Harrison out of jail in time for New Year

FORMER world featherweight champion Scott Harrison was released from Barlinnie prison in time to celebrate New Year. The 31-year-old was freed after serving four months behind bars.

Harrison's lawyer Massimo Franchi said: "He will be delighted that he is out before the end of the year so he can start rebuilding his life in 2009. He will want to start afresh and he has got the support of his family there."

However Harrison, who has not fought for three years, still has a trial pending in Malaga, Spain next month and any hopes he has of returning to the ring would depend on his licence being reinstated by the British Boxing Board of Control.

Yesterday he emerged from the main gate of Barlinnie prison in Glasgow just after 8am, dressed in a grey suit and white shirt and carrying a plastic bag with his belongings.

He refused to comment but gave a thumbs-up sign as he was driven away in a red taxi.

Harrison was jailed last year for a total of ten months on a series of charges.

The boxer was imprisoned on 2 September for two months for assaulting his girlfriend and a police officer, four months for drink-driving and two months for breaking a night-time curfew, a condition of bail from the drink-driving charge.

He received an additional two months the following week after he admitted punching a stranger in the face on a night out. At that appearance, his solicitor Franchi told the court: "Since December 2006 his life has been hell. Since that time he got himself into quite a bit of bother.

"Finally, after really hitting the doldrums in 2006, he can perhaps now face up to reality again and get on with his life.

"He has now got eight months to consider his own position carefully, to consider his attitude and what he should do in the future.

"If he doesn't get a grip of his alcohol problems it is quite obvious, I think, that he'll end up dead. It's as simple and as blunt as that. While in Barlinnie I understand he's training very hard, he's not drinking and is determined to become a new man when he comes out."

His prison term was reduced by two months earlier last month and he was released yesterday after serving half his sentence.

At the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh, Lord Kingarth ruled that the sentences for the drink-driving and bail breach could run concurrently rather than consecutively, reducing that particular sentence to four months.

In the drink-driving incident, the boxer from Cambuslang was caught at nearly four times the limit as he drove down Laurieston Road, in the Gorbals area of the city, at about 9pm on 29 August. Officers found he had 137 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mg.

In the assault incident, Glasgow Sheriff Court heard Harrison hit his partner Stacy Gardner, after she went to his Cambuslang home on the evening of 26 May to comfort him following the death of his uncle. A neighbour witnessed the assault and called the police and Harrison assaulted one of two officers who arrived to investigate. The court heard the boxer had been receiving counselling for an alcohol problem.

Harrison still faces an assault charge in Malaga, relating to an alleged incident in October 2006 in Alhaurin el Grande. The trial was postponed last year when the Spanish judge fell ill and was unable to hear the case.