Walpole St Andrew man given suspended jail term and 10-year ban after crash

A Walpole St Andrew motorist has been banned from the roads for 10 years – his fifth disqualification.

And Paul Spencer Martin, 50, avoided an immediate jail term after King's Lynn magistrates insisted that he consult the duty solicitor at court yesterday.

Martin, who intended to be unrepresented, had read the pre-sentencing report and assumed there was no alternative but prison.

But solicitor Andrew Cogan successfully persuaded the bench that a community order would be of more benefit to both Martin and the public.

Mr Cogan said: “You could send him to prison for six weeks, ten weeks or 12 weeks even. What good would that be to the community?

“Prisons simply don’t have the room for [criminals like Martin] and they can’t do anything with them.

“We’re talking about long-term rehabilitation of this man. He needs to address underlying issues and the best way of doing that is to put him on a thinking skills programme.”

The court was told that Martin, of Station Road South, has had a lung removed due to cancer and there are suspicions that he has prostate cancer.

Although in the middle of a four-year driving ban, he took his mother’s car without her consent and wrote it off in a crash while over the drink-drive limit.

He had been returning to her home after collecting his medication from Wisbech.

Jane Walker, prosecuting, said Martin lost control of the Toyota Rav 4 on a bend in Wisbech Road, Walpole St Andrew.

Police arrived at the scene to find Martin being cut out of the vehicle and having suffered a head injury for which he needed hospital treatment. An evidential test there showed he had 141 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of urine, the legal limit being 107.

Miss Walker said he had a “worrying” number of previous convictions for drink-driving, failing to provide a specimen and driving while unfit through drink or drugs.

At an earlier hearing, Martin pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, driving while disqualified, having no insurance and drink-driving on August 19 last year.

As well as the ten-year ban, he was given a 12-week prison sentence, suspended for two years, and a two-year community order with a thinking skills programme and 15 days’ rehabilitation activity. He was also ordered to pay a £115 victim surcharge.