Given 14 months
Barrister Henry Hendron has been jailed after trying to purchase drugs from the clients he represented.
Legal Cheek reported in March that Hendron had admitted to three counts of intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence and one count of possessing a class A drug.
The controversial barrister has today been jailed for 14 months, Yahoo News reports.
Woolwich Crown Court reportedly heard how Hendron was arrested outside Belmarsh prison in May last year after visiting a client.
Messages on the barrister’s phone showed he had asked to buy methamphetamine and GBL from two clients, including one he was visiting at the time of his arrest.
Hendron, who was called to the bar in 2006, had represented both men over drug supply allegations.
Jailing Hendron, Judge Jonathan Mann KC described him as “bright and capable” and a “well thought-of person both professionally and personally”.
“I want to make it clear that it is not the fact that you are a barrister that is so serious,” Judge Man stressed. “What is so serious is these offences have been committed by you in the context of you asking those you represent, or represented, to supply you with drugs.”
Hendron first hit headlines in 2015 when he was arrested after his then-boyfriend was found dead with drugs in his system at the flat the couple shared in Temple, London.
He pleaded guilty to possession of controlled drugs — ‘chemsex’ substances mephedrone and gamma-butyrolactone — with intent to supply and was handed a community order with 18 months supervision and 140 hours unpaid work. He was suspended from practice for three years in April 2017.
Hendron was suspended again just weeks after returning to practice for failing to comply with a determination of the Legal Ombudsman to pay a complainant £850. However, the decision was overturned in 2020 because he was already suspended at the time.