A drunk man who laughed while he urinated on the face of a sleeping homeless man has been jailed for eight weeks. 

Richard Stanley woke to find Stephen Gibney urinating on him in an act of “gratuitous degradation” in Liverpool city centre on 18 May. 

Gibney, 32, of Childwall, earlier admitted assault by beating at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court.

Jane Stacey, prosecuting, told the court that just before 5am Stanley was sleeping rough in the Whitechapel area when he woke to find Gibney and another man standing over him.

“He opened his eyes and saw two men both laughing and realised the defendant was urinating on his face and his coat next to him and his worldly possessions,” the BBC reported Stacey as saying. 

When Stanley said he was going to call the police, the court heard that Gibney threatened to “fight you right now. What are you going to do about it?”

Gibney was arrested at the scene and later told police he could not remember the incident. 

District Judge Wendy Lloyd told Gibney the offence was “a deliberate act of degradation of a homeless person”.

She added: “It was his home, his little pitch where he was trying to establish himself as a human being and a valuable human being just like everyone else.

“He is in no way to be looked down upon, to be judged or dealt with in any lesser way than anyone else in society.”

Gibney’s lawyer, Keiran Fielding, said his client had had a considerable amount to drink but accepted his behaviour had been “vile”.