Criminal Convictions
On 26 January 2009, Blake was charged following an incident at his former restaurant in the early hours of 25 January in which a 17-year-old was wounded. He did not present any BBC programmes for the duration of the legal proceedings.
He appeared before Sutton Coldfield Magistrates' Court charged with possessing an offensive weapon, wounding with intent and affray. Blake appeared with a second man, Steven Sproule, aged 38, of Booths Farm Road, Great Barr. Sproule was charged with assault and affray. Magistrates bailed Blake and Sproule to appear at Birmingham Crown Court on 27 April. On 27 April, both men denied the charges brought against them and were granted unconditional bail pending trial.
The trial began at Birmingham Crown Court on 27 July 2009. Blake's co-defendant, Sproule, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Blake denied the charges, and also pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice by throwing the alleged weapon - a 3-foot (1 m) long patio umbrella pole - into a nearby garden centre. The court was told that Blake hit the teenager in the face with the pole. The jury retired on 31 July 2009 before giving their verdict on 3 August 2009. Blake was found guilty of unlawful wounding and perverting the course of justice, but was cleared of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He was remanded on bail. On 2 September 2009, he was sentenced to two years in prison. In November 2009, his appeal against the sentence was rejected by the Court of Appeal He was released under home curfew in June 2010 after serving nine months of his sentence.
As a result of the conviction, Blake was dismissed by the BBC on 14 August following an internal review.
Read more about this topic: Ashley Blake
Famous quotes containing the words criminal and/or convictions:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No two people see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will often apply the same principle, recognized by both, differently. Even one and the same person won’t always maintain the same views and judgments: earlier convictions must give way to later ones.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)