A hit-and-run driver who killed a four-year-old girl and seriously injured her mother while high on drugs had a year knocked off his prison sentence yesterday.

Daniel Jackson had his 13-year sentence quashed and replaced with one of 12 years by the Appeal Court in Edinburgh.

Jackson, 32, drove his 4x4 along an Edinburgh pavement, hitting Rachel Donachie and her daughter, Olivia, as they walked home from nursery.

Olivia was killed instantly, just yards from the family's home in Colinton. Her mother, aged 33 at the time, had her left leg amputated below the knee as a result of her injuries.

Jackson, a married father-of-three who had a string of previous convictions including crimes of violence, admitted the culpable homicide of Olivia and was jailed for 13 years in October last year.

Lord Menzies said that Jackson drove “like a maniac” and banned him from driving ever again. He told Jackson that he would have received a 16-year prison sentence but the final sentence reflected his early guilty plea.

Jackson's legal team, appealing against sentence, argued that the starting point was too high and that any discount should have been applied to the whole sentence. Lord Johnston and Lord Philip quashed the trial judge's sentence, replacing it with a sentence of 12 years, calculated by deducting 25 per cent from the 16-year term.

Lord Philip said yesterday: “We are satisfied that the imposition of a starting point of 16 years was not excessive, having regard to the discretion open to the sentencing judge and, in particular, having regard to the tragic and very serious circumstances of this case.However, we are not persuaded that his approach to the issue of discount is correct or even appropriate.”

The High Court in Edinburgh heard last year that Jackson had taken Valium and methadone on the day of the accident and claimed to have taken heroin and between 20 and 30 Valium tablets the previous night.

The court also heard that there were 11 defects on Jackson's Jeep Cherokee, rendering it unsafe to drive. These included having no working foot brakes.

Jackson, from the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh, left the scene of the fatal collision. But he later turned up at a hospital in Edinburgh, having slashed his wrists.

He told doctors there: “I killed a little girl.”

He was taken to the city's St Leonard's police station, where he said:

“I deserve life for what I've done -

a life for a life.”

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