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Brutal attack not sadistic - judge
HE told them he loved them as they rained down kicks and punches on his body, but Brent's three killers still didn't stop.
The attack began when Brent's assailants bet each other 5 that they could knock him down with one punch.
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The brutal and prolonged attack then continued across three estates before the 23-year-old was left slumped up against a car in a pool of blood.
He died in hospital three days later, his mother Brenda cradling him in her arms.
William Hughes, 22, Marcus Miller, 17, and Stephen Bonallie, 18 were all given life sentences at Newcastle Crown Court in February.
Sentencing them, Judge John Milford QC said the three had attacked Brent for sport, describing the murder as pure sadism.
Britian's top judge, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, yesterday described the attack as a "pack of hounds on a fox" at the Court of Appeal yesterday.
But the killers' legal teams attacked the minimum jail terms handed out as "manifestly excessive".
Mr Justice Goldring – sitting with Lord Phillips and Mr Justice Plender in – said the youths had taken advantage of Martin for many years before his death. But he said he accepted the arguments that the sentencing judge had wrongly categorised Martin's murder as "sadistic", concluding that it did not fulfil the strict legal criteria for that.
The judge said Brent had been the victim of "gratuitous gang violence directed at a vulnerable person", but he cut Miller's minimum term from 15 to 13 years, Hughes's from 22 to 19 years, and Bonallie's from 18 to 15 years.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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