Downfall of lawyer who acted as prison drug mule

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A DISGRACED lawyer who says she was "coerced" by a feared underworld figure into smuggling drugs into prison was jailed for 32 months yesterday.

Angela Baillie, 32, had felt unable to resist a demand to deliver heroin and diazepam tablets to an inmate of Glasgow's Barlinnie prison, after a gun was shown to her, a court heard.

The judge was urged by Baillie's QC to take the exceptional step of sparing her from a jail term, but Lord Kinclaven said no other method of dealing with her would be appropriate.

"Your case, like many others in this court, clearly illustrates the tragedies and the devastation that can be caused by involvement with drugs and the drugs trade," Lord Kinclaven told Baillie, a former cocaine addict from a well-off family.

He said it was clear from the quantities of drugs that they were not for personal use, but for supply into the prison system generally, and Baillie, as a solicitor visiting the jail on business, had been in a position of trust.

Indicating the sentence would have been four years but for her plea of guilty, Lord Kinclaven added: "The court requires to mark the gravity of your offences and the court's disapproval."

Baillie, of Newton Mearns, Glasgow, showed little emotion as she was led from the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh. She had admitted being concerned in the supplying of the drugs, worth 1,558, in October last year. She was caught after a tip-off. She visited a client and passed to him a cigarette packet containing 14.85g of heroin and 158 diazepam tablets.

As well as being prosecuted, Baillie is facing proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act, in which the authorities are seeking a confiscation order in the sum of 52,556. She disputes that the money was made illegally, and there will be a hearing later to determine the issue.

Yesterday, the defence counsel, Paul McBride, QC, said Baillie, a divorced mother of a 15-year-old daughter, had a history of psychiatric problems which, since the Barlinnie offence, had been diagnosed as a bipolar disorder (a type of mental illness typified by mood swings). In the past, she had had a drug addiction and had attempted suicide.

"Her professional life was essentially a faade hiding... a real inability to do anything other than merely cope with life," said Mr McBride.

He said psychiatrists who had examined Baillie recently had concluded that at the time of the offence she was suffering from diminished responsibility.

Mr McBride said the crime had not been committed for financial or professional gain, but Baillie had endured coercion. He mentioned "an individual" and described the man as a career criminal with connections to drug-dealing syndicates in Glasgow. "He and his associates are properly regarded as dangerous individuals," added Mr McBride.

A woman known to the man had contacted Baillie before the offence and asked her to supply and store drugs. The requests were refused, said Mr McBride.

Then, a couple of days before she went to Barlinnie, Baillie was visited at her home by the woman. She was told she had to deliver drugs to the jail.

She was not threatened, but a handgun was "apparent in the possession of this woman".

Mr McBride continued: "She asked [Baillie] to store the gun. She did not do so. Her perception was that the woman's intention had no doubt been to display to her that the demand to deliver drugs was a demand made by a dangerous network of individuals for whom firearms and violence was a stock-in-trade.

"A gun was not put to her head, but the demand was made in such a way she felt it could not be refused. At that time, she lived alone with her child."

On the eve of the prison visit, the cigarette packet containing the drugs had been taken to Baillie's home. She was at her wits' end, not knowing what to do.

"What she ought to have done is contact the authorities or her family. She did not follow any of these routes. Had she done so, she would not be here today.

"Her reason was impaired through [mental] illness. This would have been entirely different if she was capable of proper thought and reason," said Mr McBride.

Since her arrest, Baillie had never gone back to her home, fearing those involved might seek to silence or punish her. She had made herself available to the Crown as a witness at a forthcoming trial.

Mr McBride said Baillie's career was over, and she had arranged to have her name removed from the roll of solicitors.

He argued for a sentence of probation with a condition that Baillie, who has spent the past ten weeks at a clinic in England, should continue to receive treatment for her illness.

However, Lord Kinclaven said: "The various factors referred to on your behalf may explain and mitigate, but they do not excuse you from responsibility."

Last night, the Law Society of Scotland said: "Whatever the circumstances of Ms Baillie's case, she has committed a serious crime which goes against the very core values of being a solicitor - trust and honesty."

A life of privilege left in tatters after fatal attraction to 'gangster chic'

"A SAD and lonely shadow" were the words used by the defence QC to describe the life of Angela Baillie, a former solicitor, now convicted drug dealer. Certainly, as she wakes this morning in a cell at Cornton Vale prison, the thin mattress and bare walls are a shadow of the comfortable accommodation in which she was raised in the affluent Glasgow suburb of Whitecraigs.

Yet the description was more apt than Paul McBride, her QC, might have thought: for despite being born to a life of wealth and privilege, with an expensive private education and financial support, Angela Baillie preferred the perceived glamour of the criminal fraternity. For three years, while studying law at Glasgow University, Baillie held down a Saturday job at Versace. As a former colleague recalled: "If there was a famous footballer and a gangster in the store at the same time, Angela would always serve the gangster.

"She had a great mind and came from a great background, but she had a fatal flaw - she thought gangsters were glamorous."

There were other problems, too. In court yesterday her QC alluded to a background of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression and suicide attempts, yet the image she presented to the world was of a party animal. As her former colleague recalled: "She was wired to the moon. She would come in late for work still high on Ecstasy and speed."

Angela Baillie was one of four daughters of Patricia and Frank Baillie, a successful businessman and a former director of Scottish and Universal Newspapers. Trouble began when she became pregnant at 17, while still a pupil at Fernhill, an exclusive private school in Rutherglen. She went on to wed Charles Carmichael at St Columbkille's Church in Rutherglen in 1990, but the marriage did not last and her husband later applied for divorce.

Determined, with an independent spirit, Baillie moved with her young daughter into a small flat in Partick, which was understood to have been bought by her parents.

Despite the pressure of completing exams and looking after a small child, she quickly embraced the club scene and its drugs and was often berated for staying out all night and leaving her child with her parents.

After she graduated in 1997 she began to work as a trainee solicitor at CF Boyle & Co in Glasgow and moved into a three-bedroom house in Newton Mearns, also purchased by her parents. She is understood to have left the firm under a cloud; however, Mr Boyle refused to comment yesterday. She then spent two years with John Carroll & Co, and a further year self-employed doing agency work for other law firms, before finally joining the firm of Richard Lobjoie & Co on 1 June 2001.

In 2003 she was the talk of legal circles after Fernando Ricksen, a Rangers player, had pursued her for a date after he attended a Bar Association dinner in Glasgow. She was also the talk of legal circles on account of her appetite for drink and drugs, particularly cocaine.

The previous year, in 2002, she had failed to turn up for work one day and her employer was contacted by her family who explained that she was seeking treatment for alcoholism at the Priory clinic in London.

However, when later confronted by Richard Lobjoie with the accusation that she was taking cocaine, she denied it and did so repeatedly on a number of different occasions.

She was viewed by colleagues as a hard worker, but with emotional problems, and staff went out of their way to provide her with the flexible hours crucial to a single mother. Yet older hands in the courts were aware of her propensity towards "gangster chic".

She took a vicarious thrill from working closely with criminals, which when coupled with her unbalanced emotional condition and drug and alcohol addictions, led to her downfall.

Her arrest took place on Sunday 23 October 2005, and the story broke a few days later that "a female solicitor" had been held. When confronted by Mr Lobjoie, she denied it referred to her. He advised her to sue, and then felt he had no choice but to suspend her.

Yesterday, Mr Lobjoie said: "As far as Angela Baillie is concerned, her actions were a total rejection of all those who tried to help her: her parents, her friends and her colleagues in this firm.

"The criminal lawyer is always under pressure. If someone had put her under pressure she should have contacted us, contacted the authorities. She had a whole deck of people who were there to support her, but she chose not to do so."

STEPHEN MCGINTY