The former features editor of Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World was today sentenced to four-month suspended jail for his part in a rampant phone-hacking scandal that sank the 168-year-old tabloid in 2011.

Jules Stenson had pleaded guilty in December 2014 to a conspiracy to hack phones and intercept voicemails. The 49-year-old is the ninth and final journalist from the erstwhile weekly to be convicted for phone hacking.

Justice Saunders also sentenced him to 200 hours of community service, a 5,000-pound fine for conspiring to hack phones, and ordered him to pay 18,000 pounds in legal costs. Stenson was charged with plotting to hack phones between January 1, 2003 and January 26, 2007.

The father-of-three broke down in the dock when he heard he would not be going to jail and thanked the judge before he left court. Outside, he apologised to the victims saying: "It was wrong and it should never have happened."

"It would be quite wrong for me to say that, as it has gone on so long and public interest is less, those convicted at the end of the series of trials should receive shorter sentences than those who were arrested earlier and sentenced in a blaze of publicity," Justice Saunders said.