THE two young men who murdered the black teenager Anthony Walker were told by a judge yesterday that they were guilty of “poisonous racist thuggery” as he sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Paul Taylor, 20, and Michael Barton, 17, the white racists who hunted down the A-level student and left an ice axe embedded in his skull, will have to stay in jail for a period longer than they have already lived.

Mr Justice Leveson, at Preston Crown Court sitting in Liverpool, sentenced Taylor, who admitted wielding the murder weapon, to serve at least 24 years. He will be 44 before he can be considered for release.

The judge also ordered that the ice axe, stolen in a raid on a mountaineerng shop in Snowdonia, should be destroyed.

Barton, who was found guilty of murder by a jury on Wednesday after a two-week trial, was sentenced to serve 18 years. He will be 35 before his case can go before a parole board.

Both men remained expressionless as the judge told them that it was his duty to pass deterrent sentences in spite of their youth.

Mr Walker, 18, a gifted scholar and promising basketball player, was murdered on July 29 after a late-night confrontation outside a pub in Huyton.

A hooded figure, thought to be Barton, screamed “Walk, nigger, walk” at their victim as he and his cousin, Marcus Binns, 17, waited to see his girlfriend, Louise Thompson, 17, on to a bus home. Barton and Taylor pursued the trio to nearby McGoldrick Park where Mr Walker was felled with one blow from the axe.

Gee Walker, 49, his mother, sitting feet away from the defendants, listened with what Mr Justice Leveson described as a quiet dignity as he told them that they had “damaged for ever” the lives of those who had loved and lost Mr Walker.

Sentencing them, he said: “This was racist thuggery of a type that is poisonous to any civilised society.”

The judge said that Taylor, unemployed, of Huyton, struck the “most terrible blow to the back of the head”. He took into account several aggravating features, including “significant premeditation”.

Mr Justice Leveson said simply that Mr Walker had been a “remarkable young man”.

In mitigation Andrew Menary, QC, for Taylor, said that at the time of the murder his view of the world had been substantially altered by smoking cannabis. Now free of drugs, he was “utterly horrified” by his actions that night. Taylor and his parents have written letters of apology to the family, which have yet to be delivered.

David Steer, QC, for Barton, had described to the court that his client was in thrall to the older man’s volatile personality. He said Barton was dim.

Earlier Mr Justice Leveson, delivering his reasons why he believed that the offences were racially aggravated — a judgment that doubles the potential tariff for murder from 15 to 30 years — concluded that the men’s hostility towards the two black men was caused partly by their colour and partly because they were with a white girl.

Mrs Walker said that no sentence could be long enough but she was pleased that the judge had sentenced to the limit of the legal framework. “Justice has been done,” she said.

Asked about Taylor’s letter of apology, she said: “I admire him for that. Surely his Mum must have instilled some goodness in him for him to accept he has done something wrong.”

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