Sheriff decides Castle Huntly prisoner’s mobile phone story did not ring true

A prisoner caught with a mobile phone at Castle Huntly jail claimed he was only disconnecting it from his games console.

Stephen Sheerin, 35, of Hillside Crescent, Hamilton, denied having the phone at Castle Huntly on January 26 last year.

But At Perth Sheriff Court Sheriff Lindsay Foulis said he preferred the evidence of the two prison officers and found Sheerin guilty.

He deferred sentence for reports.

Prison officers Norman Dyce and Kenneth Anderson found Sheerin with a BlackBerry device when they carried out a cell check at around 10.45pm following a false fire alarm.

They said Sheerin appeared to be texting and, after spotting them, bent forward in an attempt to hide the phone.

The officers said they did not see a charger at the time.

Sheerin claimed he had gone into a fellow prisoner’s cell to retrieve a borrowed PlayStation and found it was being used to charge the BlackBerry device, which did not belong to him.

He said in the short time it took him to unplug the device prison officers walked in and caught him with it and if they had entered the cell fully they would have seen the charger on a chair.