LOL! Judge has last laugh as he jails bragging thug

A JUDGE has mocked a thug – who had previously boasted on Facebook about avoiding prison – by saying ‘LOL’ as he jailed him.

David Newlands, 24, had been given 150 hours’ community service for attacking a vulnerable man.

But he refused to undertake his sentence. He was then handed another chance by Judge Norman Ritchie to carry out the punishment, and again failed to do so.

Newlands even boasted about avoiding jail, writing on Facebook: ‘I’m out bro, easy’. He also said he had told justices to ‘stick it [the community order] up their pipe’ and still walked free. However, when he came back to Judge Ritchie this week at the High Court in Glasgow, he was jailed for nine months. And in a parody of Newlands’s Facebook posts, the judge told him: ‘It’s always interesting to see a different view on sentencing as in “I’m out bro, easy”... As they say, LOL.’

‘LOL’ is a social media term which stands for ‘laugh out loud’. The judge added: ‘I gave you two chances, you didn’t take them.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m doing this out of anger. In truth it enlivened what was other- wise a dull day.’ He ordered Newlands, who is already serving eight months for assault and breach of the peace, to serve another nine months at the end of his current sentence.

For this latest charge Newlands had admitted chasing Ivor Miller, 27, along two streets in Glasgow city centre last December. Mr Miller tried to hide in two pubs before he fled into a derelict flat and jumped from a secondfloor window, suffering severe injuries.