back to article Mobile snap murderer jailed for life

A Paisley man who murdered a 24-year-old by stabbing him 80 times with a knife and then "went on to pose for a mobile phone picture alongside the victim's body" has been jailed for at least 15 years, the BBC reports. Stephen Price, 20, previously admitted murdering 24-year-old Scott Burgess "with a knife in his home in Glen …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Paisley isn't Glasgow

    nasty business and the little bugger deserves all he gets, same with his gf and her sister.

    However Paisley isn't Glasgow, it's close but a seperate place altogether with it's own university, catherdral , the lot.

  2. Matt

    15 years?

    is that all?

    so the guy forces his way into a seemingly innocent mans home, violently murders him and poses for photo's with a smile on his face (clearly he enjoyed the experience) and he gets 15 years?

    This is the kind of person we need to remove from the streets of Britain permanently, not for 15 years.

    We need to lock these Chavs up for life, and i mean life, this guy has nothing to contribute to society

    I'm astonished at this sentence.

    A lot of people have gone down for longer for less.

    No parris hilton thumb on here becuase it's just not funny at all anymore (hint hint)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    "At least 15 years"

    What's the betting that "at least 15 years" will mean... eight years? Ten years?

  4. Aram

    Widespread mental health issues

    There are far, far too many people like this: people with something clearly wrong upstairs, who have lost contact with reality (I know that he didn't plead diminished responsibility or similar). The UK as a whole needs better mental health provision.

    However, until the benefits of that improved provision trickle through, I agree with Matt, it doesn't really look like these three have anything to contribute to society as a whole.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    PATHETIC LEGAL SYSTEM

    Fucking Joke. They lock people up for 10-15 years for drugs offences (Which do not in the main, no matter how much they try to convince you, cause anything like the level of suffering that these inbred morons just have. And when people are hurt as a result of drug trading it is usually those directly involved and only due to the illegality of the trade in the first place (because the law of the jungle applies where there is no other applicable)! Oh dear *od how dumb are these people. Incidentally I would place a large bet on these morons NOT being stoned, but probably drunk at the time of the attack). PATHETIC SENTENCE, PATHETIC LAWS

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    He should be strung up

    This Country is really p!ssing me off, you here about stuff like this all the time it's about time they started hanging people again. I will be more than happy to string them up. Saves us tax payers money and puts the scum where they belong in Hell being pineappled by Hitler...

    And I think its about time they passed a Law in this Country that if you commit certain foul crimes you give up your human rights there fore you no longer get treated like a human. Love to see these people when they are marked men / women.

  7. Tony Barnes

    @ Matt

    The "at least 15 years" bit means he'll only come up for parole after 15 years (at the earliest), at which point he'll probably be told to keep on rotting.

    I'm guessing he'll do 30 odd for this, if not just be kept in for the duration.

    The girls got off very lightly IMO, sentences shouldn't of differed by more than a few years given the calculated nature of what they did.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, ffs

    "At least 15 years" means exactly what it says - he'll be in prison for 15 years before he's considered for parole. It doesn't mean he'll automatically be out in 15 years, but he certainly won't be out before then.

    You'd think the more fervent law and order enthusiasts would be aware of such things....

  9. g e

    He sure do got a purdy mouth....

    Even though 15 yrs is nothing like 'life' for a tearaway chavster like this clown he sho' goan get himself a shitload o' learnin' over the next 15 yrs....

    Bring back the stocks then everyone can kick the shit out of him in the street on a daily basis.

  10. captain kangaroo
    Boffin

    urgh...

    Murky business....

    It's hard to know what the sentence is supposed to represent, further than the apparent overcrowding of the prison service.

  11. David

    Released on licence

    Because it's a life sentence, if he's released at all it will be on licence - he can be hauled back into jail whenever they want.

  12. Charlie
    Stop

    RE: He should be strung up

    "This man should be killed because he is less than human"

    Hmm, where have I heard that before...

    Aside from the staggering arrogance you display by presuming that you can dictate what defines humanity, it's precisely this attitude of condoning violence and murder which fosters a culture of violent crime.

    Revenge is a worse motive than none at all.

  13. Ted Treen
    Pirate

    Yeah, right...

    At least 15 years - or until his cell is needed for some dangerous pensioner withholding part of his council tax.

    "Really dangerous" is reserved for those who question the power & authority of the Dear Leader's monolithic centralised state.

    Depraved violence against your fellow citizens is nowhere NEAR as unacceptable to NuLab.

  14. Chris Miller
    IT Angle

    It isn't about revenge

    It's about eliminating the possibility of these thugs being released and then doing the same thing all over again. They may well be mentally ill, but since we don't have any effective cure, the alternatives are to keep them locked up for the rest of their natural lives or putting them out of their misery. I favour the latter option on the grounds that it's both more humane and much cheaper.

    The main argument against the death penalty is that you may sometimes get the wrong person. But there are plenty of cases like this one where no-one can possibly be in any doubt that the guilty party is actually guilty.

    What was the IT angle again?

  15. Lozzyho
    Flame

    RE: He should be strung up

    Charlie, I agree totally with AC.

    The Ned (Scottish Chav) concerned is obviously INhuman. Note the difference from SUBhuman. You're implying something to do with the Nazis. The difference is this little shit quite obviously decided to ignore someone else's human rights FOR FUN, so why should we recognise him as human?

    I think, and hope, that more and more people in the UK are starting to come round to the realisation that the liberal values we supposedly hold so dear (if you listen to the BBC anyway) are ruining Britain.

    We need corporal and capital punishment back, and soon.

  16. phix8
    Flame

    'Revenge is a worse motive than none at all'?

    Sometimes people say things as if they're true... when they clearly ain't.

    So if a woman is stabbed by some guy who 'felt like it' and her husband kills the guy - you think the husband committed the worse crime?

    Hm.

    String them up. Oh and other people who said they should lose human rights is dead-on. Why do they benefit by rules they've chosen to ignore in others.

  17. Louis Cowan
    Pirate

    Alcatraz

    While we can't carry out the death sentence, as human beings we just can't, there's no reason why we can't just ship these idiots onto a big fenced-off island and leaving them to fend for themselves for the rest of their natural lives, is there? Like in that Ray Liotta classic "No Escape"

  18. David

    @ Ted Treen

    This is Scotland we're talking about - not some uncivilised country which imprisons people for not paying their Council Tax.

    And Labour don't have much to do with our criminal justice system these days.

  19. Stu
    Pirate

    Disgusting

    If there is anything to warrant the return of capital punishment, its this.

    If without a shadow of a doubt, a group were responsible for such a disgusting act of goodfellas style killing, ALL parties involved, including the mobile phone owner should go to the gas chamber in a slow and painful death, for even thinking it amusing and/or entertaining.

    Yes the mobile phone person too because if they could be present during an act and feel it okay to video/photograph the event out of boasting, they too have the very same risk factors associated with the killer himself, an accessory to murder if you will.

    These men and women will now be maintained in a prison from our own tax money and I for one would see them hang instead of pay to have such sewage scum 'rehabilitated'. We all know there is no real rehabilitation going on in the prison systems.

    @Aram - This isn't quite what you'd call a mental health issue, although its a factor, its a kind of social violence beyond anything you or I would think possible, a kind of group/social mental disease, some studies state its apparent in very low class and intelligence types with, dare I say it, animal like tendencies.

    There was a BBC documentary on recently with that idiot politician (cant remember his name) as he went across the US learning about capital punishment over there, and whilst those yankees sounded really callous in their justification of it all, they really did have a good point - why should hardened violent types get off with living in a prison as a burden to the state, or being put to death in a peaceful way?

    If your loved ones were killed, HONESTLY now, would you not want their killer put to death slowly and painfuly as perhaps the victim was?

    That separation is very apparent between the US and UK.

  20. Alan Paul

    @ Lozzyho

    "The difference is this little shit quite obviously decided to ignore someone else's human rights FOR FUN, so why should we recognise him as human?"

    Because if we don't, we, as a society, are really no better than he is. I'm amazed that you can write what you did above and yet you really can't see this.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @Aram

    WTF is increased mental care going to do? Maybe after a fortune is spent on him, we'll discover that his mother didn't love him as much as she'd loved his brother, but he will *still do what he did if out on the streets*. Hell, my mother didn't love me as much as she loved my brother, and I've never gone into a mall and blown a bunch of people away.

    Just like in Omaha NE, USA, where the shooter had some $250,000 spent on his mental care, and he still took an ak-47 and blew away a bunch of people. (Yes, I, too wonder WTF he was doing with a weapon like that in the house and available to an 18 yo kid -- I believe his daddy ought to be doing some hard time for that.) As a matter of fact, his parents ought to be doing time for the shitty way they raised him. If you don't give a shit about the mental health of your kids, then why should the government and world + dog pay for it? Now they're all upset, wringing their hands and not knowing what went wrong. I think that if you raise a monster, you ought to pay for your monster. Who is in a better position to know that this garbage is a danger to society? If I know that my kid is a dangerous maniac, I'll have him committed, and he can play in the rubber room.

    We don't want to rub this garbage out because we want revenge. We want a 100% effective way of keeping them from ever doing it again. If they're dead, problem over. Just think of the good that money would have done if not blown on a lost cause. Shit, I could use a quarter of a million -- too bad I've got to work for it.

  22. Lozzyho
    Flame

    @Alan Paul

    >> Because if we don't, we, as a society, are really no better than he is. I'm amazed that you can write what you did above and yet you really can't see this.

    Alan, that's an old argument and I understand it fully, but I just don't agree. It's not a case of right and wrong. It's a case of ridding the human race of the dangerous scum that this guy clearly is.

    You might not agree, but just because I don't share your liberal views doesn't make me wrong. Being human is more about having the right DNA.

  23. Sam

    Eye for an eye.

    "Because if we don't, we, as a society, are really no better than he is."

    That's something I could personally live with.

    Bring back eye-for-an-eye.

  24. Spleen

    Death penalty for murder, good idea

    You know what else is a good idea? Amputating people's hands for theft. After all, if there's a sufficient deterrent then no-one will do it, right? Never mind that if a crime already carries an extremely high probability of being caught, as murder does, it follows that people who commit such crimes are already too irrational (or sometimes desperate) to take into account the future cost of being caught and locked up when considering the decision "should I kill this guy y/n". So fiddling with the exact value of that future cost has exactly zero effect. With no effect on crime all you're left with is a state which has the power of life and death over individual citizens, something far more dangerous than one which, for example, legislates that every individual citizen must carry an identity card.

    Maybe if the death penalty necessitated everyone being issued with a biometric card including the measurement of the exact length of rope that would ensure a quick hanging for the carrier (10% of which data would, of course, be wrong, so the carrier could look forward to an agonising death by asphyxiation, or needing their head sewn back as part of the funeral arrangements), El Reg readers would be less keen on the government having that sort of power. Are El Reg readers powerless against government power when there's no IT angle? Maybe if Paris Hilton was in charge of every hanging? Help me out here. You're usually pretty sensible about what the government should and shouldn't be able to do, and quick to condemn spurious justifications based on fear - 'let us ritualistically kill people so we can protect you from chavs' is no different from 'carry this card so we can protect you from terrorists'. How can we help you stop being idiots over this?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    15 yrs?

    Hmmm he'll be 39 when he gets out. Honestly it doesn't seem like much punishment for stabbing someone 80 times and then defiling the corpse after celebrating the death with a photo

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I oppose the death penalty on purely practical grounds

    I don't give a shit is this toerag is burned alive while being anally raped by a herd of pigs but that won't convince me the death penalty can ever be properly implemented. When we had it political toadies and people the judges liked got off while ordinary folk were hanged in questionable circumstances. If we get it back it'll be the same.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Death Penalty

    In general I favor the death penalty, not for eye for an eye reasons, but for reasons of; if this person is a danger to society and cannot be rehabilitated, then they should be killed for the safety of others.

  28. Hollerith

    the good thing about cutting off hands and hanging people...

    ... is that it stops crime. The first time they hanged a man on Tyburn, murder stopped. The first time they branded a man for theft, not only did he stop stealing, but every other thief stopped, both in that generation and forevermore. Brilliant deterence!

    Oh, what, you mean that murder and theft and other crimes carried on, in the face of disablement, torture, transportation, and death sentences?

    Could that be the lesson of history?

    Hello?

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What planet are Judges on ?

    These Judges nowadays are simply on a different planet to most of us . 15 years for what he did is so low as to be a disgrace. I would say that 40 to 50 years would be suitable !! Really it is disgusting that this guy may get put in 15 years and still be only 35 and able to kill yet again. I just hope if he does kill again he targets the Judge to teach him how ridiculous his sentencing is.

  30. Chris Miller

    @Spleen

    Ignoring the pathetic straw man regarding amputation for theft, you argue that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to murder. I agree. The argument for the death penalty (in cases such as the one being discussed) is that it has a very low rate of recidivism and can be seen as a merciful alternative to simply locking people up and throwing away the key.

  31. Jacob Lipman
    Pirate

    @fellow reg readers

    "There was a BBC documentary on recently with that idiot politician (cant remember his name) as he went across the US learning about capital punishment over there, and whilst those yankees sounded really callous in their justification of it all, they really did have a good point - why should hardened violent types get off with living in a prison as a burden to the state, or being put to death in a peaceful way?"

    While that sounds fantastically logical on the face of it, in reality the death penalty costs a great deal more than a life sentence in the United States. Between the money poured into law enforcement and prosecutorial investigations, the decade or so spent in prison exhausting the numerous appeals required by law, the related costs of the appeals themselves, and finally the cost of the execution and related paraphenalia, it costs a right shitload of money to have the state kill a man. In the state of Nebraska, more convicted murderers have died in prison awaiting execution than have actually been executed. That being said, the state's sole mode of execution (the electric chair) has been declared unconstitutional on grounds of cruelty; state senators have stonewalled the introduction of a new means of execution, meaning that a death sentence in this state is simply a much more expensive life sentence.

    "Just like in Omaha NE, USA, where the shooter had some $250,000 spent on his mental care, and he still took an ak-47 and blew away a bunch of people. (Yes, I, too wonder WTF he was doing with a weapon like that in the house and available to an 18 yo kid -- I believe his daddy ought to be doing some hard time for that.)"

    I certainly wouldn't blame the father. In the U.S., anyone 18 years of age or older can purchase a rifle or shotgun, and ammunition for it. This includes any kind of military-style semi-automatic weapon. The weapon in question was a Romanian-made AK-47 style weapon, probably a WASR-10. Such can be had at a pawn shop or sporting goods store for between $350 and $600. To effect such a purchase, one must fill out a single piece of paperwork provided by the BATF which asks one's name and a few personal detail, and ascertains that you are legally allowed to purchase the weapon in question (are you buying it for yourself or for another? Are you a user of or addicted to any illegal drugs? Are you an illegal immigrant?). The dealer must then perform a quick background check, which entails calling an FBI-run information center and providing your personal details. This typically takes about five minutes.

    The purchase of a "long gun" firearm may be effected in most states with no waiting period and little hassle.

    The point of all that is, had the little bastard not stolen his father's gun, he might readily have obtained one by himself. Even though it is illegal to purchase a gun if you've been committed to a mental institution in the past (which he had), information-sharing is shitty enough in the US that by simply lying on the paperwork, he likely could have purchased a weapon.

    Sending his father to prison would do nobody any good whatsoever. It is notable that he selected a mall. In Nebraska, one can obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon in order to defend oneself. Yet there are certain places one cannot carry, even with the permit. This includes malls. It would seem to me that the city bears some portion of the responsibility; it seems logical that if a state does not allow you to defend yourself, it should be liable if you are killed violently.

    Back on the topic of the article itself, it takes more than a single moment of irrational anger to invade a man's home and stab him eighty-some-odd times. Capital punishment is expensive and irreversible, but modern technology has certainly provided us with some interesting new torture devices. He would seem to be a good candidate to help the state discover the long-term neurological effects of repeated high-voltage shocks. Perhaps a new twist on the old idea of the stocks could be fun. The shock-stocks, maybe; allow the passing public to press the button atop the stocks, resulting in a paroxysm of agony for the imprisoned murderer. It would certainly provide a powerful deterrent...

    The skull and crossbones, because it's a grim subject.

  32. J
    Coat

    IT?

    "What was the IT angle again?"

    There was a cell phone involved, that's clearly it!

    "Hell, my mother didn't love me as much as she loved my brother, and I've never gone into a mall and blown a bunch of people away."

    Now, AC, calm down... Let go of the knife, AC... Calm thoughts, now...

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Well, the ancients had a way

    It was called Blood Money - a scale of payments that would entitle the relatives of the victim recompense (or indeed the victim, if they were not killed). A life for a life should mean that the little shits should be serving the family, and then the state for the rest of their lives, not be served by the state in their own shared apartment with on-suite toilet and regular meals, education and hell, if they're young enough, free holidays and a new identity in another country. However, I think that in this case Trepanation and subsequent washing with 60% H2O2 should produce a lasting effect.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    "Because if we don't, we, as a society, are really no better than he is."

    Huh?

    That idiot killed for the sheer fun of it. Society would kill after careful consideration and in a non-messy to protect itself.

    Some societies/countries (you know who you are) are not against invading other countries to kill their soldiers and some hundred thousand civilians just because they might eventually some day think about throwing some rocks or whatever technology they have. Well, it is a war, technically it is not murder....

    Before someone throws a sissy fit, I am against death penalty *solely* because the government (any one) couldn't make it work quickly, efficiently, economically and in a just way.

  35. Spleen

    @Chris Miller

    Zero rate of recidivism also means zero chance of redress if they get it wrong. Which they do. All the time. More often if they have the death penalty, in fact, because dead men can't keep an appeals process going and provide evidence in their defence. Even if relatives/friends/campaigners pick up the baton, the incentive for the government to get it right the first time is still considerably reduced. The government cannot be trusted with that power.

    The argument that it's a merciful alternative to life imprisonment is absolute bollocks. If that's the justification then we should give them the choice, which to an extent they have already as it's not that difficult to commit suicide in prison.

    And the comparison of amputation with execution is not a straw man. They're based on identical assumptions that if you ratchet up the cost of being convicted of a crime to the extreme level of muitilation and death, you reduce recidivism and greatly increase the deterrent effect. That revulsion you feel towards the idea of amputation but not execution is purely cultural.

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