

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Two white men were sentenced to life in prison Wednesday nearly 19 years after they murdered a black teenager in a hate crime that shook Britain.

The brutal stabbing death of Stephen Lawrence on a London street rocked British society as an unprovoked attack that was motivated purely by bigotry and then investigated poorly by police. An official inquiry found that the bungled police response reflected an “institutional racism” inside Scotland Yard and led to major changes in policing.

After years of tireless campaigning by Lawrence’s parents, convictions in their son’s death finally came Tuesday, after a review of the case unearthed new DNA evidence implicating Gary Dobson and David Norris, members of a racist gang that targeted black residents in the part of South London where they lived.

In sentencing the two men, Justice Colman Treacy said Wednesday that they had committed a “terrible and evil crime ... for no other reason than racial hatred.”

Although Treacy issued life sentences, under British judicial rules Dobson could be freed after 15 years behind bars and Norris after 14, because both were minors at the time of the attack.