A South Derbyshire woman who calculatingly gave a false alibi for her cheating armed robber boyfriend after he had held up a jewellers has escaped being jailed.
Lying Lisa Sudale, of Hartshill Road, Hartshorne, had even turned up at Birmingham Crown Court prepared to give evidence claiming that Junior Laing was at her home at the time of the robbery.
The 35-year-old 'spiritual healer' stuck by her false tale even after Laing, then 28, of Earlsbury Gardens, Perry Barr, Birmingham, had been jailed – claiming he had been wrongly convicted.
And she denied doing acts intended to pervert the course of justice – but a jury at Warwick Crown Court took just an hour and 20 minutes to find her guilty by a unanimous verdict.
Sudale was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for 18 months and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work and to pay £600 costs.
Prosecutor Ian Windridge said that in September 2014 an armed robbery took place at the Gold and Silver Investments jewellery shop, in Long Street, Atherstone.
Laing, wielding a single-barrel shotgun, and another man burst in and robbed the owners of £39,000 worth of jewellery after Laing had hit one of them with the butt of the shotgun.
They escaped in a get-away car driven by 31-year-old Charlotte Caines – through which she was traced because it was a courtesy car supplied by her insurance company after her own car had been damaged.
Laing was arrested nine days later, and following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in May the following year, he was jailed for 16 years, with a four-year extended licence period, while Caines, of Monks Park Lane, Mancetter, Atherstone, was given eight years.
But Mr Windridge told the jury: "Miss Sudale was Laing’s significant other, girlfriend, call it what you will, and this case is about what she did in April 2015."
On April 5 she made a written statement to the police in which she said Laing was at her home in Swadlincote all day on the day of the robbery, which took place at 2.30 that afternoon.
She went into great detail about what they did that day up until she left for an appointment at 4pm.
"Her statement, if it had been correct, would have given Mr Laing a complete defence. If he was at her home in Swadlincote, he could not have been in a jewellery shop in Atherstone."
And Mr Windridge pointed out that not only did Sudale make the statement, she went to court prepared to give evidence on Laing’s behalf – although she was not called to do so.
When she was arrested for attempting to pervert the course of justice, she stood by what she had said, claiming that Laing had been wrongly convicted.
But investigations showed she had phoned Laing at a time when, according to her account, they had been sharing a bath – and she said he had been at her home each night over the preceding few days, when there was evidence he had spent a night in a hotel.
Giving evidence, Sudale said of Laing: "I loved him very much. He was sometimes elsewhere. He cheated on me; he kept cheating on me."
Her barrister Heidi Kubik asked whether, when Laing was arrested, she believed he was one of the robbers, and she replied: "No I didn’t. I was convinced they’d got it wrong."
Asked where she honestly believed he was at the time, she answered: "I thought he was at home with me."
But the jury quickly rejected her contention that she had simply made a genuine mistake about where Laing was that day.
After the jury’s verdict, Miss Kubik said Sudale began her relationship with Laing at a time her father was terminally ill, and after he died she became emotionally dependent on him.
"When he was arrested she desperately wanted the police to have got it wrong. I don’t go behind the verdict that when she made her statement she knew the alibi was false.
"But I ask Your Honour to consider whether there was at least a measure of her allowing her desperate wishful thinking about his innocence to become a fixed idea."
Miss Kubik argued that Sudale, who has had 'a spiritual awakening' and 'is convinced she has the ability to be a spiritual healer,' would be particularly vulnerable in custody.
Sentencing Sudale, Recorder Jacqueline Carey told her: "Providing a wholly false statement to the police to provide your then-partner with an alibi is viewed extremely seriously by the courts because it undermines the whole course of justice.
"You knew from when he was arrested and your house was searched exactly how serious the allegation was against Mr Laing.
Armed robbery is at the top of the scale.
"There was a degree of persistence by you. You attended court on Mr Laing’s behalf. You were not called to give evidence, but you were prepared to do so and to continue with your lies.
"I don’t begin to accept your evidence about your state of confusion or your poor memory. This was a deliberate lie.
"But I do have concerns about your ability to cope with a prison sentence. In the light of the age of the offence and what I have read about you, I am prepared to suspend the sentence."
