In brief: Jersey-based artist Iain Alexander Shepherd, known for his portraits of Donald Trump, has been sentenced to 130 hours of community service and a 36-month driving ban after admitting drink driving. He tested at more than twice the legal limit and was told by the court he had come “so close to custody.” The case was heard at Jersey’s Magistrate’s Court.
The Incident at Green Island
On the evening of 24 September, at around 7.18pm, Shepherd parked outside Green Island Village Store, where a member of the public noticed his car rolling backwards before he drove further into the space. He then ate a chocolate bar he had not paid for. The same member of the public smelled alcohol on him and called the honorary police, who in turn reported the matter to the States police, the Jersey Evening Post reports.
Shepherd tested at 108 micrograms of alcohol in his breath, a reading the court described as exceptionally high. Relief Magistrate Sarah Fitz told him directly: “This was such a high reading. You must understand that you have come so close to custody today.”
Trump’s Favourite British Artist
Shepherd, who goes by the professional name Iain Alexander, has lived in Jersey for the past decade and frequently travels to the United States for work. Earlier this year he told the Washington Post that President Donald Trump had called him “his favourite British artist.” He also told the newspaper that he designed a $250 bill featuring Trump’s face, which the Trump administration controversially attempted to introduce as currency, with the US Treasury Department moving to make prototypes of the banknote. Trump, Shepherd said, had suggested his own design ideas for the note.
The artist’s Jersey connections run deeper than his transatlantic celebrity. In 2016, he sold a painting of David Bowie to benefit Jersey Hospice Care, raising £30,000, a sum the charity described at the time as “an incredible gesture.” Advocate Julia-Anne Dix, defending, told the court that Shepherd had also volunteered in schools across the island over his ten years here.
Sentencing and Mitigation
Advocate Dix painted a picture of a man facing an “extreme set of circumstances where he became unable to cope” at the time of the offence. Shepherd had been abstinent for ten weeks before the incident, she said, but drank due to insomnia and after receiving bad news from work in the United States. She described him as a man of “exceptionally good character” who had never previously appeared before the courts.
Centenier Sharon Rive presented the facts of the case to the court. Relief Magistrate Fitz sentenced Shepherd to 130 hours of community service, which the court noted is the equivalent of seven months in custody, and disqualified him from driving for 36 months. At the end of that ban, he will be required to retake his driving test before he can get back behind the wheel.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
