Amy Whitehouse’s husband was jailed yesterday after being exposed for trial fixing by the Daily Mirror.
The court heard that Blake Fielder-Civil, 26, joined in a “vicious and one-sided” assault on James King while high on cocaine and alcohol.
He then tried to scupper the trial with a £200,000 pay-off to King, the landlord of the Macbeth Pub in Hoxton, East London.
The plot was exposed when the two middlemen, Anthony Kelly and James Kennedy, approached the Daily Mirror trying to sell CCTV of the June 2006 assault.
The court heard that Mirror man Stephne Moyes, who exposed the planned cover-up, was told the money from the pay-off was to come from Winehouse.
Moyes was nominated for a British Press Award scoop of the year prize after he revealed the trial-fix plot.
Late last year the Mirror placed covert cameras and auido equipment in a house in Barnet to film King claim he would writhdraw his court statement as soon as the £200,000 was placed in his account.
The Mirror then filmed a further meeting in which Fielder-Civil discussed the conspiracy with the two middlemen in a pub.
The men were arrested after the Mirror handed over a dossier of evidence to the police.
At the time the Met police said: “We’re grateful to the Mirror for bringing a very serious allegation of crime to our attention.”
Jocelyn Ledwood, prosecuting, said in court that Fielder-Civil received a text message before the trial was due to start which read: “What happened at court? We were thinking about getting Amy to pay that silly c*** off.”
When police arrested Fielder-Civil last November they found him with nearly £2,000 and a further £3,000 in his wife’s handbag.
Fielder-Civil, of Camden, North London and Brown, of Carshalton, Surrey, admitted causing grievous bodily harm and perverting the course of justice. Brown was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
Kelly, 26, of Chalk Farm, North London, was jailed for 20 months after admitting perverting the course of justice. Kennedy, 20, of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, admitted the same charge and was a given a 40-week sentence at a young offenders’ institution, suspended for a year.
King pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice by allegedly joining in the cover-up and was cleared at his trial last month.
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