CMU's favourite thug about town, Blake Fielder-Civil, has been jailed for 27 months after admitting to assaulting that James King, and then trying to pervert the course of justice by bribing the victim not to testify against him. The sentence is not good news for his other half, Amy Winehouse, who has been saying of late that she expected to get her husband home any day now, despite everyone else seemingly expecting a two year plus sentence. Given Winehouse's fluctuating health and mental state of late, it's not clear how she'll cope with the news 'Blakey' will be banged up for sometime to come.
Fielder-Civil's friend Michael Brown was sentenced for 33 months because the court recognised it was actually him who started the altercation that led to the assault against King. Judge David Radford concluded that Fielder-Civil was drunk and high on cocaine when he joined in the attack "out of a mistaken sense of loyalty to a friend". But the judge added: "The fact remains that in joining in that attack by kicking out at Mr King after he had already been both punched and kicked by Mr Brown you behaved in a gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful way".
Fielder-Civil's lawyer, Jeremy Dein, said that his client's actions had been the result of a "drugs-ridden lack of judgment rather than callousness", adding that "for almost half his life he has been in the clutches of drugs". Referring to his missus and her own drug issues, he told the court: "It's their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other. He knows that if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for him but for his wife as well".
Two other men - James Kennedy and Anthony Kelly - received shorter sentences for their part in the plot to pervert the course of justice.