The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
‘Heartbreak’ for Paige family
Justice: Davidson calls for whole-life sentences
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has told how her “heart breaks” for the family of murdered schoolgirl Paige Doherty after her killer had his sentence cut by four years.
John Leathem was given a mandatory life sentence and ordered to spend at least 27 years behind bars for the frenzied knife attack on the 15-year-old.
Leathem admitted killing the teenager after she came into his deli-shop in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, in March 2016.
Last week, less than a year after Paige’s death, judges at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh quashed the original punishment and imposed a 23-year minimum sentence.
The decision prompted Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson to call for whole-life sentences to be introduced north of the border. She challenged Ms Sturgeon on the issue at first minister’s questions at Holyrood, saying if the Scottish Government did not act her party would bring forward a members’ bill to try to make the change.
Ms Davidson said: “As it stands, our judges do not have the tool of a whole-life tariff at their disposal and we say that we should.
“We can sit in this Parliament and we can wring our hands and we can express outrage every time something like this happens, or we can do something about it.
“I want to do something about it.”
She pledged: “If the Scottish Government won’t act, then I can say the Scottish Conservatives will do so by pushing ahead with a member’s bill making the case for the introduction of whole-life sentencing in Scotland. We need to stand up for families who see sentences for murder cut less than a year after they have been handed down and we should change the law so that families like Paige Doherty’s feel that the law is tipping back in their favour and that the worst criminals are kept off our streets forever.”
Ms Sturgeon said her government would “reflect further” on the issue “about what further changes we might think appropriate”.
The first minister said: “My heart breaks for the family of Paige Doherty.
“I met Paige’s mother last year and there literally are no words to express the pain and grief that she and the rest of her family have gone through.”
She said she had “no difficulty” understanding comments made by the Justice for Paige campaign group, who branded the reduction in Leathem’s sentence as “heartbreaking”, arguing that it “serves no justice to Paige and her family”.
Ms Sturgeon said: “If I had been a relative of Paige Doherty, I would have felt exactly the same.”
She added: “As well as being first minister, I’m also a human being and there are many occasions when I look at decisions of courts and wish that different decisions had been reached. It may well be this is one such case.”