Four men who savagely bashed and stabbed a father of three to death in an Adelaide laneway have been jailed for at least 20 years.
A Supreme Court jury found Joshua Betts, 21, Johnas Jerome Presley, 20, Everard Miller, 28 and Wayne Smith, 22, guilty of murdering 49-year-old Clifford Hall in Elizabeth Park in December 2012.
Justice Tim Stanley on Monday described the bashing as a "grossly disproportionate" response to an earlier altercation, in which Hall racially abused Betts after he urinated on a fence.
He sentenced each of the men to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years.
The court heard Hall and another man, Wayne Robert King, confronted Betts and Presley after Betts urinated on a fence near a suburban laneway.
Justice Stanley said Betts was punched in the face by King and subjected to verbal abuse, including racial taunts, by Hall.
Betts and Presley retreated before returning to the scene with Smith and Miller, armed with weapons including a knife and a baseball bat.
In the fight that followed, Hall was fatally stabbed in the back by Betts and punched and kicked in the head by the other men, while King was hit with a baseball bat.
Justice Stanley said he accepted the hurt caused by racial abuse but there was no justification for the "senseless violence" inflicted.
"I can only say that this was an unavoidable tragedy," he said.
"These events could have been avoided if rational common sense had been applied."
While the offenders felt genuine remorse about their actions, there were insufficient grounds for setting a lower non-parole period than the mandatory 20-year minimum, he said.
The men's sentences, including concurrent terms for one charge each of aggravated causing harm, were backdated to reflect time already spent in custody.
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