London - The husband of troubled British singer Ami Winehouse was Monday sentenced to 27 months in prison for trial- fixing to avoid jail and for beating up a former pub landlord. A court in London found Blake Fielder-Civil, 26, guilty of perverting the course of justice and causing grievous bodily harm during an incident in an east London pub in June, 2006.
Winehouse, 24, who had made a point of attending her husband's court hearings, was not present when sentence was passed Monday.
Fielder-Civil, who admitted the charges, was told by Judge David Radford at Snaresbrook Crown Court, east London, that he behaved in a "gratuitous cowardly and disgraceful" way.
But his lawyer, Jeremy Dein, said the sentence would be a "nightmare scenario, not just for him, but for his wife and family." Dein claimed that Fielder-Civil was "contrite" and had signed up for drug rehabilitation treatment.
"Its their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other," Dein said about Winehouse and Fielder-Civil.
Fielder-Civil was accused of beating up James King, 36, the pub landlord, who suffered serious facial injuries, and of hatching a trial-fixing plot under which King would have received a pay-off of 200,000 pounds (400,000 dollars) if he withdrew his statement to the police about the incident.
Three fellow-defendants were expected to be sentenced later.
