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Jason Vincent
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Raped and threatened to kill a 77 year old woman in a home invasion in 1993
Stabbed and seriously wounded two fellow inmates at Waikeria prison between September and October 2005 while doing time for this offence.
Attempted murder by stabbing another inmate in December 2005 while doing time for those offences. .
He has 54 previous convictions including 9 for burglary and 3 for assault
.
.
none known
Born 1970
Prison
Sentenced to 15 years with parole eligibility after 10 years in October 1994
Reduced to 13 years with parole eligibility after 8 years 8 months on appeal
Sentenced to 5 years with a 3 year minimum non-parole period in November 2006
Increased to preventive detention with 5 year minimum non-parole period on appeal
Sentenced to preventive detention with 9 year minimum non-parole period in April 2008
All sentences are to be served concurrently
Background
NZ Herald story here
Supreme Court decision here
From the Dominion Post 14/06/2007
A man who raped an elderly woman and then 12 years later stabbed fellow inmates in two separate prison attacks has been sentenced to preventive detention by the Court of Appeal. Jason Glen Vincent, who represented himself, had appealed against his conviction and sentence of five years on a charge of wounding with intent. He argued that his lawyer had failed to adequately put his defence to the jury and that one aspect of the Crown counsel's cross-examination of him had been unfair. The Crown also sought leave to appeal against the sentence on the ground that the judge erred in principle in refusing to impose a sentence of preventive detention. The Court of Appeal judgment, delivered yesterday by Justice Rodney Hansen, dismissed Vincent's appeal, and allowed the Crown's. It sentenced Vincent to preventive detention with a minimum of five years imprisonment.
The judgement made reference to a letter written by Vincent to his brother and intercepted by prison authorities. In it, Vincent referred repeatedly to stabbing other prisoners and in one passage he said: "Stabbing people has become second nature and at this point I see no difference between sticking a knife into a leg of chicken and sticking a knife into a leg of man, the only major difference is that one of those meats is raw and requires a bit more effort to penetrate." At the time of the stabbings Vincent was serving a 13-year sentence imposed in 1994 for the rape the previous year of a 77-year-old woman. The woman, recovering from breast surgery, had been asleep in her unit at a retirement village when Vincent broke in and subjected her to what the sentencing judge described as a "vicious and brutal rape". When she screamed, he threatened to kill her. He was arrested some months later and DNA testing confirmed that he was the offender.
In August 2003 the Parole Board ordered that Vincent not be released before his applicable release date, July 17, 2007. In September 2005 Vincent attacked another inmate at Waikeria Prison, stabbing the man in the arm with a screwdriver. After the attack Vincent was placed in segregation. Out of segregation in October 2005, Vincent attacked another inmate in the prison yard. Vincent asked the victim to buy him some gel and some biscuits and when he refused, threatened to stab him with a screwdriver. The victim punched Vincent in an attempt to stave off the attack. He was then stabbed in the bicep and the neck. At trial, Vincent admitted the first stabbing, but claimed self defence in relation to the second. He pleaded guilty to one charge of wounding with intent to injure, and was found guilty on a second count. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of five years and three-and-a-half years jail.
Justice Hansen said the Court of Appeal was satisfied there was nothing of substance in Vincent's criticisms of his lawyer. "The trial ultimately turned on the jury's assessment of the credibility of the principal protagonists." Reports before the sentencing judge had revealed that the 37-year-old Vincent had a traumatic and disruptive upbringing, being subjected to physical and sexual abuse. He began abusing substances at 12 or 13, and criminal activity at 14. Over the next 10 years, until at age 24 he was jailed for raping the elderly woman, he accumulated 52 convictions, many of them minor, but some for assault. Although the Crown asked for sentence of preventive detention after the stabbings trial, the sentencing judge decided a finite sentence was more appropriate. He took into account that although Vincent had been in prison, for many years he had not evidently engaged in the kind of conduct for which he was being sentenced.
But the Court of Appeal found that the judge was overly influenced by the absence of offending in prison until the stabbing incidents in 2005. "Good behaviour in the controlled environment of a prison does not provide a reliable guide to the risk of reoffending in the outside world," Justice Hansen said. The Court of Appeal also took into account that the offending followed a period of intensive psychological counselling. "The risk of reoffending is to be regarded as further increased when offending has followed therapeutic intervention," Justice Hansen said. "The offending suggests that treatment has been ineffective and supports the psychologist's observation that during his time in prison the respondent has made no sustained effort to modify his violent behaviour." The Court of Appeal said the sentence of preventive detention would provide Vincent with an incentive to undergo more counselling.
