A DISABLED man used his mobility vehicle as a getaway car from a vicious robbery in Huddersfield.

But Appeal Court judges yesterday threw out a plea by Jason Lee Robinson that his disability should mean a lesser sentence.

The thug failed to convince top judges he was too harshly punished.

Robinson, 38, didn’t let the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair by a particularly painful form of arthritis stop him from playing his part in the robbery of an elderly man outside his home in Huddersfield in February 2011.

Joseph Doyle, 64, was left with a cut scalp and a fractured kneecap after being attacked with a bar and threatened with a knife before his home was plundered. Their haul included a wide-screen TV.

Robinson, of Juniper Grove Mews, Netherton, was jailed for 12 years in April, after being convicted of robbery at Bradford Crown Court.

He asked Lord Justice Aikens, sitting with Mr Justice Holroyde and Judge Peter Rook QC, at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, to reduce that sentence, arguing that his disability was not taken sufficiently into account.

The judge told the court the vehicle the robbery gang escaped in after attacking their victim was Robinson’s mobility car, a Ford Focus. Robinson and another man were arrested shortly afterwards.

Lawyers for Robinson argued that he ought to have been shown mercy by the sentencing judge because of his painful and debilitating condition.

Lord Justice Aikens, delivering the judgement of the court, said: “The sole ground of appeal is that the judge erred in not taking more account of this appellant’s disability, as he will have to endure in a more arduous way the lengthy custodial sentence than would a person who didn’t suffer from his disabilities.