A top road traffic lawyer has said that it should come as no surprise that Katie Price avoided Christmas in prison after her conviction for drink-driving and driving while disqualified.
Jeremy Sirrell, a Director and Road Traffic Offences Solicitor at Palmers Solicitors in Essex, commented after the former model received a suspended prison sentence, 100 hours of unpaid work and a two-year driving ban, having admitted the offences earlier this year.
Many people were surprised to see Price walk free from court, with the judge even saying she was lucky not to be spending Christmas behind bars.
The seemingly lenient sentence even prompted the police to say they would see if they could appeal.
However, Mr Sirrell said: “The police are there to catch offenders. Prosecutions are for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to deal with, the decision to appeal or not is theirs.
“In any case, it looks like the court may have applied the sentencing guidelines correctly in this case.”
He said the reason the sentence was correct dated back to the court’s decision to defer sentencing earlier in the year so Price could attend the Prior for treatment.
“The Court had previously agreed to defer sentence back in September on conditions and upon the successful completion of those conditions would then sentence Price accordingly.
“It is accepted that if a Court does defer sentence, it does so in order to avoid sending someone to prison at least for an immediate term and is very often a last-ditch attempt to avoid such a term of imprisonment.
“If a defendant does comply with the terms of the suspended sentence, it is very difficult then for the Court to go back on its decision to then impose an immediate custodial sentence.
“If the Court felt that an immediate custodial sentence was appropriate, it should have sent Price to prison back in September,” added Mr Sirrell.
“What is slightly unusual is that the prosecution appears to have dropped another charge of drug driving and this might be as a result of Price’s solicitor agreeing this in exchange for a guilty plea to the charge of driving with excess alcohol but we cannot be sure.”