A sword attacker from Dundee made obscene gestures on camera after appeal judges refused to cut his prison sentence.
Derek Alland was viewing proceedings at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh by a TV link to prison when he was told that his sentence appeal was rejected.
Alland, 29, reacted by making the hand gestures following the failed legal bid.
The violent intruder was jailed for more than six years in December for attacking Lee Gray in his own home in Dundee.
Alland, drunk and wearing only one shoe, hit his victim over the head with a glass bottle and knocked him to the floor, before repeatedly punching and stamping on him.
He then grabbed an ornamental sword and struck him with the weapon during the attack at a flat in Hilltown Court on February 15 last year.
He was on five bail orders at the time.
Drunken attack sentences
The sentencing judge told him at the High Court in Edinburgh: “It must have been a terrifying experience for your victim, as well as his partner who was in the flat at the time.”
Lady Poole told Alland that he would have faced a nine-year jail term for the assault on Mr Gray, but for his early guilty plea.
Alland, a prisoner, admitted assaulting Mr Gray to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of life.
He was also ordered to be under supervision for a further three year period when he will be under licence and can be returned to jail if he breaches its conditions.
Less than two weeks later he was given a further year behind bars at sheriff court level for battering his friend in a drunken attack in October 2020.
After Sheriff Paul Brown sentenced him at Dundee Sheriff Court, Alland replied: “Thanks very much Sheriff Brown. Is that all?”
Drunk, with one shoe
Lawyers acting for Alland challenged the sentence imposed on him for the assault, arguing the headline sentence of nine years selected by Lady Poole was “excessive”.
Solicitor advocate Ann Ogg, for Alland, told the appeal judges it was not a premeditated attack and the danger to life was potential rather than actual.
She said: “The appellant was drunk.
“He had fallen out with his partner.
“In fact, he was wandering about with one shoe on.”
She said Alland had “a very difficult background” and a history of foster care as a child.
Lord Doherty, who heard the appeal with Lord Boyd of Duncansby, said in rejecting the sentence challenge: “This was a nasty and frightening attack on the complainer, who was unknown to him, in his own home.”
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