Stooges recruited to fix trial and get boxing promoter off charges are jailed

A drugs kingpin, a rogue juror and his mother and a one-legged mechanic have been jailed for attempting to fix a trial.

Boxing promoter Leslie Allen, 66, recruited a team of stooges to help him get off charges of having £150,000 of cannabis and cocaine and a pepper spray in 2018.

The plot backfired “spectacularly” after other jurors in the Warwick Crown Court case became suspicious of juror Damien Drackley’s behaviour as they deliberated on verdicts.

They reported him to the judge who went on to convict Allen without the jury and jail him for 13 years.

After a trial at the Old Bailey, Allen, Drackley, 37, Mark Walker, 57, who was known as “Walker the one-legged mechanic”, and Laurence “Del Boy” Hayden, 54, were found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Drackley’s mother Lorraine Frisby, 56, from Birmingham, had admitted the charge and soliciting the disclosure of jury deliberations.

On Friday, Allen appeared at the Old Bailey by video link from prison while Frisby, Drackley and Walker attended court in person where they were all handed jail sentences by Mr Justice Cavanagh.

Leader Allen was handed five years to run consecutively to his drugs sentence.

“Naive and foolish” Drackley was given four years for his part in the plot which “struck at the very heart of the criminal justice system”.

“Pivotal character” Frisby received two years and three months while Walker was given nine months for his more “minor role”.

Hayden failed to attend his trial and has since been arrested in Spain under an extradition warrant, the court was told.