Andy Coulson Sentenced to 18 Months in Phone Hacking Case

LONDON - A judge was set to pass sentence on Friday on Andy Coulson, a former senior editor in Rupert Murdoch's news empire and a onetime adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, who was found guilty last week in the phone-hacking scandal that has convulsed Britain's press, police and political elite.

After a monthslong trial, Mr. Coulson was convicted on a charge of conspiring to intercept phone messages. Other defendants, including Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Mr. Murdoch's British newspaper subsidiary, were all acquitted.

Mr. Coulson, a former editor of The News of the World tabloid, and the newspaper's former royals reporter, Clive Goodman, also face a retrial, accused of making illegal payments to police officers in return for two royal telephone directories. Prosecutors said that they would seek the retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict on the bribery charges.

The phone hacking scandal in Britain had its roots more than a decade ago when a private investigator hired by The News of the World hacked the voice mail of Milly Dowler, an abducted teenager who was later found murdered. When that hacking became known in July 2011, a wave of public revulsion forced Mr. Murdoch to close the newspaper.

Mr. Coulson, 46, who denied the charges against him, faces a maximum sentence of two years. He is to be sentenced along with three journalists and a private investigator, who have all admitted their part in the scandal.