Delay ‘disgrace’

A sheriff branded health bosses “disgraceful” for causing another delay in sentencing a menace who wrote poison pen letters to his own mum.

Joseph Carson, 63, is awaiting punishment after he was convicted of breaking a court ban on contacting his Erskine mother, Jane Carson, by sending her a card on her 84th birthday.

Carson appeared at Paisley Sheriff Court yesterday to discover his fate, when the court was hit with another setback preventing it handing him his disposal.

Defence agent Amy Spencer said a psychiatric report previously requested by the court from the Douglas Inch Centre had still not been prepared.

She added this was despite repeated requests to the clinic for the document.

Sheriff David Pender slammed the delay as “disgraceful” and called for the hearing to be adjourned again until May 27.

Carson was remanded back to HMP Low Moss to await his sentencing.

He was convicted of breaching a Non-Harassment Order ( NHO) after he bombarded Mrs Carson, and her former boyfriend, Ronald Moreland, with poison pen letters.

He was also made the subject of a ten- year- long NHO in relation to Mrs Gayle McMillan, and her husband, Alan McMillan, after sending them hate- filled letters for over five years.

Carson, formerly of Machrihanish, Argyll and Bute, had been found guilty by a jury of three charges of breaking the NHO by contacting his mum and the McMillans.