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A convicted murderer has lost an appeal against the 22-year length of the punishment part of his life sentence in which he argued that such a long period was not justified because the murder was committed spontaneously rather than being premeditated.<\/p>\n
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Appellant John Farquhar, 59, pled guilty to the murder of Garry Thomson in March 2025, after the Crown rejected an offer of a guilty plea for culpable homicide, in addition to a charge of attempting to defeat the ends of justice. The appellant had a record of previous convictions dating back to 1990, including one for assault to severe injury and danger to life and two instances of assault and robbery.<\/p>\n
The appeal was heard in the High Court of Justiciary by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Beckett, with Ogg, solicitor advocate, appearing for the appellant and Macintosh, advocate depute, for the Crown.<\/p>\n
A gross overreaction <\/p>\n
Mr Thomson lived in the flat directly above the appellant\u2019s at Gairbrig Court, Guardbridge. At the time of the murder on 17 October 2023, the appellant was a suspect in a drugs supply case in Edinburgh which ultimately resulted in his conviction in April 2024. At some time between 7:18 and 7:48am that day, the appellant entered Mr Thomson\u2019s flat and struck him with a knife, apparently concerned that he knew about his criminal past and pending court case and that this information may become more widely known locally.<\/p>\n
Following the murder, the appellant took Mr Thomson\u2019s keys and bank cards and took a bus to St Andrews to spend the day drinking with two associates, paying with the deceased\u2019s cards. The following day he told Mr Thomson\u2019s daughter Yazzmine Florence that he had not seen Mr Thomson and tried calling his phone with her despite knowing him to be dead. He also instructed one of his associates to delete a string of messages from his phone suggesting he planned to flee the area and make for Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
The sentencing judge noted the nature and extent of the wounds inflicted and the appellant\u2019s deception to Ms Florence and the aggravation of the appellant being on bail for the drugs offence at the time. Taking account of the aggravation and the concurrent sentence of three years on the charge of defeating the ends of justice, he imposed a punishment part of 22 years, reduced from 23 for the guilty plea.<\/p>\n
It was submitted for the appellant that, notwithstanding the serious impact of the crime on the deceased\u2019s family, the crime was not premeditated. It was a gross overreaction to what the deceased had said. Given the relatively early acceptance of responsibility for causing death reflected in the appellant\u2019s rejected plea of guilty to culpable homicide, his remorse, and the passage of time since his serious convictions for crimes of violence, the sentence imposed was excessive.<\/p>\n
Deplorable actions <\/p>\n
Delivering the opinion of the court, Lord Beckett began: \u201cThis was a particularly serious example of murder. Even if there was no premeditation it was an intentional killing, aggravated by the appellant\u2019s departure without making any attempt to seek assistance for Mr Thomson.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cHis deception and attempts to conceal what he had done are also materially aggravating of this particularly violent attack involving the infliction of four serious knife wounds to the neck, and efforts to inflict more thwarted only by Mr Thomson\u2019s defensive actions. The appellant attacked Mr Thomson in his own home in circumstances where he had offered no physical threat to the appellant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting the appellant\u2019s continued offending, Lord Beckett said of the earlier plea bargaining: \u201cThere is nothing in the grounds of appeal directed to the level of reduction made for the appellant pleading guilty to murder when he did and we are not persuaded that there is any material mitigation in his earlier plea of guilty to culpable homicide for actions that plainly constituted murder. The appellant may be remorseful, but remorse seems only to have developed after his deplorable actions following the murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
He concluded: \u201cThe judge took account of all relevant considerations and carefully evaluated them before imposing a sentence appropriate to the particular circumstances of the case. We were unable to conclude that the punishment part was excessive. There has been no miscarriage of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court accordingly refused the appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A convicted murderer has lost an appeal against the 22-year length of the punishment part of his life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-346230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115032189003901691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}