Two men who left a Sudanese refugee to die after bashing him with a pole committed an "extraordinarily callous act", a judge has said.

Liep Gony, 18, was drunk and "utterly defenceless," when set upon by the pair, in what prosecutors say was a racially motivated attack in suburban Melbourne on September 26, 2007.

Mr Gony was bashed with the pole more than a dozen times and left unconscious on the Noble Park street in Melbourne's southeast.

He died the next day in hospital.

On Thursday, Victorian Supreme Court judge Justice Elizabeth Curtain questioned why his attackers - Clinton David Rintoull, 24, and Dylan Giuseppe Sabatino, 21 - did not call for help for the man after the bashing.

"He (Rintoull) is of the belief that he has killed him and he knows that he has bashed him repeatedly with a pole and yet they leave him there and run off ... and they don't make a call," she said.

"It is an extraordinarily callous act."

Justice Curtain said that three days earlier Rintoull had called triple-zero when he was being chased by a group of African men, but failed to do so when his victim was clearly injured.

"He could have made an anonymous phone call," she said.

Lawyers for both men have denied the attack was racially motivated, despite Rintoull having graffitied the message "F*** da niggas" on the wall of the house he was staying in.

Rintoull also allegedly talked about killing "all the blacks" and was heard saying: "They don't respect our way of life. F****n niggers chasing us around. We should get them, f*****g bash them".

Rintoull's lawyer George Georgiou said his client was angry with the group of men who chased him rather than a particular race.

"Yes, it would seem, at times, he has used the word nigger," he said.

"In my submission, the court should be careful about over-analysing the words of a (then) 22-year-old who was stoned."

Sabatino's lawyer Scott Johns said his client was motivated by misguided loyalty to his friend rather than racial hatred.

"The evidence doesn't stretch so far as to say it was a racially motivated attack," he said.

"There is not a shred of evidence that my client shared Mr Rintoull's expressed views."

But prosecutor Aaron Shwartz said the fact that Rintoull targeted a "dark skinned person" who he did not recognise as one of the men who chased him on a previous occasion meant it was a racially-motivated attack.

Justice Curtain will sentence Rintoull, of Noble Park, who has pleaded guilty to murder and Sabatino, of Adelaide, who has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, at a date to be fixed.