Thomas McMahon admitted bringing painkillers to his son Joseph Peers
A man tried to pass drugs to his imprisoned murderer son hidden in a crisp packet.
Prison staff caught dad Thomas McMahon making the move when visiting Joseph Peers in HMP Full Sutton.
Peers was the getaway driver involved in the murder of 28-year-old Ashley Dale.
McMahon, 64, admitted bringing in the prohibited painkillers into the Yorkshire prison on June 22 last year.
It holds some of the country’s most dangerous and high-risk prisoners in the country, including serial killers and terrorists.
Julia Baggs, prosecuting, told Hull Crown Court how McMahon and two women were visiting Peers, who was convicted for the murder of Ashley Dale, but during the visit staff noticed McMahon moving his mouth before putting an item inside a crisp packet.
Identical crisp packets were on a table in front of the group and they were “rotated” and moved around several times. This aroused suspicion and CCTV pictures showed McMahon’s crisp packet being moved on the table.
Staff found that there were 14 white, oval-shaped tablets inside it. “Custodial settings are notoriously rife with controlled and uncontrolled drugs”, said Miss Baggs.
“It’s a high net-worth currency. All matters involving the transportation of prohibited items into prison are very serious but this is not any sort of large-scale operation.”
McMahon was arrested and claimed his son had been suffering back and knee pain and that he was worried about him. The tablets were to help his son with this.
The prosecution did not accept this explanation but did not seek to challenge it, the court heard.
“It was a prescribed medication for pain relief but it is abused and is bought and sold on the black market,” said Miss Baggs.
McMahon had convictions for 23 previous offences, most recently in September 2023 for being over the drug limit for cannabis. He had returned from a trip to Amsterdam at the time, Hull Live reports.
Billy Torbett, mitigating, said that McMahon’s previous conviction for drug-driving in 2023 came after he took a trip to Amsterdam because of the stress of his son’s murder trial. When he returned, there was still cannabis in his system while driving.
Father-of-four McMahon had no previous convictions for drugs possession or supply. He brought the drugs into Full Sutton Prison because his son was suffering pain from an injury.
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The painkillers had previously been prescribed for himself to treat chronic pain but he had not used them. “He knows he has made a significant error in judgement, to say the least”, said Mr Torbett.
“He is immensely remorseful for his actions. He understands that he has made a significant error here, an error which he regrets.
“It was the simple passing of pain management drugs to his son. He is under no illusions about the seriousness of it.
“He has largely remained out of trouble for 34 years apart from that driving conviction in 2023.” McMahon was still banned from visiting his son at the prison and this had caused emotional problems for him.
Recorder Taryn Turner told McMahon: “This is serious offending. This was in a custodial environment where there has to be the maintenance of order.
“Drugs equals currency, in monetary terms perhaps not, but nevertheless. You brought in a quantity of tablets, concealed from view.
“These tablets, you well knew, were prohibited items. The risk created is substantial. You were visiting your son, who is serving a sentence for murder.
“This was a serious lapse in your judgement.” Drugs in prisons fuelled violence, intimidation and debt, said Recorder Turner.
McMahon, of Dunchurch Road, Knotty Ash, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence, ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity requirement days.
Peers was the getaway driver on the night of Ashley’s murder on August 21, 2022, with the care worker being shot in the abdomen with a Skorpion sub-machince gun at her home in Leinster Road as part of a plot to kill her boyfriend Lee Harrison.
Peers, then aged 29, was said to have been the getaway driver for a gunman, James Witham, who had discharged a hail of bullets in Ashley’s dining room as she fled through the back door of her home.
On November 22, 2023, Peers was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 41 years for the murder of Ashley Dale, conspiracy to murder Lee Harrison, and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon with intent to endanger life.
He will be 70 years old before he is eligible for release.
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