TWO homophobic killers who brutally murdered a gay man were jailed for 28 years each yesterday, on the day that a new law against hate crimes came into effect.

Jody Dobrowski, a barman, was beaten to death in woods popular with gays.

A judge at the Old Bailey said that Scott Walker and Thomas Pickford, both known criminals, went to Clapham Common to engage in “homophobic thuggery” against “those who were particularly vulnerable”.

The sentencing heralds a new era when murderers motivated by their victims’ sexuality will be jailed for twice as long as those convicted of other murders. Similar heavier penalties apply when the ground for murder is race, religion or disability.

As the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, QC, finished a sentencing speech that referred to compassion for their victim’s plight, applause broke out.

Stonewall, the gay rights group that campaigned for extra penalties against homophobic hate crime, will now press ministers to outlaw incitement to hatred of gays.

Mr Dobrowski, 24, had moved to London to pursue a career in bar management. On an evening last October he left a friend’s house and walked towards the common in South London.

Walker, 33, and Pickford, 26, who lived nearby in a religious-run hostel for ex-offenders, also made for the common after drinking at least eight beers.

Walker had been given early release on licence from a 15-month prison sentence for assaulting and threatening to kill his mother. She had been left with a swollen neck and unable to swallow after he attempted to strangle her, punched her face and bit her nose in an argument. His licence had ended the previous day.

Pickford was a heroin addict with a history of petty burglaries.

The pair had beaten up a gay man in woods on the common two weeks earlier, punching him in the face and hitting him 30 times. He was left with concussion.

They took the same detour again. A man on the Common heard Mr Dobrowski’s screams. He approached the attackers and asked: “Are you trying to kill him?” One replied: “We don’t like poofters here and that’s why we can kill him if we want to.”

Pickford asked the man if he, too, was a “poofter” and wanted to be killed.

The man retreated and saw the pair stamping on Mr Dobrowski’s head. “They were kicking and jumping on the man as if trying to kill an animal,” Nicholas Hilliard, for the prosecution, said.

Another witness heard them shout homophobic insults. Pickford told police and kicked him like a football. that Walker had stuffed Mr Dobrowski’s sock into his mouth to choke him while hitting him with a shoe. He broke a beer bottle on his victim’s head

A witness telephoned police and the killers ran away. Mr Dobrowski died in hospital. A post-mortem examination discovered 33 injuries.

The pair returned to the hostel — Pickford with his trousers covered in blood up to the knees — where they boasted to other residents about what they had done.

Lord Thomas, QC, for Walker, said: “We are moving towards a saner society in which everyone’s human dignity and personality, whatever his lifestyle, is fully recognised. There is still an atavistic strain in our society, hopefully declining.” The judge, who studied photographs of the dead man, told his killers that Mr Dobrowski’s face had been left “a bloody and swollen pulp. You showed him no mercy.”

In a court statement Mr Dobrowski’s mother, Sheri, said that her son was a confident man with a strong sense of integrity.

When sentence was passed, she shouted: “Woo-hah” and hugged a policeman. Outside court she said: “Jody was not the first man to be killed or terrorised or beaten or humiliated for being homosexual or for being perceived to be homosexual. Tragically, he will not be the last.”

Ben Summerskill, Stonewall’s chief executive, said: “This tragic killing was a sober reminder of how much prejudice still exists in some people, even in one of the most tolerant cities in Britain.”

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