SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Arthurson told Leishman:

"Alan Robert David Leishman, you have this morning been convicted on your own plea, under section 76 procedure, of the grievous crime of culpable homicide.  You were on a bail order at the time of this crime.

Your victim was Mr Ross Adams, a 36 year old man who was so fortunate as to come from a large, close and loving extended family.  In particular, in death he leaves behind his young daughter, his parents and his five siblings.  He was, however, so unfortunate as to encounter you on the evening of 5 September 2023 in the living room of a flat at 18 Anderson Park Road, Denny, when you stabbed him with a large knife in his upper left thigh, inflicting a very deep wound.  

Police, paramedics and a special operations team attended the scene. Mr Adams was unconscious. No blood pressure reading was detectable. His Glasgow Coma Scale reading was 3. Defibrillator pads were deployed. CPR required to be facilitated through an automated device. After 30 minutes of CPR  a pulse was detected. The gravity of Mr Adams’ condition, caused of course by the severity of the injury occasioned by your knife attack, required him to be transported to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital under police escort, where he was admitted to intensive care following surgery, remaining critically ill thereafter in an induced coma.  As a result of his blood loss and resulting cardiac arrest Mr Adams sustained multi-organ failure. In particular, Mr Adams had suffered ischaemic bowel, kidney and hypoxic brain injury. Following several days of brain stem tests being undertaken, Mr Adams’ life was pronounced extinct and artificial life support was withdrawn on 10 September 2023, all in the presence of his family.

You are now aged 30.  You were aged 29 at the time of this offence.  You have accrued to date nine groups of summary-level convictions in Scotland, one of those involving the use of weapons by you, and you have in addition one English conviction.  You have served seven custodial sentences.

I have listened with care to the submissions advanced this morning on your behalf by senior counsel, and propose to take into account all that has been said.  In particular I note the submissions made by senior counsel regarding the timing and utility of your early plea; the lack of prior animus between you and Mr Adams; senior counsel’s observations on the particular context of the offence, insofar as ascertainable ; and your expressed remorse.

In the whole and particular circumstances of this case I have taken the view that the level of culpability involved in the index offence can be properly located towards the higher end of crimes of this nature.  You used a large bladed weapon to inflict a very deep wound upon a vulnerable area of the body of your victim.  As you put matters yourself to police officers, you “put a big blade in his leg”, or, disturbingly reflective of your attitude after the attack, you “cut him up like a fish”. The Crown has elected to accept your plea of guilty to the crime of culpable homicide, and I will of course sentence you on that basis, but make no mistake, given the nature of the instrumental violence engaged in by you towards your victim, I regard the gravity of your criminal conduct as meriting a very high headline custodial tariff disposal indeed.

You will accordingly serve on this indictment a period of imprisonment of 10 years, discounted due to the timing and utility of your plea from a period of 14 years, with 6 months of that latter period being attributable to the bail aggravation libelled. This sentence will be backdated to 7 September 2023, being the date of your initial remand into custody in this case."

23 May 2024