- Michael Ruse changed his plea to guilty after his Facebook updates were printed off and delivered to court anonymously
- He had been on trial for attacking his friend's father with a baseball bat and baton
- Asked by a friend how the case was going, he wrote: 'Yeah I think I get away with it tbh x (sic)'
- He described the judge as 'stuck up' in another update after he was convicted
- But he escaped with a suspended prison sentence, a curfew and a fine
- He has been back on Facebook since, complaining about having to stay indoors at night
Foolish: Michael Ruse was convicted after bragging to friends on Facebook that he would get off
AS the jury prepared to consider
their verdict in an assault trial, they received a helpful pointer from
one of the defendants himself.
Michael Ruse, 21, had a Facebook conversation with a friend saying of his crime that he thought he would ‘get away with it’.
Unfortunately
for the bragging attacker, one of his online followers took exception
to the comment and printed it out before handing it in at Portsmouth
Crown Court.
Confronted
with the evidence, Ruse was forced to change his plea to guilty and was
given a suspended prison sentence and a curfew.
Judge
Ian Pearson told him: ‘You were stupid enough to put on Facebook what
amounted to a full confession. Your stupidity really is not much
mitigation.’
And Russell Pyne, defending, conceded: ‘He needs help with regard to thinking skills.’
Ruse,
from Leigh Park, was on trial with his friend Terry Reeve accused of
attacking Reeve’s father, Gareth, with a baseball bat and baton.
During the two-week trial, the court heard that Reeve, 20, had thrown a brick at his father’s car in March last year.
Reeve and Ruse then armed themselves with weapons and attacked the 45-year-old lorry driver in a street in Leigh Park.
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