SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Harrower said:

"Robert Paterson, Sean McGregor and Donald Stone, on 2 May 2025, you each pled guilty to a charge of either directing serious organised crime or one of being involved in serious organised crime, contrary to sections 30(1)(a) and 28(1), respectively, of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. Your pleas were entered on the third day of the trial diet, after the jury were sworn in, but before evidence was led.  Notwithstanding the timing of your pleas, I acknowledge the utilitarian benefit that they will have had in the context of a trial that had been scheduled to last for 20 days.

The indictment restricts the period during which these offences were carried out to little more than a fortnight falling between 28 January 2023 and 14 February 2023.  That relatively short period corresponds to the period during which your activities were placed under covert surveillance by Police Scotland.  In order to explain why you were placed under surveillance at all, and why that surveillance was brought to such an abrupt end, it is necessary to begin with an incident that occurred on 15 November 2022, in HMP Edinburgh, where you, Mr Paterson, were serving a life sentence for murder. 

Robert Paterson/unnamed others

It was shortly before two o’clock in the morning.  I will refer to the senior prison officer on duty as XY.  From within your cell, Mr Paterson, you began to scream that you were having a heart attack.  You claimed you had taken cocaine and demanded to be taken to hospital.  When an ambulance arrived at the prison, it must have come as something of a surprise to the staff, since none of them had summoned it.  The narrative doesn’t record who did make the emergency call.  However, it does state that XY saw you swallowing a SIM card you had just removed from a mobile telephone.  It also reveals that your partner had been calling the prison and demanding that you receive medical attention.  

The ambulance team were permitted to examine you.  Having found your vital signs to be only slightly elevated, they concluded that you were not in any immediate danger.  XY was aware of your conviction in 2012 for conspiracy to escape from custody while in hospital.  In these circumstances, he allowed the paramedics to remain with you to monitor your condition, while he spoke with medical staff at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.  Shortly before 8am, he allowed you to be taken to the ERI for assessment.  Following a CT scan, you underwent surgery to remove seven plastic bags from your stomach.  They were each intact.  You blamed XY for what you believed to be an unnecessary delay in sending you to hospital. 

I have set out the agreed background, not because it reveals that you may have been conspiring to make another attempt to escape from custody, but because it demonstrates that XY acted entirely appropriately throughout.  Although the narrative states that you decided to seek “revenge” upon XY by having him seriously assaulted, as a matter of fact, there was never anything in his behaviour that required to be avenged.  To advance your plan, you contacted several people, both within and outwith the prison, the latter by means of non-prison-issue telephones.  You discussed obtaining ammunition for a handgun to which you were in a position to provide access. You identified an individual who was prepared to carry out the assault, and discussed with him the provision of a vehicle and a driver.  All this was overheard by means of the covert surveillance to which I have already referred.  As a result, the police were able to intervene before any assault could even be attempted. 

There was no obvious financial motivation for the planned assault on XY.  In that respect, it was unlike other serious organised crime with which this court is familiar, such as fraud or the supply of drugs.  However, under the 2010 Act, it is sufficient that your principal purpose was in conspiring to commit a serious offence.  It is not necessary that the principal purpose of that serious offence was financial gain.  A serious offence is defined as one committed with the intention of obtaining a material benefit for any person.  Although the narrative is silent on the matter, parties are now agreed that the person you identified to carry out the assault on XY was to be paid in drugs and/or money, and that this is sufficient to meet the terms of the legislation. 

The brief window of covert surveillance between the end of January and the middle of February also revealed a major drugs operation in which all three of you, together with other unnamed persons, were involved.  Although the size of that operation cannot be quantified, the agreed narrative states that you, Mr Paterson, directed others in the supply of significant quantities of benzodiazepines, cocaine and cannabis.

Robert Paterson/Sean McGregor

The charge to which you, Sean McGregor, pled guilty includes an allegation that you “transport[ed] and suppl[ied] controlled drugs” and that you “arrange[d] to carry out an assault and robbery of controlled drugs”.  That wording is liable to be misunderstood if it is taken to mean that your involvement in arranging to carry out an assault and robbery was only, as it were, behind the scenes.  In fact, as the narrative makes clear, you and at least one other person attended at a property where cannabis was bring grown, pretending to be police officers.  This caused the owners to flee.  Therefore, while your intention may have been to carry out a robbery, in the result you were able simply to take the drugs, with neither an assault nor a robbery having been committed or even attempted.  You then contacted Mr Paterson, who arranged to buy the cannabis from you, via another individual.  You also agreed with Mr Paterson, in exchange for a share of the profits, to participate in a separate plan to rob unknown others of several kilograms of cannabis and cocaine, as well as five high-value watches.   Once again, no such robbery took place due to police intervention the following day.

Robert Paterson/Donald Stone 

You, Donald Stone, regularly supplied thousands of benzodiazepine tablets in the Bathgate area.  Mr Paterson arranged for you to be supplied with at least some of these drugs and to be provided with a motorbike to assist you in making your errands.  You were also concerned in supplying drugs into HMP Edinburgh.  You, Mr Stone, would identify women who, in return for payment in drugs, would be prepared to visit the prison with “valium” and cocaine concealed on their person.  Mr Paterson would identify prisoners to whom the drugs would be passed while evading detection.  Photographs were exchanged so that visitor and prisoner might recognise each other.  In the event only one such exchange took place during the period of surveillance, your plans for a further visit having been thwarted by the intervention of the police.  In addition to “valium” and cocaine, this further visit was to have involved the supply of cathinones, so-called “legal highs”, but which are in fact Class B controlled drugs.  

On two occasions, Mr Stone, you told Mr Paterson that you were looking to acquire a specific type of knife, as the narrative puts it, “just in case”.  The narrative doesn’t record the circumstances in which you considered it might be necessary to have such a knife, but it may be inferred from the terms of the charge to which you have pled guilty that its purpose was to enable or further the commission of serious organised crime. 

Robert Paterson - sentence

Robert Paterson, the maximum sentence I may lawfully impose for an offence under section 30(1)(a) is one of 14 years.  In the circumstances I have narrated, the offence to which you have pled guilty is one of the utmost seriousness, involving a very high degree of criminality.  It involved directing others in the commission of a number of serious offences, and causing significant harm, or at least the risk of significant harm.  It was aggravated by your previous convictions, and by reason of your having committed the offence while in prison.  I have taken account of everything said on your behalf by Mr Ross and in the social work report.  Had it not been for the timing of your plea, I would have sentenced you to a period of imprisonment of 12 years.  However, the narrative records that on 18 April 2025, you confirmed your intention to plead guilty in terms that were ultimately accepted at trial.  In all the circumstances, I am prepared to reduce your sentence by one eighth.  The period of imprisonment will therefore be 10 years and 6 months beginning from today. 

Sean McGregor - sentence

Sean McGregor, the maximum sentence I may lawfully impose for an offence under section 28(1) is one of 10 years.  You have an appalling record of previous convictions.  Although none of them is for being involved in serious organised crime, or for having been concerned in the supply of drugs, several of them are for assault.  I have taken account of everything said on your behalf by Mr Scullion and the social work report.  But for the timing of your plea, I would have sentenced you to a period of imprisonment of 4 years.  Taking the timing of your plea into account, I would have reduced that sentence by one tenth, or, rounding up, by 5 months.  That would have reduced your sentence to a period of 43 months’ imprisonment. 

However, you committed this offence after having been released from a sentence of 36 months’ imprisonment, imposed on 29 April 2022 by Ayr Sheriff Court, in respect of an offence of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.  The expiry date for that sentence was 2 May 2024.  Therefore, as at 14 February 2023, which was the last date on which this new offence was committed, there were 442 days of the original sentence still to serve.  In terms of the power conferred on me by s16 of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993, I shall make an order returning you to prison for a period of 442 days beginning from today.  The new sentence I am imposing on you will only begin on the expiry of that 442-day period. 

That being the case, I must make a further reduction to your sentence to take account of the period you have spent on remand between 2 May 2024 and today’s date.  That period is approximately 14 months.  I shall assume that the length of sentence that would have resulted in that period being spent in prison is twice that period, namely, 28 months.  The result is that the sentence I will impose, to begin at the expiry of the period of 442 days beginning from today, will be one of 15 months. 

Donald Stone - sentence

Donald Stone, in your case, too, the maximum sentence I may lawfully impose is one of 10 years.  You too are a prolific offender, although none of your previous convictions is for being involved in serious organised crime, or for having been concerned in the supply of drugs.  I have taken account of everything said on your behalf by Mr Anderson and in the social work report.  Although the social worker recommends an extended period of supervision, and notwithstanding the discussions to which I have already referred about acquiring a knife, I accept that you have not been convicted of a violent offence, and that therefore an extended sentence would be incompetent.  But for the timing of your plea, I would have sentenced you to a period of imprisonment of 70 months.  Taking the timing of your plea into account, I will reduce that sentence by one tenth.  Your sentence will therefore be a period of imprisonment of 63 months, backdated to 16 February 2023, when you were remanded in custody."