Winehouse husband jailed for over 2 years

AMY Winehouse stayed away from court yesterday as her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, was sentenced to 27 months in jail for beating up a pub landlord and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The singer was hoping her husband, who has been on remand for nine months, would be released – but he is now unlikely to walk free until just before Christmas.

Winehouse's father, Mitch, said she was bearing up well. "It's about what she expected," the 51-year old cab driver said. "Amy's doing well and had prepared herself for him to stay in prison a few months longer."

She and Fielder-Civil, 26, married in Miami in May 2007. He was arrested in November and has been in jail ever since.

Fielder-Civil's lawyer told Snaresbrook Crown Court in London that his client was a reformed character who was determined to put his struggles with drugs behind him and to help his wife, now suffering from emphysema, to do the same.

Jeremy Dein said: "It's their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other.

"He knows that if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for him but for his wife as well."

Winehouse, 24, has become an international star since her album Back to Black came out in 2006. But her music has been overshadowed by reports of drug use, run-ins with the law and her tempestuous relationship with Fielder-Civil.

The court heard he joined in a "vicious and one-sided" assault on James King while high on cocaine and alcohol. The victim suffered a broken cheekbone and was so badly beaten he needed metal plates fitted to his face.

Fielder-Civil and a friend, Michael Brown, 40, who began the attack, tried to scupper the trial with a £200,000 pay-off to Mr King, the landlord of a pub in east London.

The plot was exposed when the two middlemen, Anthony Kelly and James Kennedy, approached a national newspaper trying to sell CCTV of the June 2006 assault.

The judge said he accepted Fielder-Civil had been making efforts to come off drugs while in prison but said he had behaved in a "gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful" way. He jailed Brown for 33 months.

Kelly, 26, of north London, was jailed for 20 months after admitting perverting the course of justice. Kennedy, 20, of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, admitted the same charge and was given a 40-week sentence at a young offenders' institution, suspended for a year.

Mr King pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice by allegedly joining in the cover-up and was cleared at his trial last month.