HEAD CHOP KILLER WINS JAIL APPEAL
A double killer who beheaded and dismembered his victim has had his minimum jail term slashed by four years.
David Collins was jailed for life and ordered to serve at least 26 years after murdering Kevin Bishop in a machete attack and severing his limbs and head in a bid to conceal the crime.
But lawyers acting for Collins, 47, appealed against the minimum period – known as a punishment part – that he has to spend in jail before he can apply for parole.
Judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh yesterday ruled his punishment part should be fixed at 22 years.
Keith Stewart QC, for Collins, told appeal judges he recognised “the extreme gravity” of the crimes he had committed.
He said:“He has, moreover, a significant criminal history, including a conviction for culpable homicide.”
He said it was acknowledged that the trial judge was bound to select a significant punishment part, but argued that in the light of similar cases the sentence was excessive.
During his trial at the High Court in Glasgow Collins, who previously killed his father, also David, with a sword, denied murdering Mr Bishop, 32, at his home in Schaw Road, Paisley, in July last year.
But a jury rejected his self defence and provocation claims and convicted him of the crime.
Trial judge, Lady Rae, told Collins that he had gone to“elaborate lengths”to destroy evidence that might have implicated him in what appeared to be“a motiveless killing”.
The victim’s torso was found dumped in a wheelie bin outside the flat.
The Lord Justice
Clerk, Lady Dorrian, who heard the sentence appeal with Lord Menzies and Lord Turnbull, said Collins did have a significant criminal record, including five years’imprisonment for culpable homicide.
She said that following the decision in the case of Robert Chalmers they would make the punishment 22 years.
Chalmers, then 59, was jailed for life in 2011 and ordered to serve a minimum term of 23 years for the murder of Samantha Wright.
Chalmers was convicted of murdering her and hiding her remains at his Edinburgh home in June 2008.
Miss Wright, from Hertfordshire, was reported missing in January the following year on what would have been her 25th birthday.
It was second time that Chalmers had committed murder. He previously fatally attacked William White, 47, and stabbed him at his home in Beech Road, Johnstone, in 1973.