SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing Lord Arthurson made the following statement in court:

"Martyn Daniel Logan, on 21 September 2022 at Edinburgh High Court, on the second day of the float period of a dedicated floating diet of trial, pleas of guilty were tendered on your behalf, first to a charge of the attempted murder of a young woman, then aged 20, and, second, to a charge of the assault to severe injury, permanent disfigurement and danger of life of a young man, then aged 19.  These offences each occurred late in the evening of 6 March 2020 at a field and wooded area near an unclassified road between Ashkirk and Ettrick Valley.  Each involved very considerable and prolonged violence as you repeatedly used a knife to attack your victims.  The agreed narrative of this case which was read to the court when your pleas of guilty were tendered sounded like a script to a horror film. 

While under the influence of a cocktail of substances, and while in possession of a knife with a blade length of 11.5cm, you assaulted your male victim on a forest track or wooded area in darkness by jumping on his back and restraining him to the ground, thereafter repeatedly striking him on the body with a knife.  He ran back to a vehicle where your female victim had remained.  She got out of the car and you then lashed out at her, stabbing her repeatedly on the body, face and head with a knife.  After a struggle, the complainers got into the car in an attempt to drive away.  You then smashed the driver side window, took the keys from the ignition and repeatedly struck your female victim on the face with the knife.  The complainers got out of the car.  You got in and drove away.  The complainers ran in the opposite direction before jumping a fence and lying in the long grass.  You then returned to the locus, stopped the car and located the complainers.  You struggled with the male complainer, striking him on the head and body with a knife before again driving away.

Your victims proceeded to walk away from the locus.  The young woman collapsed on several occasions.  In due course they reached the home of a couple in Selkirk who were unknown to them, and collapsed in their hallway, covered in blood.  While waiting for an ambulance, your female victim was passing in and out of consciousness.  Both were taken by ambulance to Borders General Hospital. 

Your female victim was intubated and placed on a ventilator.  She was given a transfusion of two units of blood.  She had sustained multiple significant lacerations to her head and face.  Lacerations to her hands required plastic surgery.  Injuries to the ring and middle fingers of her left hand will cause her lifelong impairment in the form of loss of function.  She additionally sustained a full thickness stab wound to her head above her left eye, which wound fractured her eye socket.  This wound was a penetrative injury to her brain at the area of her temple which caused a significant haemorrhage on her brain.  This brain injury was life threatening.  The resultant scar tissue on her brain has caused her to suffer epileptic seizures.  She is at high risk of future seizures and will require treatment and medication for epilepsy for the rest of her life. All of these appalling injuries were inflicted by you during your murderous attack upon her.

Your male victim sustained multiple stab and slash wounds, namely two deep wounds to the back of the chest, a deep wound to the left shoulder at the joint and deep wounds to fingers.  He additionally sustained stab wounds to the head, lip, neck, elbow and wrist.  A CT scan has disclosed that a fragment of the knife used by you in your attack upon him was embedded and remains in his skull.  He required surgery and a blood transfusion.  His injuries will result in lifelong scarring and were life threatening.

You are now aged 32 and were at the time of this offending aged 29.  You come before the court for sentence for these horrific crimes of violence, against two young people whom you had barely met, as in effect a first offender, with one Justice of the Peace court conviction from 2017 on your record, in respect of which you were fined.  The criminal justice social work report and risk assessment prepared for today’s sentencing hearing records that you have three children and have a good employment history. The author states that you have a history of significant and extreme drug misuse. He advises that your likelihood of further offending is low. He reports that you claim to have been drug free for the last two years. If you were to return to drug misuse, this assessed likelihood would increase, in the author’s view. The author finally notes that the propensity on your part to cause serious harm is evident, but that serious harm would not seem imminent.

I have listened carefully to the submissions advanced this morning on your behalf by your senior counsel.  He has in particular submitted that these offences represented a single event which came from nowhere, with no discernible background but with the explanation available of your chaotic thinking related to your reliance at that time on controlled substances and in particular steroids. Your senior counsel has further submitted that your acceptance of responsibility in your guilty pleas has had an appreciable utilitarian value and that the risk of repetition of such conduct by you is low.

I turn now to disposal. Standing the gravity of your crimes in this case, involving as it does a single but sustained episode of extreme instrumental violence by you upon two young people who were effectively strangers to you, occasioning catastrophic consequences to them, in quite horrendous circumstances, the only appropriate disposal requires on any view to be a very substantial custodial one.  

I accordingly propose today imposing upon you in respect of charges 3 and 4 on this indictment, on an in cumulo basis, taking into account the sentencing principle of totality, a sentence of 12 years imprisonment, reduced from a period of 13 years due to the tendering and timing of your guilty pleas. This disposal will be backdated to 21 September 2022, being the date of your conviction and initial remand into custody in this case."

19 October 2022