Jason Daron Mizner, a convicted child rapist, was scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday at the Brisbane District Court. However, it was put off until Friday. When Justice Leanne Clare viewed a portion of one of the many rape tapes, she was so shaken that she needed a break to ensure emotions didn't get the best of her while passing the judgment.
"I think it would be best to put some distance between the viewing of that tape and the delivery of the judgment so that it does not overwhelm the sentence," she said, describing the tapes as "very confronting." But with more than 60 child sex crimes towards the 2-year-old infant that Mizner has pleaded guilty to, the prosecution wants the 44-year-old jailed for life, reports Daily Mail.
His abominable activities date back to the early 2000s and include over 30 counts of rape and recording the horrific assaults on tape. That said, owing to the "torture" he suffered the last time he was in prison for a different crime, Mizner's lawyers argued his sentence should be reduced.
Jason Daron Mizner admitted to 36 counts of rape and six counts of making child exploitation material in the Brisbane District Court today. #9News 9news.com.au/2018/09/21/12/…
According to them, the abuse their client suffered when he spent years in a Thai jail for a separate sexual assault of another young child should be taken into account for the current judgment. "He received beatings and other torture, partly in relation to [the Australian] offending," Mizner's lawyer said. "The Australian Federal Police gave evidence at the [Thai] hearing about the Australian offending, so it's not much of a stretch that inmates in Thailand would have known."
But Justice Clare asserted that just because the pedophile had a difficult time during his incarceration in Thailand, there's no reason for reducing his potential sentence as they were two separate crimes. "The report outlines deprivations and abuses that your client has described, but to say he's been tortured for 11 years is an overstatement of the material, frankly," Justice Clare said.
Mizner was 31 at the time of the assaults and had formed a relationship with the Australian girl's mother when he committed the devious acts over a number of months, the court heard. The mother found the videos he made along with a range of other unrelated child exploitation material while he was on a holiday in Thailand.
During his stay in Thailand, he repeated the same pattern - forming a relationship with a local woman before sexually assaulting her young daughter — and was arrested by Thai law enforcement. After serving 11 years of a 35-year sentence, Mizner was deported to Brisbane, where Australian authorities arrested him.
Having said that, this is the second time Mizner's sentencing has been delayed. In September, a doctor suffered a heart attack while preparing a psychological report for the court, thereby delaying the case. The defense argued that the report showed Mizner suffered a brain injury after a motorcycle accident when he was 21, leaving him "uninhibited". But it also revealed that the pedophile had a "predilection for babies" and had "a medium-to-high chance of re-offending if not incarcerated," Justice Clare pointed out. "Even a low risk of re-offending when it comes to raping babies is a substantial risk to deal with. When it's a medium-to-high risk... it's alarming," she said.
