9:06am Monday 22nd March 2010
By Megi Rychlikova
A MAN was arrested and given a prison sentence despite being acquitted of attacking a York resident with a cricket bat.
Liam McLoughlin skipped bail during his trial and was not in the dock to hear the jury reject prosecution allegations that he had donned a balaclava and hit Simon Archer near his eye in The Crescent, Heslington, last June.
As soon as the jurors returned their not guilty verdicts, Judge Jim Spencer QC said: “He is going to have to come back. “Perhaps that is why they (judges) always used to remand people in custody until juries came back. “The only thing I can do is issue a bench warrant. “If this puts him to any inconvenience, that is his fault.”
McLoughlin was arrested within hours and held in a police cell until the court opened the next day. Just before lunch, he was brought in custody into the dock and pleaded guilty to failure to attend York Crown Court. Andrew Semple, for McLoughlin, said “His nerves got the better of him.”
Judge Spencer gave him a one-day prison sentence. Because of his time in custody after his arrest, he was immediately released, almost exactly 24 hours after the jury retired to consider their verdicts and he had left the building illegally. He had been on bail on condition that he stay within the precincts of the court and come into court when his case was called on.
An attempt by his lawyers to phone him and find out where he was failed because he had switched his mobile off.
McLoughlin, 26, of Wordsworth Crescent, Woodthorpe, York, denied charges of carrying an offensive weapon and causing actual bodily harm. Mr Archer alleged in court a car pulled up outside his home on June 16 and when he went out, one man grabbed him while a second in a balaclava hit him on the head, causing a bump near his eye.
Part of a glove with McLoughlin’s DNA was found nearby.
McLoughlin denied being in The Crescent that evening. He claimed the attack never happened and that Mr Archer and his girlfriend, Joanne Fearnley, made up the story after burgling his garage, finding the glove and taking it.
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