By Graham Brown

APPEAL COURT judges have thrown out a brutal Angus murderer’s bid to have his life sentence cut.

Callous killer Adam Gallagher will remain behind bars until at least 2021 after yesterday failing in his attempt to have his sentence for the unprovoked stabbing of a Czech fruitpicker reduced at the High Court in Edinburgh.

In April 2006, baby-faced Gallagher was told he must serve at least 15 years before being considered for parole after a jury at the High Court in Perth found him guilty of the murder of migrant worker Marek Smrs in Arbroath the previous summer.

Sentencing judge Lord Wheatley told the young heroin addict his actions on the fateful night—when Gallagher plunged a steak knife through the heart of his 21-year-old victim—were a “dreadful and wholly unjustified assault on an entirely innocent person.”

At the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Lords Kingarth and Philip rejected Gallagher’s appeal against the punishment part of his sentence, consigning the 20-year-old to at least another 13 years behind bars.

Just 18 at the time of a murderous act which shocked and sickened the Angus town and the wider community, Gallagher had endured what his defence counsel described as a young life plagued by behavioural and psychological difficulties.

Gallagher had barely celebrated the milestone birthday when he brutally cut short the life of Mr Smrs, a former waiter from Brno in the Czech Republic, who had arrived in Scotland only weeks earlier to follow his dream of a new start.

The migrant worker had been out drinking in Arbroath and fell asleep on grass near the harbour on the night of July 18, 2005, where he was discovered by Gallagher and his then girlfriend.

The pair stole the man’s wallet and walked away but when Mr Smrs woke up and realised what had happened he followed the couple, begging them to hand over his belongings, which included his passport.

Gallagher responded by drawing the blade and thrusting it into his victim’s heart, running off and leaving Mr Smrs to bleed to death in the street from an attack medical experts said he would not have survived.

Gallagher denied murder, a plea that was rejected by a jury who returned a majority guilty verdict at the High Court in Perth after a six-day trial in March, 2006.

Members of Mr Smrs’ family journeyed from Brno to Tayside to hear the original sentence handed down to Gallagher.

“You went out that night armed with a knife. Your victim was very drunk and wholly defenceless,” Lord Wheatley told Gallagher.