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May. 22nd, 2013 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webofevilA shoplifter had a £20,000 crown court trial over claims a stolen joint of beef reminded him of his dead grandmother. John Casey was caught on Asda’s shop camera hiding a £12 roast in a rucksack at the Washington Galleries store last October and arrested for theft.
But the 51-year-old denied he was being dishonest and said he had moved the meat out of sight as it was giving him “flashbacks” about his grandma, who died of a blood clot when he was a child.
Casey, of Lumley Close, Oxclose, Washington, was tried over two days by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court. The estimated cost per day of a trial per day is £10,000 and the case was heard before John Milford QC, one of the north’s top judges.
After just over an hour deliberation Casey, who has never shoplifted in the past but has other convictions, was found guilty. [Sunderland Echo]
