Broken PlayStation murderer gets four years
The High Court of Edinburgh, Scotland, has sentenced Alan Stirling to four years in prison for "culpable homicide" in the murder of a man who potentially broke his "computer" or "PlayStation" depending on who's talking. The BBC headline says PlayStation, the judge says PlayStation, but the reporter calls it a computer. So we're not sure if this is one of those cases where the brand name is tossed around to mean any console, like photocopies are Xerox and tissues are Kleenex.Anyway, after a night of "drink and drugs" with friends at Stirling's apartment he awoke at 5 AM to the sound of one of his friends having knocked over the television, which apparently had the console on or near it. Stirling then repeatedly "punched and kicked" the man. He found the gentleman later in the lobby and attempted to help him, but it was too late. In this case, the BBC's headline of "Man kills friend over PlayStation" is just a tad misleading.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NeverSage @ Mar 24th 2007 3:06PM
It's not misleading! It's sensational!
generaldane @ Mar 24th 2007 3:30PM
he will be out in time for the ps4
jay @ Mar 24th 2007 3:40PM
Yet again drugs are mentioned in a murder. And people say they're not bad, I don't know how well known the story is outside the UK but some kid was recently jailed for basically ripping his friends head off with a knife and stabbing another friend as he was basically mental off Cannabis.
The PS murderer guy is a just another scab who'll hopefully fall off into non-existence along with the other tossers of the world.
vidGuy @ Mar 24th 2007 3:49PM
There's going to be a PS4???
J @ Mar 24th 2007 3:49PM
Some people are not meant to ingest certain chemicals. I knew a kid that would act nuts every time he smoked pot. He was exactly the kind of person who couldn't handle being stoned. But these people usually have a serious chemical imbalance in the first place and you find evidence of this even when they are not on drugs.
Probot @ Mar 24th 2007 3:54PM
"Yet again drugs are mentioned in a murder. And people say they're not bad, I don't know how well known the story is outside the UK but some kid was recently jailed for basically ripping his friends head off with a knife and stabbing another friend as he was basically mental off Cannabis."
Yeah, it's a good thing the legal stuff, like alcohol, never causes people to be violent.
Joshua @ Mar 24th 2007 3:54PM
And he's going to be back on the streets by 2011. Murderers that kill intentionally don't deserve to ever be included in society again. Either lock them up, or something else...
chuma @ Mar 24th 2007 4:03PM
4 years for murder??? That really is a joke.
vidGuy @ Mar 24th 2007 4:07PM
Um, he didn't get convicted of murder. The held him under culpable homicide, which if I understand it correctly is the rough equivalent of manslaughter in the US.
MANY people get convicted of manslaughter and only spend a few years behind bars. Hell, I just found out the other day that Don King was once convicted of manslaughter.
AirIntake @ Mar 24th 2007 4:09PM
Pot doesn't cause people to go crazy. Crazy people just might get crazier when on pot.
vidGuy @ Mar 24th 2007 4:11PM
BTW, Don King spent just under four years in prison for his manslaughter conviction.
NoHitHair @ Mar 24th 2007 4:38PM
Probot:
Well said.
silence @ Mar 24th 2007 4:39PM
JAY SAID:
"Yet again drugs are mentioned in a murder. And people say they're not bad, I don't know how well known the story is outside the UK but some kid was recently jailed for basically ripping his friends head off with a knife and stabbing another friend as he was basically mental off Cannabis"
I SAY: How about JUST mental you douche bag. I smoke weed all the time and have never thought about cutting peoples heads off. Your no better then the idiots who blames games for violence. I find it hard to believe that games or weed would cause a "normal" person to do that kind of thing. I would bet pretty much anything that these people were already crazy... Simple minded sheep...
js @ Mar 24th 2007 4:49PM
Silence: Pot may do very little to make someone violent, but drugs, legal and illegal, directly change the chemistry of your brain. To say their influence over people is as vague and intangible as the effect of violent games is silly. You're comparing hard and soft sciences.
driven2sin @ Mar 24th 2007 5:04PM
Then why don't you ban all the legal opiates everywhere in the forms of vicodin, percs etc.
Then go after Zoloft which turns women into vampires
and of course cigs and alcohol don't affect you at all
Alec @ Mar 24th 2007 5:23PM
LOL!
Steve @ Mar 24th 2007 5:41PM
4 years for murder? Why not 4 months or 4 weeks? Why not smack him on his widdle hand and tell him he can't have any chocolate chip cookies until he apologizes? The UK bans guns and then fails to punish those who commit the most heinous of crimes. If a government is going to ban a perfectly sensible form of self-defense that that government ought to take the job of protecting its citizens seriously.
Imagine all those people out there who are tied to another individual that they absolutely despise. This ruling basically tells them that they can trade in a lifetime of mild misery for a 4 year prison sentence. I know some divorced people who'd gladly trade their ex's life for 4 years of prison!
Steve @ Mar 24th 2007 5:48PM
Probot,
The fact that alcohol is legal method of affecting your mental state does not disprove Jay's point.
Matt @ Mar 24th 2007 5:48PM
"3. Yet again drugs are mentioned in a murder. And people say they're not bad, I don't know how well known the story is outside the UK but some kid was recently jailed for basically ripping his friends head off with a knife and stabbing another friend as he was basically mental off Cannabis."
That guy was schizophrenic...you forgot to mention that buddy.
vidGuy @ Mar 24th 2007 5:52PM
"This ruling basically tells them that they can trade in a lifetime of mild misery for a 4 year prison sentence."
Hmmm, I guess people don't understand how manslaughter differs from murder. This ruling absolutely, positively does not say anything of the sort.
It's funny to me how Alex rags on the BBC for being misleading when the headline "murderer gets four years" is just as misleading.
sotik @ Mar 24th 2007 6:02PM
@ #3
I am sorry to say this but your statement is as stupid as stupid can get. You hope he falls off into nothingness for what he did? He got pissed at a friend, beat him up and then that was it, the day AFTER they were doing drugs or did you not read the full post?
He found his friend later and tried to help him. You call this cold blooded murder? You are a retard if you think that. He has anger problems probably had NOTHING to do with the drugs since he had just woke up the next day when he heard what happen.
Its stuck up people like you that need to fall into nothingness.
Ace @ Mar 24th 2007 6:16PM
Legalizing everything would stop gang violence to a very large degree and lower the demand as well as preventing poisonings due to bad cuts, etc. Look at prostitution in Nevada, once legitimized the industry became much safer, the girls are not abused, condom use is mandatory, STD prevalence is almost nil (not one girl has tested positive for HIV in the 10 or so years its been legal) nothing but good things have come from it. Vague notions of "morality" do nothing but harm people in a nation.
jay @ Mar 24th 2007 6:23PM
Uh oh the smack heads are out.
I'd argue some more about friends and family members who were level headed and stable before go crazy on drugs but let's not.
Mustn't be the precious drugs. They're totally harmless. Infact I say the pot and alcohol actually STOPPED the guy from commiting even more murders that day.
Alcohol is just as bad. My friends brother died in an alcohol related death. *shrugs*
theGreenGrunt @ Mar 24th 2007 6:30PM
#4 wins the thread.
vidGuy @ Mar 24th 2007 6:30PM
@Ace,
I agree with you about legalizing some drugs. For example, I would be pro legalization of marijuana because weed drug offenses account for such a large percentage of criminal justice resources (police-patrol, prison-space, court-time, etc). And things could be safer because they could be regulated.
But I'll have to disagree with you on that point that legalization would lower demand. In fact, I think demand would sky-rocket. Even with large taxes imposed on legalized drugs, the price would certainly be lower than street prices are. And lower prices mean higher demand. Plus, how many people don't dabble in drugs only BECAUSE they are illegal? You'd see a ton of people come out of the woodwork if some drugs were legalized, therefore also increasing demand.
Of course, an increased demand means more tax revenue. Honestly, I see personal possession becoming legalized at some point... it just makes too much sense to not do it.
Hammer @ Mar 24th 2007 6:33PM
To correct an easy mistake, it's the Scottish High Court in Edinburgh.
The High Court is the highest level of court in Scotland and can only be overridden by a ruling of the House of Lords. It sits in which ever area of Scotland is most appriporate for the hearing, so the correct wording in the opening paragraph should have been:
The Scottish High Court, sitting in Edinburgh..."
Nessuno @ Mar 24th 2007 6:40PM
"Manslaughter" in the US is a conviction for a negligent or reckless (depending on the jurisdiction) disregard for human life. The importance here is that there would be no intent to cause the kind of damage that would cause death.
Under no circumstances would a deliberate beating qualify as manslaughter. The closest situation I can think of would be someone who kills another person in a true fist fight, but it would have to be an actual two-way fight, not a beating.
If this was in the US this would almost definitely have been 2nd degree murder, and he DEFINITELY would have received more than 4 years, no matter what the charge. 4 years is an insult to the victim, his friends and family, and the entire concept of justice.
xbox fan @ Mar 24th 2007 7:40PM
What the hell!! What a sick freak. Who would murder someone over a Playstation 3. Maybe if it were an Xbox 360 or Wii I could see the point... but a PS3?? Nevermind, you should never murder anyone. Don't be stupid kids.
linkreincarnate @ Mar 24th 2007 8:05PM
Weed is less harmful than alcohol. This has been scientifically proven by a group of scientists hired by the us government to prove that pot was bad for you. As for the kid who acted nuts... He was probably just starved for attention...
Ace @ Mar 24th 2007 8:55PM
Doubt it. In life there are people that say "I'm gonna try heroin" and those that dont. If you are one of those that wants to do it, you will find a way. The only difference is that you may die because it could be cut with arsenic.
Additionally, people are already supplementing their want/need of drugs with legal prescription alternatives like Vicodin, Norco, Percocet, OxyContin, Prozac, Xanax, Ambien, and a whole host of other drugs that cost 200 bucks a bottle supply. The only difference is who is getting rich in this situation, namely pharmaceutical companies.
Mark @ Mar 24th 2007 9:30PM
THIS IS SECOND DEGREE MURDER. PLEASE, 4 years?? He beat a boy to death in anger, how is it not murder? The law is f'd up. It's rigged, I just heard some black kid got 7 for assaulting a hall monitor out of anger. Yet the hall monitor didnt die and wasnt injured seriously. Yet some fool in Europe beats someone to death and gets 4? So If I was in a club in Scotland and someone stepped on my sneakers Im guessing it would be fine to beat them to a pulp in anger and if they died I'd only have to do 4.pshh
Tom @ Mar 24th 2007 9:41PM
Ok, so we went from video games to murder to legalizing pot to prostitution to pharmaceutical price gouging. That’s just great.
By the way, if you start a sentence with "I smoke weed all the time and..." it doesn't matter what you have to say. You're a pothead!
Shibathedog @ Mar 24th 2007 11:34PM
To the guy who mentioned drugs being bad (#3):
While i agree with you that for the most part drugs are bad (Things like Special K, Crystal Meth, Cocaine, Heroine, fucking BAD ideas) You have to remember that 9 times out of 10, They are used as an excuse, and the same goes for alcohol. And i especially think this is the case for what you mentioned.
There is no way on earth, absolutely no way, you could ever get high enough off cannabis to do something like that, and not know what you are doing. If it was something a little bit more insane (like one of the drugs i mentioned), maybe, but not cannabis.
It's just people saying, Oh i was high i didn't mean to/didn't know what i was doing. The same way people say that when they are drunk
CJ @ Mar 25th 2007 9:39AM
Ive used a few drugs like weed, acid, ecstasy before. As good as drugs may make you feel, there is no way I will believe now that they should be legalized. In fact, cigs and alcohol are to widely used and I dont care if you say it is your legal right to do so, it still should be illegal. We know for a fact cigarettes are highly addictive and will lead to cancer. We know alcohol destroys your liver, is abused daily, can cause people to do very stupid, dangerous, and even fatal things to themselves and others, and along with that, thousands every year are killed by drunk drivers.
As far as regular illegal drugs, they usually lead to more harmful drugs, dependency, overdose, death, change of mental state that can cause you do do harm to others, ect. Are these all not reasons enough to make a drastic change in laws today? Is our consumption of alcohol that imperative and necessary? The facts show that these drugs do more harm than good. In my own opinion, we are overdue on changing laws on what is legal and what isnt. Even if we keep alcohol legal for instance, there needs to be something done to restrict its use at the very least. The lives that were taken and will be taken should be enough reasons to support this. You or your loved ones could not be here tomorrow because of alcohol or other drugs. Or maybe something already happened to someone you know or care for. Look I have enjoyed drinking and partying before, but in the end its not worth it. We may think its our right, but I think that right has been taken for granted too many times, by too many people. I dont see why it would be so hard to sacrifice this "right" in order to save lives. If it is that difficult for you, than maybe you have a problem and should seek help.
Ok done now. Oh and I must say I am happy to see Sony and the PS3 underachieve. I hope this continues.
Jose Goldar @ Mar 25th 2007 1:47PM
Just taking drugs isn't the problem. The problem is the overuse of drugs. Alcohol in moderation is considered good for your health. Tobacco smokers suffer less nausea from anesthesia after surgery. And marijuana is used medicinally to relieve pain and nausea. But drinking too much can kill you, smoking too much will kill you, and smoking too much bud can give you a case of munchies so bad you eat too much