Cornton Vale prison officer jailed for his part in drug trafficking operation
A Cornton Vale prison officer who took part in a drug trafficking operation which led to the seizure of amphetamine potentially worth about £640,000 on the streets has been jailed for five years.
A Cornton Vale prison officer who took part in a drug trafficking operation which led to the seizure of amphetamine potentially worth about £640,000 on the streets has been jailed for five years.
A judge told Russell Baillie and his two co-accused: "You are all bit-part players, but bit-part players in an extensive criminal scheme."
John Morris QC told the trio: "The jury convicted you of concerning yourselves in the commercial supply of controlled drugs. That is a very serious matter."
The judge said at the High Court in Edinburgh that all three were relatively minor cogs in a much larger wheel, but added: "Big wheels cannot run without little cogs like you helping them out."
Baillie (31) was on sick leave from Cornton Vale women's prison at Stirling when he gave his uniform to co-accused Lawrence Simonini (29).
Simonini was later caught with 20 kilos of the Class B drug in a car on the M74 motorway in March 2014 on a journey from Liverpool to Scotland.
He wore the uniform during the trip and prosecutors believed it was a bid to convince police officers who might stop him that nothing untoward was going on.
Simonini, from Carfin , in Lanarkshire, and a third offender, Joshua Quinn (26) from Liverpool, were also jailed for five years each for their roles in the drugs operation.
Simonini wore the uniform when he drove north from Merseyside with the haul of drugs in the boot of a hire car.
But undercover police were tracking the vehicle which was stopped and an investigation revealed that the uniform belonged to Baillie, from Shotts, in Lanarkshire.
The trio's earlier trial heard that Simonini had hired a Toyota Verso car in Motherwell and he and Baillie drove to Liverpool. Simonini returned north in the vehicle while Baillie caught a train to Glasgow from Liverpool's Lime Street station.
Baillie maintained that he did not know anything about drugs and that he had gone to Liverpool for "a day trip". He said he had given his uniform to Simonini because he wanted it for "a fancy dress party".
Simonini claimed that he also knew nothing about drugs and believed he was returning north with a load of fake jeans. He claimed that he wore the prison uniform because Baillie told him to do so.
Quinn was found guilty of being concerned in the supply of the Class B drug on August 21 in 2013 during journeys between Renfrew, Paisley and the Larkhall area. All three had denied drug trafficking charges.
Paul Nelson, counsel for Baillie, asked the judge to restrict the sentence passed on his client as far he he was able to.
Defence counsel George Gebbie for Quinn said: "He has no anti-social leanings."