A 17-year-old youth was ordered to be detained for life yesterday for a ''vicious and cowardly'' murder which left the imprint of his new trainers on his victim's face.

Paul Whyte, who had been abusing drugs since he was in primary school, will have to serve at least eight years before he can be considered for parole.

Sentencing Whyte at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Lord Milligan told him he had been convicted of an appalling attack. ''Undoubtedly this was a vicious, sustained, cowardly attack by kicking and stamping on a victim who (was) clearly hopelessly drunk and completely unable to defend himself,'' he said.

Whyte, of Blindwells, Alva, Clackmannanshire, denied murder, and his defence counsel Mr Neil Murray QC, asked the jury to convict him of a reduced charge of culpable homicide.

However, after retiring for less than an hour, the jury found Whyte guilty of murdering Mr Andrew Mathers, 32, a father of two, in Queen Street, Alva, on February 14 this year.

His cousin, Mr Colin Whyte, 18, of Kings Court, Alloa, also faced a murder charge but the jury found the charge against him not proven.

There was no eye-witness evidence to the fatal attack and no evidence of motive, but family and friends of the victim suggested afterwards that there had been a previous incident between the Whytes and Mr Mathers, of Cleuch Drive, Alva.

The victim's brother, Mr Colin Mathers, 29, of Fallin, Stirlingshire, said: ''It is a sad day when you cannot come out of a pub and go home in a quiet village without some numpty doing this.''

The victim was described as a quiet man who would do anything for anybody. He came from Fallin but had lived in Alva for seven years, working as a joiner and drove a taxi at night.

On the Saturday night he was murdered he had been at a works' party at a hotel in Alva. Witnesses spoke of seeing a drunk man making his way down the street with some difficulty, but what happened next was never explained.

A student told how she had seen Mr Mathers lying unconscious in the street ''all messed up''.

His heart stopped beating at the scene and paramedics tried to revive him all the way to hospital. The anaesthetist who helped treat Mr Mathers in intensive care told the court: ''There was what looked like a shoe print on his face.''

Both of the victim's cheekbones had been broken in three places, his nose was broken, his Adam's apple was damaged and he died without regaining consciousness.

Pathologist David Sadler of Dundee University, who carried out a post-mortem examination, said the injuries to the face were the result of at least five blows, probably considerably more.

Four of the sets of patterned bruising on the face bore a ''striking similarity'' to the distinctive tread pattern on Whyte's Adidas training shoes.

The court heard that Whyte had been wearing new trainers for the first time that night.

His mother gave evidence that he had come to her door in Nethergate, Alloa, in the early hours of the morning asking her to wash his clothes.

But even after the trainers were put through the washing machine they still showed traces of blood which were matched to Mr Mathers.

Whyte told a social worker that on the night of the murder he had been drinking and had taken a drug which might have been ecstasy.

He also spoke of paranoia resulting from his addiction to cannabis and Lord Milligan continued the case until yesterday for a psychiatric report.

Mr Murray said the report described Whyte's history of drug misuse since the age of 11 at primary school. He had also fallen in to bad company and consorted with older youths who had already left school.

Whyte was an individual who had gone wrong through immaturity rather than deliberate choice of a particular lifestyle.

He agreed with Lord Milligan that, as far as Whyte's behaviour on the night of the murder was concerned, the main problem was alcohol rather than any other substance.

Mr Murray said: ''He deeply regrets the situation he finds himself in and the situation the family of the deceased find themselves in.''