BILLY WRIGHT, a leading loyalist who was jailed yesterday for eight years, is considering an appeal against the sentence imposed for threatening to shoot a Portadown woman.
Wright (36) was also given eight years by Lord Justice McCollum for threatening Mrs Gwen Reed's teenage son Thomas during the same confrontation in Portadown's Westland Road area on August 10th, 1995.
He was jailed in his absence after leaving Belfast Crown Court in protest as it became apparent that he was to be convicted. The judge was halfway through his 82-page judgment, which described the evidence of the Reed family as "scrupulously honest" and that from Wright and his defence witness as "incapable of belief".
Wright and two co-accused jumped to their feet in the dock and began shouting at the judge, accusing him of making a political judgment. Friends of the men, including Wright's girlfriend, Elenor, also began heckling Lord Justice McCollum, shouting "Shut your mouth" and "Go back to your friends at Maryfield".
They left the court once the three accused men had been taken away by warders to the cells below the court.
Jailing Wright, Lord Justice McCollum said his involvement in the case was quite sinister" and he had "quite deliberately" tried to pervert the course of public justice.
During the two-week trial in January the judge heard that Wright had told Mrs Reed, "I'm going to f. . . ing shoot you", after he had also warned her son that "I'm coming after you". Wright's threats came the day after Mrs Reed identified two other Portadown men as the attackers of her 5-year-old daughter, Nicola, injured as she attempted to shield her boyfriend during a punishment beating.
The men, Trevor Buchannan (29), of Corcrain Drive, and Dale Weathered (28) of Ranfurley Road, were given jail sentences of eight and seven years respectively for assaulting Nicola Reed and causing grievous bodily harm to her boyfriend, Jason Hughes, during the punishment beating on August 9th.
Later when jailing the Portadown men Lord Justice McCollum praised the courage of Mrs Reed and her family for going to the police and for giving evidence. They had "shown valour and considerable moral and physical courage", the judge said. "If more people were like her there would be many fewer punishment beatings, and people in the housing estates around Northern Ireland would be free of the rule of the bullies and criminals and their camp followers".
Lord Justice McCollum said that anyone listening to the facts of the case would be left in no doubt that the punishment beating on August 9th was a "planned and organised assault".
The judge said he found the content of Wright's evidence - "quite unconvincing" and he had no hesitation in rejecting it.
Of the witnesses called on Wright's behalf and his co-accused Lord Justice McCollum repeatedly said he had found them "unconvincing untruthful, unworthy of belief" as he reviewed their evidence.
Reviewing Mrs Reed's evidence he said: "I believe that in giving her evidence Mrs Reed was a scrupulously honest witness. She is a person of limited imagination and throughout her evidence she showed no tendency to exaggerate or to dramatise.
"I am satisfied that she concentrated on giving a strictly factual account of everything that had happened and she resisted all invitations to speculate or to vilify any party, or any other witness in the case.
The judge said there had been some suggestion that her evidence had been influenced by the fact she was receiving money from police and was now being protected by them at a secret address in England. But he added: "Having regard to her close ties in the Corcrain estate I would be very surprised if the attractions of a new life in England would compensate for her effective banishment".
Of the evidence of her son Thomas and daughter Leanne Lord Justice McCollum said they had both been "accurate and truthful witnesses".