The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
sheriff clips man’ s wings after drone films prison drug airdrop gang
Accused didn’t realise he was recording an 18-minute clip
A dealer who unwittingly filmed himself on a drone used to fly a drugs package into a maximum-security prison was jailed for 12 months.
Michael Martin was found guilty by a jury of supplying drugs into Perth Prison, where his brother Chris was serving a sentence.
Martin accidentally recorded more than 18 minutes footage of a gang preparing the drone with a package which crash landed inside the jail.
Fiscal depute Michael Sweeney told Perth Sheriff Court: “If there was an award for the movie with the most inept director, it would have been won by the accused.”
The jury was told a second drone flight led to a package being hooked with a makeshift fishing rod into Chris Martin’s cell on the prison’s third floor.
Mr Sweeney said: “The message seems to be that if at first you don’t succeed, then fly, fly again.”
Martin, 34, of Cedar Avenue, Kirkcaldy, was found guilty of being concerned in the supply of drugs at Perth Prison on September 22 last year.
He was cleared of a number of other charges, including breaching civil aviation laws by flying a drone into a prison on both September 22 and then again on September 25.
PC Nicholas Schembri, 38, told the trial it seemed the men were unaware they were being filmed by their drone.
He said the video showed a tour of the inside of Martin’s girlfriend’s property and even briefly revealed the house number on the front door.
The faces of all three men were visible on screen and that Martin could be recognised from a tattoo on his neck.
PC Schembri said: “It starts with the accused lifting the drone and looking at the drone itself and then turning it round in the same room.
“At some point, it is taken outside and back into a bedroom. During the footage you can see another two people preparing what looks like drugs.
“I don’t think they were aware the drone was actually filming at that time.”
Giving evidence, Martin accepted it was him who was on the video, and claimed he had been fixing the drone for the other two men.
He said they were strangers who turned up at his door with the drone and drugs and claimed to be friends of his brother Chris.
Three days after the original drone crashed to the ground with drugs and five phones still attached to it, a second identical device was flown into the jail.
Sentencing Martin, Sheriff William Wood warned him: “Whatever misadventures there were, you would do well to steer clear of further such misadventures in future.”