A lawyer has been jailed after talking to a prisoner facing gun charges on smuggled mobile phones.
Criminal legal consultant Dene McClean, 37, of Simpson Close in Enfield, communicated with 36-year-old Jonathan Gomez more than 500 times while he was on remand awaiting trial at London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison.
Law graduate McClean, who was on Gomez’s legal team, spoke to the prisoner for more than 16 hours and exchanged dozens of text messages over a year from September 2017.
The contact on seven illegal mobiles included 27 minutes of calls over three days while Gomez was giving evidence in his Harrow Crown Court trial.
Gomez, from Borehamwood, was jailed for 12 years in 2018 following a retrial after a gun, ammunition and silencer were found in the boot of his car.
The contact included calls over three days while Gomez was giving evidence in his Harrow Crown Court trial. Photo: Peter Beal
McClean, who advised in police stations for around a decade, says on his website that he has represented suspected fraudsters, kidnappers and gang members.
He was jailed for 42 weeks by Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday after previously pleading guilty to unauthorised transmission of a sound by electric communication from within a prison, and unauthorised transmission of an image by electric communication from within a prison between September 23 2016 to September 28 2017.
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutor Robert Hutchinson said: “Dene McClean demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the integrity of the criminal justice system by repeatedly and deliberately flaunting the ban on communicating with prisoners on illegal mobile phones.
“The possession of these phones can lead to prisoners committing further offences or intimidating witnesses.
“McClean’s actions were criminal. As somebody working within the legal profession, he should have known better.
“The rules are clear in that legal professionals must use official routes to speak with their clients or they risk bringing the very core of the profession into disrepute.”
Prosecutors discovered the communications in an investigation of Gomez’s girlfriend’s mobile phone following the collapse of his first trial.
In a WhatsApp message McClean told her: “Tell him to call me from prison phone, not the mobile tomorrow afternoon.”
Gomez was convicted of conspiracy to possess a firearm with intent to endanger life in 2018.
He was sentenced to another nine months for offences relating to communicating with McClean, the CPS said.
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