenced to six months in prison for hacking into the messages, including some from Princes William and Harry.

Shortly after the sentencing, The News of the World's editor Andy Coulson announced his resignation.

"I have decided that the time has come for me to take ultimate responsibility for the events around the Clive Goodman case," Coulson said.

Judge Peter Henry Gross said Mulcaire duped mobile phone network operators into passing him confidential pin numbers to access messages left on the cell phones. He passed those on to Goodman, and between them the pair made 609 separate calls to the voicemail systems of three senior members of the royal household.

"Neither journalist or private security consultant are above the law," the judge said, passing the sentence.

The calls to intercept the voicemail messages — made between November 2005 and June 2006 — targeted the telephones of the Prince of Wales's aide Helen Asprey, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the ex-SAS officer who is private secretary to Princes William and Harry, and Prince Charles' communications secretary Paddy Harverson.

Goodman, 49, acted after his once celebrated career began to founder, his lawyer Jon Kelsey-Fry said during the daylong sentencing hearing.

"Mr. Goodman's stories were no longer considered adequate by his superiors," he said. "He was demoted, sidelined and a younger reporter was assigned to cover the royal family. Under that pressure, he feared for his job.

"It was whilst under that pressure that he departed from these high standards with which he lived his life, a departure of which he will be ashamed for the rest of his life."

Gross acknowledged the reporter had acted in desperation, but said it could not reduce the "intrinsically serious and unattractive nature" of the crime.

Mulcaire, once a semiprofessional soccer player, had also pleaded guilty to five other charges of intercepting messages of well-known figures, including those of supermodel Elle Macpherson.

Goodman and Mulcaire had earlier apologized through their lawyers to the Prince of Wales, Princes William and Harry at a previous hearing, and the judge said their contrition had allowed them to have a more lenient sentence than the maximum two years they faced.

The judge said that although none of the stories produced using the intercepted messages were particularly noteworthy, the two men's conduct was a risk "to the very fabric of life in our country."

Eavesdropping is a sensitive issue for the royal family. Charles was the victim of an embarrassing intercept in 1989. The prince and his current wife, Camilla, were recorded having an explicit phone conversation while he was still married to Princess Diana.