A YouTube music star was jailed for 30 months for possessing a stun gun disguised as a torch.
Brendan MacFarlane faced a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment for the firearms offence but a judge ruled he could impose a lesser sentence because of exceptional circumstances.
MacFarlane, 25, was linked with the weapon after police were called following a confrontation outside flats in Simpson Square, Perth, where a lockdown party had been taking place on June 27 in 2020.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard DNA and fingerprints linked MacFarlane to the stun gun following the incident.
A judge pointed out MacFarlane, who was 22 when the crime was committed, had no previous convictions and had never been to prison.
MacFarlane, of Balbeggie, near Perth, was convicted of the firearms offence at an earlier trial, when he was acquitted of an assault charge.
Music career cut short
MacFarlane shot to fame when an invitation to appear on Maury Povich’s talent show on US TV sparked a high-profile legal battle over parental control of his passport.
He was 11 when videos of him singing gospel and country standards went viral after being posted on YouTube.
His defence counsel Gillian Ross had argued that there were exceptional circumstances that would justify the court imposing a lesser sentence than the statutory minimum of five years’ imprisonment, including his assertion the stun gun was not his.
Judge Lord Weir accepted there was no basis for disputing this.
He noted MacFarlane’s “highly promising musical career in the USA” had been compromised through no fault of his own and accepted he had suffered from long-standing anxiety issues.
However, he added deterrence must remain at the forefront of the court’s thinking when dealing with this type of crime.
He told MacFarlane: “You had no basis to be in possession of an article of this character in a public place at all.”
The defence counsel said he had no knowledge of stun guns and did not know what it was at the time of the incident.
She said he was a young person at the time of the offence and sentencing guidelines recognised young people generally have a lesser level of maturity and greater capacity for rehabilitation.
She said he had previously had “a very promising musical career” and added: “Music is all he had ever known from a very young age.”
The Courier told last month how the Crown dropped a case against MacFarlane when he was not brought to court from prison – where he was on remand for the firearms charge.
It was the 14th occasion the case had called since February 2020.
He had been accused of beating a man with a crowbar in Perth city centre while acting with two other men.
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