A groom who spent his wedding night in the custody suite rather than the bridal suite has been back in court for what his lawyer branded a “pre-nuptial disagreement”.
Graeme Leslie and his bride, Margaret-Ann had a wedding-day disaster when they were thrown into the cells for a drunken argument at a Montrose off-licence last September.
Leslie was jailed for the wedding day offence, but appeared back at Forfar sheriff court for a deferred sentence on other matters, including an offence in which the 62-year-old assaulted his then-fiancee by grabbing her by the neck to her injury last August at Carnegie Court sheltered housing in Montrose.
Defence solicitor Nick Markowski told Sheriff Pino Di Emidio at Forfar: “The court will be familiar with the concept of a pre-nuptial agreement – this unfortunately was more a pre-nuptial disagreement.”
Leslie had also previously admitted another incident last March at the housing complex in which he behaved in a threatening manner and struggled violently with police trying to arrest him, with the offence being racially aggravated.
“This case happened before they were married, he was drinking, police were called and he struggled with police officers and was abusive towards them,” added the lawyer.
Mr Markowski added: “A high tariff deferred sentence didn’t get going because he was imprisoned.
“The courts have adopted various approaches to Mr Leslie, including a restriction of liberty order from 3pm to midnight which had the effect of keeping him out of the pub during the day.
“He and his wife have now settled in St Cyrus and he is reporting to me that he is not drinking as much as he did prior to his marriage.”
Mr Markowski added: “There has been a bit of water under the bridge since these offences were committed, and he is now happily married and away from Montrose.”
Sheriff Pino Di Emidio told the ex-soldier: “You have shown over the last three months that you can stay out of trouble and it is very important that you keep that up.”
He fined Leslie £240 for the Montrose breach of the peace and deferred sentence on the other matter until July for the accused to be of good behaviour.
“I could very simply just have imprisoned you but I won’t do that to give you credit for what you have achieved thus far.”
