Liverpool man Sam Walker was arrested when he left prison over suspected drug offences, court hears

Feb 15 2013 Liverpool Echo

A LIVERPOOL inmate alleged to have orchestrated a drug smuggling plot from inside jail was arrested at the prison gates after his release from the sentence he was serving, a court heard.

Sam Walker spotted his girlfriend Lois Griffiths and three-year-old son waiting to greet him outside Doncaster Prison but also waiting were police officers who immediately arrested him and later questioned him over the drug allegations.

Walker, 29, told a Sheffield Crown Court jury he was “distraught” at being arrested when he thought he was a free man again.

The prosecution claim Walker organised drugs and mobile phones to be smuggled into HMP Doncaster through Griffiths, 25, on the outside.

It is claimed he enlisted her help to organise two “mules” – visitors Richard Pemberton, 21 and Emma Scamp, 20 – to smuggle packages into the jail.

Nadim Bashir, prosecuting, said two other inmates David Sage, 32, and Lee Stanley were allegedly recruited by Walker to take delivery of the packages for him.

But Walker told the court he knew nothing of the drug plot and said the wing where he was housed in a single cell was dominated by Sheffield-based gangs who would “slash” him if he dared challenge their authority.

He said: “There would be no way I would be allowed to do that, my face would be cut open.”

He said he was the only Merseyside man on the wing apart from a Birkenhead man and he kept himself apart from the gangs.