Conspirators jailed for trying to fix Coventry drug kingpin’s trial

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A drug kingpin, a rogue juror, his mother, and a mechanic have been jailed for attempting to fix a trial.

Leslie Allen, 66, a boxing promoter from Coventry, recruited a team of stooges to help him get off charges of possessing ?150,000 of cannabis and cocaine and a pepper spray in 2018.

The plot “failed spectacularly” after other jurors in the Warwick crown court case became suspicious of fellow juror Damien Drackley’s behaviour as they deliberated on verdicts, the court heard. 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 of soliciting the disclosure of jury deliberations from her son.

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 each handed jail sentences by Mr Justice Cavanagh.

Allen, the “leader” of the conspiracy, was handed five years to run consecutively to his drug sentence.

“Naive and foolish” Drackley was given four years for his part in the plot and for breaching jury rules, which he had admitted. Frisby, who played a “pivotal” role, received two years and three months, while Walker was given nine months in jail 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.

A sixth alleged conspirator, Daniel Porter from Birmingham, died before the trial and the court file was formally closed. The court was told he had been “exploited” when he agreed to take the rap for Allen, even though he had only recently been released from prison.

Sentencing, Cavanagh said it was “a complex, carefully planned and very cynical conspiracy” that “struck at the very heart of the criminal process”.

He said: “Jury service is probably the most important public service a member of the public will be called upon to do. The consequences, if faith in the jury system was lost by juror misconduct, are too horrible to contemplate. Were it not for the good sense and vigilance of the jury, the conspiracy might have succeeded in its entirety.”

Previously, the prosecutor Tony Badenoch KC said Allen was a “major drugs wholesaler” with the means and motive to evade justice. In 2016, 1kg (2.2lb) of cocaine with a street value of ?100,000 was seized from his Jaguar car, and ?50,000 of cannabis stuffed in laundry bags was found at his house, as well as pepper spray in a desk drawer.

Before his trial in November 2018, Drackley, from Nuneaton, was randomly selected to be juror number one. He told his mother in Birmingham about the case within an hour and a half of the first day’s evidence. She then acted as a go-between to broker a deal with Allen and the middleman Walker for her son to receive ?5,000 to fix the trial.

At the time, Allen was on bail and persuaded Hayden and Porter to lie for him in court. Hayden, from Coventry, appeared to give the game away by nodding and winking at Drackley as he walked to the witness box, to the puzzlement of other jurors.

During deliberations, jurors became suspicious after Drackley, a car assembly line operative and wheeler-dealer, let slip that he knew the area where Allen lived. Mitigating for Drackley, Stephen Bailey said his client had been immature, naive, and easily influenced by others, particularly his mother when he “should have said no”.