Driver caught out over disability lie

A man who escaped a speeding fine by claiming he was too disabled

Officers followed Keith Smailes, 49, as he walked half a mile from the magistrates' court and then got into his C registration VW Golf convertible car.

Smailes, of North View Terrace, Felling, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, was given a nine month jail sentence, suspended for one year, at Newcastle Crown Court today for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The defendant was caught breaking the limit by a speed camera in March last year on Old Durham Road, Gateshead.

But at a hearing in January he told Blaydon magistrates he could not have been driving as he was too disabled to get behind the wheel and had not driven for several years.

But the lie was exposed within minutes, and he was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Judge Tim Hewitt today said such a serious offence as "lying in court" would normally warrant imprisonment.

But the judge accepted Smailes was genuinely disabled.

Judge Hewitt told him: "I accept you are a disabled man, quite seriously disabled.

"However, you quite clearly made the most of it by playing to the gallery, or the magistrates in this case.

"You were lying on oath about the fact you were not able to drive, when we all know you clearly were, within limits."

After the case Jane Foley, defending, said her client suffered lumbar canal stenosis causing back pain so bad that he had been fitted with a morphine pump in his stomach.

Smailes was ordered to pay £300 towards the prosecution costs, which were estimated to be in four-figures.