Rapist's jail term appeal

Palmerston North rapist Basil Mist has had his preventive detention sentenced overturned by the Supreme Court but still faces a challenge to the length of his 16-year jail term.

Basil Steven Marshall Mist, 23, was given preventive detention for sex crimes against five young girls including rape, sexual violation and having sex with underage girls, one of them aged seven, between 1998 and 2002.

He is also serving a 10-year sentence for the manslaughter of his girlfriend Barbara Jayne Miller in March 2002.

He was jailed for 16 years for the sex crimes in November 2003, but earlier this year the Court of Appeal increased the sentence to preventive detention.

In the Supreme Court, his lawyer argued that Mist, who had not been 21 at the time the offences were committed, was not eligible for preventive detention.

The five judges of the Supreme Court, in three separate judgments, agreed.

But Mist's trouble with the length of his sentence are not yet over.

The Supreme Court has remitted his case back to the Court of Appeal for the Crown to ask it to consider whether 16 years' jail is too little.

- NZPA