Thief shot by Tony Martin is jailed over drugs

A thief shot by the farmer Tony Martin during an attempted burglary was jailed for 18 months on drugs charges yesterday.

Brendon Fearon, 32, whose accomplice, Fred Barras, 16, was shot dead as the pair tried to burgle Martin's Norfolk farmhouse in 1999, was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of supplying heroin.

The court was told that Fearon's friend, Dean Thompson, was being moved from Newark police station to a security van last September when Fearon tried to pass him a packet of cigarettes. He was stopped by staff, but seconds later shoved a packet containing 0.12 grams of the class-A drug into Thompson's mouth.

Before proceedings began, Andrew Cohen, for the defence, urged the court to dismiss the case because newspaper and television reports made it impossible, he said, for Fearon, from Newark, Nottinghamshire, to have a fair trial.

But his application was turned down by Judge Alison Hampton, who said it would "give a free hand to this defendant and to others like him to indulge in criminal activity, only later to claim that they could not have a fair trial because of their notoriety".

Judge Hampton, who lifted a restriction preventing Fearon's identity being revealed to jurors, said: "The court regards the supply of drugs to those in custody as a very serious matter." In addition to his 18-month sentence she gave him two concurrent sentences of three months after he admitted possessing cannabis.

Fearon is suing Tony Martin, who shot him in the leg during the attempted burglary, for £15,000 compensation. Martin is serving a five-year sentence for the manslaughter of Barras after the Court of Appeal overturned a life sentence for murder imposed at his trial.