Jailed crime boss loses legal challenge to have escape risk downgraded
COLIN GUNN ARGUED IT REDUCES HIS PROSPECT OF RELEASE ON LICENCE AT THE END OF HIS LIFE TERM
A NOTORIOUS Nottingham crime boss, who is serving a life sentence for plotting the murders of an innocent couple, has lost a legal challenge over whether he poses a high risk of escaping from prison.
Colin Gunn was jailed for at least 35 years in 2006 for conspiracy to murder John and Joan Stirland, who were shot dead in Trusthorpe, Lincolnshire, to gain “revenge” on their son.
He took legal action against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), claiming that a decision in February last year not to downgrade his escape risk classification was unfair and unlawful.
Gunn, currently in high-security Long Lartin Prison in Evesham, Worcestershire, argued that the decision means he experiences a “significantly more intrusive and restrictive regime in the prison”.
At a hearing earlier this month, his lawyers claimed it prevents him moving to a lower security category prison and reduces his prospect of release on licence at the end of his minimum term in 2040.
But in a judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Saini dismissed Gunn’s challenge.
The High Court previously heard that Gunn was last classified as being of “exceptional” risk in March 2013, due to allegations that he had tried to corrupt a member of staff as part of an escape plan, before being downgraded to “high risk” in September that year.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Saini said: “Counsel for the claimant argued that his previous exceptional escape risk was of very limited if any relevance, since his downgrading by definition meant that the concerns which formed the basis for his previous classification were ‘no longer valid…’ I reject the logic of this submission.”
He continued: “The previous exceptional escape risk categorisation was because of intelligence suggesting that that the claimant and a second prisoner were planning an escape involving a helicopter and firearms… The history forms part of the overall evidential picture.”
The judge also ruled that the decision not to hold an oral hearing over Gunn’s classification was lawful, finding “it would have served no purpose”.
Gunn, once said to have run the Bestwood Estate in Nottingham with his brother, David, built up a multimillion-pound empire based on drugs, extortion and violent crime and played a part in the city previously being branded as Britain’s gun crime capital.
The prisoner, who was also handed a nine-year sentence in 2007 for bribery of two police officers and conspiracy to corrupt, has previously hit the headlines over his prison experiences.
In 2010, he claimed to have won the right to be addressed as “Mr” by prison staff after complaining to the Prisons Ombudsman. Two years later, he urged fellow inmates at his then jail, Belmarsh, to complain that they had been overcharged for sending A4-size mail.