A chef who stamped on his own dad leaving him with multiple fractures and a shoeprint on his face is to appeal his jail term.
Lawyers acting for 25-year-old Joseph Mearns will today argue that he could have been placed on a community order rather than being sent to prison – believing that his three years and four months sentence was “excessive”.
Dundee Sheriff Court previously heard that Mearns, of Hilltown, attacked his dad Frank after a boozy night out in the city centre.
In the early hours of the morning, they ended up at a block of flats where Joseph Mearns was staying.
A friend of Mearns heard a “commotion” in a close and found him standing over his “unresponsive” father while beating him.
Sheriff Alistair Brown said: “You subjected your father to a dreadful attack and did enormous damage.
“Stamping on somebody’s head is one of the most serious forms of assault that there is.
“I have known it to kill, I have known it to cause serious brain injury. The information I have is that you had a difficult relationship with your father and you found him annoying. I assume in your favour that is true but that goes nowhere towards persuading me that I should step away from the only obvious appropriate sentence, which is a substantial custodial one.”
Medics later found a shoeprint on the victim’s face and multiple fractures to his nose and eye sockets.
Fiscal depute Nicola Gillespie said: “The accused was found punching his father repeatedly to the face and head.
“His friend pulled the accused off and managed to get him inside, where he stated ‘don’t stop me’.
“The complainer was still lying on the ground and was unresponsive with blood on his face and on the ground around him. The accused was later interviewed and admitted punching, kicking and stamping on his father’s head.
“He accepted he was filled with rage and said his father had ‘kept going on about family stuff’.”
Solicitor Larry Flynn outlined the terms of his appeal at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, saying: “It is essentially a two-pronged appeal where we believe it could have been dealt with in a non-custodial manner and the sentence that was passed down was excessive.”
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