High Court upholds on appeal 18.5-year punishment part given to under-25 for revenge knife murder

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2026] HCJAC 14
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary
• Judge:
  Lord Beckett

Brandon McLachlan argued that 18 years and 6 months, reduced from 21 years for his guilty plea, was an excessive length for the punishment part for a crime committed when he was 21 years old. The offence was aggravated by having been committed while the appellant was on bail in relation to solemn proceedings for assault to severe injury and possession of a knife.

The appeal was heard by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Beckett, with Lord Matthews and Lord Armstrong. The appellant was represented by Lenehan KC and McMillan, advocate, and the Crown by Frain-Bell KC, advocate depute.

Revenge with a knife

On the evening of 21 December 2024, the appellant was removed from a nightclub in Airdrie for being involved in an altercation with other patrons. Shortly afterwards the deceased, Jamie Lucas, and his partner Lynsay Goldie left the club to smoke. Despite not knowing each other, the men confronted one another, and Mr Lucas struck the appellant with his head after complaining he was “in his face”. Afterwards, the appellant was heard saying that he would go and get a knife and stab Mr Lucas in the neck.

When Mr Lucas left the club at 2:34am, around 15 minutes after the appellant left the area, the appellant returned and stabbed him repeatedly on the left side of his body. When he was intercepted by the police nearby, he said on arrest that he had gone home to get the knife and stab Mr Lucas with it. Ms Goldie witnessed the whole events leading to Mr Lucas’ death, and in a statement the mother of Mr Lucas’ 10-year-old son described how he had become isolated, depressed, and developed survivor’s guilty as a consequence of his father’s death.

In his sentencing remarks, the judge stated that he did not consider the appellant to have acted instinctively but to have plotted revenge with a knife for a minor assault. He also considered the occurrence of the fatal assault in the presence of Ms Goldie to be a materially aggravating circumstance. The case of Donnelly v HM Advocate (2017), in which a 23-year-old man was given a punishment part of 20 years for a spontaneous knife murder, was noted for its similarity, albeit Mr Donnelly had three significant previous convictions, but his offence was not aggravated as the appellant’s was by bail.

For the appellant it was submitted that the judge had made little or no allowance for his age or enhanced prospects of rehabilitation. The attack on the appellant, while separated by time, would otherwise have reduced the crime to culpable homicide. Additionally, no decision had been taken to call for a social work report, which deprived the judge of sufficient information about the appellant’s capacity for change.

Highest level of harm

Delivering the opinion of the court, Lord Beckett rejected the appellant’s proposition regarding the earlier headbutt, saying: “The infliction of four wounds with a knife, including one penetrating the heart and another the lung, was grossly disproportionate to the deceased head-butting the appellant and would have excluded provocation even if the appellant had retaliated instantly with a knife.”

He added on the severity of the offence: “In determining the gravity of this crime, the correct approach according to the Sentencing Process guideline was first to determine culpability and harm. Any case of murder involves the highest level of harm. In this case, the judge had information from the family of the deceased about the considerable impact on them, not least on the deceased’s young son, who is left without a father. As the judge noted, it was perpetrated in the presence of the appellant’s partner. The judge properly identified this as a serious feature.”

Considering the impact of the appellant’s relative youth, Lord Beckett said: “The judge sought to make an individualised assessment of the appellant’s culpability. That is the correct approach under the Sentencing Young People guideline. It provides, at para 12, that ‘the court should not rely solely on age when determining the maturity of a young person’, prompting this court to observe, in Huynh v HM Advocate (2026) [that] the Sentencing Young People guideline does not suggest an abstract approach to an offender’s culpability on account of age, it proposes that the court considers the individual involved and should not just focus on age.”

He concluded: “The appellant requires to persuade us that there has been a miscarriage of justice by virtue of the sentence imposed being excessive. Not all judges would have started from 21 years, but that is not the test. In the whole circumstances, whilst we consider the sentence imposed to have been severe, this was a case where a severe sentence was called for, even for a relatively young offender. For the foregoing reasons, we are not persuaded that the punishment part was excessive.”

Having identified no miscarriage of justice, the court refused the appeal.