Kerwin and McLoughlin, who both have numerous previous convictions, were initially charged with murder after a public appeal was launched to find those responsible for the attack. 

But on Tuesday, the pair were sentenced for lesser offences after the CPS accepted McLoughlin’s guilty plea to manslaughter and Kerwin’s guilty plea to actual bodily harm. 

McLoughlin was sentenced to nine years and four months, while Kerwin was jailed for 10 months. 

Duncan Browne’s family: ‘We all feel despair’

The family of Mr Browne, who wanted to be a firefighter, expressed their anger at the murder charges being dropped. 

“We all feel despair. We are broken as a family,” Mr Browne’s grandfather, John Browne, 72, said outside court. 

“We can’t understand the decision to drop the murder charges. It seems the CPS is more like the criminal protection service.”

The CPS accepted the pair’s guilty pleas at an earlier hearing last year, when the court heard that the prosecution had “given very careful and anxious consideration” to whether to accept McLoughlin’s plea to manslaughter.

But based on evidence, the CPS decided “the interests of justice are served by not pursuing McLoughlin to trial for his murder”, said John Benson, QC, prosecuting.

The trial heard how Mr Browne – who grew up in Kirkby, Merseyside, where he attended a local primary school – had watched the England versus Ukraine match with friends, before becoming separated from them. 

Mr Benson said the defendants, who had been drinking in the city centre with another man, arrived at a taxi rank in Hanover Street at about 3.30am.

The court heard one of the group said “get out of the way, lad” to Mr Browne as they attempted to board the one cab which was at the taxi rank. They then launched their attack. 

“This, the prosecution say, was an unprovoked and wholly disproportionate reaction to the trivial issue of who was to board the taxi,” Mr Benson said. 

Sentencing, Judge David Aubrey said: “This was a wholly unprovoked and gratuitous assault in the city centre against a man who had not been abusive, he had not been confrontational and I am satisfied he had not offered any threat of violence whatsoever.”

‘Cowardly’ attack

The court heard McLoughlin had 16 previous convictions for 31 offences. He had been on licence at the time of the attack, after being imprisoned for conspiracy to steal in 2019.

Kerwin had 20 previous convictions for 44 offences, but none of them for violent offences.