Babyshambles and former Libertines front man Pete Doherty has been jailed for six months for his role in the death of a young film maker of an overdose. Doherty had pleaded guilty at Snaresbrook Crown Court last month to the cocaine possession charges, which stemmed from a nose candy party at which Rachel Whiteread, a film maker, died of ‘heroin poisoning’. Sentencing him to six months of picking up the soap in the prison showers, the judge remarked that Doherty had an “appalling record”, having been to court 13 times on various drug and burglary charges.
Doherty’s previous remarkable ability to wriggle out of charges and avoid jail met its match with the death of Whiteread, who unfortunately for Doherty, happened to be related to some very influential people in Britain, and they weren’t going to let her death pass quietly. Footage found after the death showed Doherty racking up, although the judge was at pains to point out that the crack cocaine wasn’t the cause of her death.
“Unhappily and tragically that woman died from the poisoning of another illegal class A drug which she had chosen to take,” he said. “The grief and loss to her family and friends caused by her death cannot, and should not, be sought in any way to be expiated by the sentence I pass today.”
