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Phone-hacking trial: An archive, a mother-in-law and not noticing the arrests

By James Doleman

March 26, 2014 | 9 min read

    Chery Carter

  • Carter denies being a dishonest person
  • Confidential papers stored in "mother-in-law's garage," court hears
  • Carter denied knowing about police hacking investigation despite three arrests
  • Proceedings resumed this afternoon with Andrew Edis QC continuing his cross-examination of Rebekah Brooks' former PA, Cheryl Carter, who is charged along with Brooks with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by allegedly concealing seven boxes of documents from police investigating phone hacking at the News of the World in 2011.

    The prosecution counsel continued to question the defendant about an interview she gave to the police in November 2011, after she had been arrested. In the interview Carter tells the court she removed the boxes in question from News International's archives as she had been asked to by Nick Mayes, the company archivist. Edis showed the court an email where Mayes asks for "guidance" for some large items he was storing but does not mention any boxes. "I was busy and that's how I read the email," Carter said. "You were busy doing your job which included reading emails properly," the prosecution barrister responded. "I thought it meant my boxes." the defendant insisted.

    The prosecutor then asked Carter if she had discussed this police interest with Rebekah Brooks. "I did make a call to her, yes," Carter said. "I was very alarmed, but told her there was nothing to worry about as it was my stuff," the court was told. "You didn't say, it's my stuff but I've destroyed it so that can't not be proved?" "No, she would have thought I was mad," Carter replied. "Were you trying to mislead Mrs Brooks," Edis asked. "No, and I wasn't trying to mislead the police either," the defendant replied. "You didn't tell her anything, so why did you ring her," the prosecutor said, adding: "I'm going to suggest that account is not honest." "I'm not a dishonest person Mr Edis," Carter replied.

    Edis then asked the witness about her use of the words "spiral notebook" in her interview. Carter said she meant "Fileofax" as that is how she would describe them. "They are completely different things," Edis said. "That's what I meant," the defendant replied. The defendant was asked about a filing list produced by a temporary employee. Carter said she had not asked the worker to do this and she had "done it off her own back" and she had no knowledge of its contents.

    The prosecutor then asked Carter if she requested urgent delivery of the boxes from the archive. The defendant said she had not been aware of how long it took to remove archived items. Edis asked why the archivist had told the police that the defendant had said she wanted the items "as soon as possible". "There was no time pressure at all," Carter said. "It was all his idea," the barrister asked. "Yes," Carter replied. Edis then showed the court Carter's original email to the archivist which states: "urgent, call me as soon as possible." Edis asked: "It was urgent but you told the police it wasn't?" "That's possible," the defendant responded "but in my recollection it wasn't urgent." The prosecutor showed the court phone records that Carter called the archivist four times in an hour. "I was chasing him but I'm not quite sure why," the witness said. "You were keen to get those boxes," the prosecutor said.

    Carter was asked about the contents of the boxes and the witness told the court that it contained a collection of her newspaper column. "You collected these so painstakingly yet you put them in boxes you described as 'old shit'. Why did you put them with the rubbish?" Carter replied: "At the time I didn't need them, my life had changed." The prosecutor suggested that all of this would "be useful to you when you went to Australia". "I wouldn't have wanted to," Carter said. Judge Saunders intervened and put it that, as Carter had booked a container to take her belongings to Australia, space would not be an issue. "I didn't want to take the clutter. I didn't even keep my kids birthday cards," the defendant replied.

    The prosecution barrister asked the witness that as she knew the police were investigating phone hacking, was this not an "odd time" to take these documents out of the archive. "It never occurred to me as it was my stuff," Carter replied. It was an attempt to destroy evidence, Edis suggested. The prosecutor asked the witness why she thought she could not store her notebooks under her own name. "I was a secretary," Carter replied. "You wrote a column in the paper every week," Edis responded "you were a journalist." Carter said she never thought of herself as a journalist. The prosecutor then brought into evidence records that showed other secretaries regularly archived items under their own names. "They were lucky," Carter said, going on to deny that anyone had ever told her this happened.

    Edis then asked the defendant about other discrepancies in her police statements and Carter responded: "I was taken out of bed, watched while going to the toilet, handcuffed and put in a cell. I was cold and scared but I did my best to help the police, that's what I did." The prosecutor then showed the witness notes taken by Nick Mayes, the archivist, who had written that Carter had called and asked for the "return of Rebekah's notebooks" and asked why she had told the police she did not know who had described them like that. "Someone has written it," Edis said. "I've never filled out a form like this in my life," Carter said. "You wouldn't have wanted your columns to be lost because no-one labelled them," the prosecutor suggested. "I put a post-it note on them," Carter replied.

    The court then took a short break.

    When proceedings resumed the chief prosecutor, Andrew Edis QC, asked the defendant why she had taken items from News International's offices and placed them in her mother-in-law's garage. Carter denied this was an attempt to hide them from police and said that Brooks did not want a courier company knowing her address and she had taken the crates to her mother-in-law's as there was no room at her home. Edis pointed out to the jury that a courier company, Securicor, was set to deliver Brooks' office furniture to her home address "so wouldn't they have been more secure than your mother in law's garage?" Carter responded that "that's what Rebekah asked me to do". Edis asked why there was no documentation to show this, "News International cannot find the document," Carter said, "that's not my fault." "Your QC, Mr Branman, is quite well connected with News International," Edis suggested. The jury was then asked to leave the court while a legal matter was discussed.

    When the jury returned Edis asked the witness why she had emailed Nick Mayes to tell him she had been looking at her beauty column all weekend. "I'm just a friendly person," Carter said. Judge Saunders asked the witness if she had been under the impression she could not place things in the archive under her own name why she was telling the archivist the documents were hers and not, as labelled, Rebekah Brooks'. "I'd already made up my mind I was moving to Australia so I didn't really care by that point," Carter replied. Edis showed the witness an email from the next day were the defendant said she was "standing shoulder to shoulder with Rebekah" and asked "were you standing shoulder to shoulder or emigrating?" Carter said that not everyone knew about her plans so there would be times she did not mention them.

    The prosecuting QC then asked the witness about her knowledge of Brooks' electronic devices. Carter said there were over a hundred iPads in the office and she managed the ones Brooks used. An email from Carter to the IT department was shown to the court where Carter tells them to return an iPad as "we don't want you keeping any of Brooks' old devices". "I didn't want to get them muddled," the defendant replied. Edis asked the witness that she must have known there was a police investigation into phone hacking. "Nobody told me," Carter said "until after Milly Dowler's phone was hacked. I absolutely knew nothing about that". The prosecutor pointed out to the witness that three journalists from the News of the World had already been arrested and "that simply cannot possibly be true". "I printed out a few letters but I did not know anything about it," Carter said, and insisted that she asked for the iPads back "to stop them being muddled."

    Court then rose for the day

    All of the defendants deny all of the charges, the trial continues

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