The Mirror was one of several newspapers which paid "substantial" damages for defamation for their December 2010 coverage of the arrest of Christopher Jefferies in connection with the Murder of Joanna Yeates; Jeffries subsequently being exonerated. The publishers of the Mirror were later prosecuted for contempt of court for the way they had reported Jefferies' arrest, and fined £50,000. Their appeal against the fine was rejected by the Supreme Court. During the Leveson Inquiry, established by Prime Minister David Cameron to investigate the ethics and behaviour of the British media following the News of the World phone hacking affair, Wallace described the newspaper's coverage of Jefferies's arrest as a "black mark" on his editing record.
