Liverpool’s leading underworld lawyer was branded an “enemy of justice” and told his career lay in ruins after a secret bug caught him bragging about telling a wanted drugs crook how to flee the country.
Criminal defence solicitor Nick Marray, 50 – described by police as the go-to-guy for some of Merseyside’s most notorious crooks – was today beginning a two-year stretch behind bars.
After more than a week of deliberation, a jury found him guilty of doing an act intended to pervert the course of justice.
Marray, of Rosthwaite Road, West Derby, was caught out by a recording probe embedded in his car telling how he advised drug gang member Carl ‘Bobby’ Stewart to take a ferry from Scotland to Ireland after learning police mistakenly believed him still to be in prison.
The lawyer was heard telling his client William Ravenscroft in January last year: “We were sitting in my office and I said to him ‘why don’t you go up to Scotland, jump the boat from Stranraer and fly out from Dublin or something like that’.”
Carl Stewart
Judge Melbourne Inman told Marray he had moved from a “guardian of justice to one of its enemies”.
He said: “You have been a solicitor for many years. Along with the jury, having listened to many conversations you had with other clients, it is abundantly clear to me that by last year you had completely lost your moral compass.
“Instead of seeking to uphold the course of justice, you were trying to pervert it.”
Marray, who was working for city centre law firm Quinn Melville at the time, was taped telling Ravenscroft that Stewart came to his office having just been released from jail with an electronic tag.
The lawman says: “Bobby says to me, he came into the office and said to me, ‘do you think I am going to get nicked on this?’
“He had the tag on, he had been on the tag two days. So I looked at the evidence and everything […] and I spoke to the prosecutor. The prosecutor more or less said ‘look, the police are getting production orders to get him produced from prison’. The police still thought he was in prison. So I told him ‘yeah, it looks like you’re going to get locked up on this, Bob,’ so he flew down to London. He had cut his tag off, flew down to London yesterday and got on the plane to Thailand.
“The plane was already f****** taxiing on the runway and they get told to turn around, go back and the police got on the plane and took him off.”
Stewart, from the Vauxhall area of Liverpool, was later jailed for five years for his role in the massive drugs plot. Judge Inman said that while Stewart had not followed Marray’s direct advice on how to escape, he had advised him nonetheless.
The judge told him: “You in effect advised him that he was going to be arrested, that the police mistakenly thought he was in prison and you gave him at least some advice or suggestion that getting out of the country via Stranraer and Dublin may be sensible.”
SOCA surveillance picture of solicitor Nick Marray
In his defence, Marray said the comments were “stupid” remarks made to impress Ravenscroft and that he did not give Stewart that advice.
His barrister Martin Liddiard admitted that the conviction was “ruinous” for the solicitor’s career.
He said: “It has to follow that any conviction for a solicitor in this country of dishonesty, or perverting the course of justice in this case, is nothing other than ruinous for him.
“He will be struck off for life. His position as a lawyer is now over.”
Judge Inman told Marray, who expressed little emotion as he was sent down, that he had no option but to jail him immediately.
He said: “There is no higher degree of trust than could be placed upon anybody than being an officer of the court.
“The system of justice places that highest degree of trust in you as a solicitor.
“The sentence that I pass must reflect the movement of an officer of the court from a guardian of justice to one of its enemies.”
The jury found Marray not guilty on a second count of perverting the course of justice, along with his client Conrad Jones, 47, of Sewall Highway, Coventry.
Marray and Jones were alleged to have plotted to threaten and pay witnesses to come forward to support Jones’ appeal against his sentence.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/