Winehouse’s husband gets 27 months in jail

updated 10:16 a.m. ET July 21, 2008

LONDON - Amy Winehouse’s husband was sentenced Monday to 27 months in jail for assault and obstructing justice.

Blake Fielder-Civil has admitted beating up pub manager James King in a barroom fight in 2006 and then offering him $400,000 to keep quiet about it.

Judge David Radford told Fielder-Civil he had behaved in a “gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful” way.

Winehouse, who has regaled concert audiences for months with appeals for the release of “my Blake,” was not at the London court.

Fielder-Civil has spent almost nine months in jail since his arrest, and could be freed in December, once he has completed half his sentence.

Three other men — James Kennedy, Anthony Kelly and Michael Brown — pleaded guilty to involvement in the plot. Brown received 33 months for assault and perverting the course of justice (the equivalent of obstruction of justice in the U.S.), while the other two received shorter sentences.

King, the assault victim, was acquitted by a jury last month of trying to pervert the course of justice. He said he was intimidated into withdrawing his assault claim in exchange for cash.

Winehouse and Fielder-Civil, 26, married in Miami in May 2007. He was arrested in November and has been in jail ever since.

Slide show   Amy Winehouse Grammy-winning British soul singer is a musical talent with a troubled life off stage. more photos

She has become an international star since releasing the Grammy-winning album, “Back to Black,” in 2006. But her music has been overshadowed by reports of drug use, run-ins with the law and her tempestuous relationship with Fielder-Civil.

Fielder-Civil’s lawyer, Jeremy Dein, told the judge that his client was “of exemplary good character” and should be freed.

Radford said that while Fielder-Civil had no previous convictions, “exemplary good character” was stretching it, “if what I read about him and the use of drugs is true.”

Dein said Fielder-Civil had an “intimate relationship with drug addiction,” but that he and Winehouse were determined to rebuild their lives.

“It’s their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other,” Dein said. “He knows that if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for him, but for his wife as well.”

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