LONDON - Amy Winehouse's husband was sentenced Monday to 27 months in jail for assault and obstructing justice.

Blake Fielder-Civil admitted to beating up pub manager James King in a bar fight in 2006 and then offering him the equivalent of about $400,000 Cdn to keep quiet about it.

Judge David Radford told Fielder-Civil he had behaved in a "gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful" way.

Winehouse, who has regaled concert audiences for months with appeals for the release of "my Blake," was not at the London court.

Fielder-Civil has spent almost nine months in jail since his arrest, and could be freed in December once he has completed half his sentence.

Three other men -- James Kennedy, Anthony Kelly and Michael Brown -- pleaded guilty to involvement in the plot. Brown received 33 months for assault and perverting the course of justice, while the other two received shorter sentences.

King, the assault victim, was acquitted by a jury last month of trying to pervert the course of justice. He said he was intimidated into withdrawing his assault claim in exchange for cash.

The plotters told a newspaper reporter that the money for the bribe was to have come from Winehouse. She was questioned by police about the case but detectives found no evidence she was involved in the plot.

Winehouse, 24, and Fielder-Civil, 26, married in Miami in May 2007. He was arrested in November and has been in jail ever since.

Winehouse has become an international star since she released the Grammy-winning album "Back to Black" in 2006. But her music has been overshadowed by reports of drug use, run-ins with the law and her tempestuous relationship with Fielder-Civil.

The judge was not persuaded by a claim from Fielder-Civil's lawyer, Jeremy Dein, that the defendant was "of exemplary good character" and should be freed.

Radford said that while Fielder-Civil had no previous convictions, "exemplary good character" was stretching it, "if what I read about him and the use of drugs is true."

Dein said Fielder-Civil had an "intimate relationship with drug addiction" but he and Winehouse were determined to rebuild their lives.

"It's their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other," Dein said. "He knows that if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for him but for his wife as well."