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A prisoner who stabbed a fellow inmate through the chest in a row over a noisy television has been sentenced to an indefinite jail term.
Jason Glenn Vincent was already serving preventive detention - with a minimum of five years in prison - when he plunged a sharpened butter knife into a neighbouring cell's occupant who had complained about the volume of Vincent's television.
The attack inflicted three lacerations to the victim's heart, which required emergency surgery.
The December 2005 incident - in Paremoremo's notorious D Block - came barely three months after Vincent stabbed two inmates, in separate incidents, while he was being housed at Waikeria Prison in Waikato.
He was serving preventive detention for those stabbings, which had occurred as he neared parole on a 13-year sentence imposed for the 1995 rape of a 77-year-old woman.
Both prosecutors and defence lawyers agreed preventive detention was the only sentence available when Vincent appeared in the High Court at Auckland yesterday on a charge of attempted murder.
He had been found guilty after defending himself at a trial in July last year.
Vincent had become involved in the dispute with his neighbour soon after arriving at Paremoremo in December 2005 and had told prison staff he would likely stab someone if he was not put into segregation.
His neighbour had offered Vincent two ways of sorting out their argument: amicably, or with a one-off fist fight.
Vincent declined the fight, as his neighbour was considerably larger.
Instead, he left the scene, only to return moments later. He sneaked up from behind and stabbed his neighbour in the chest as the man tied his shoes.
Vincent "did not function well" among the general prison population, defence lawyer Mary Kennedy told Justice Lynton Stevens yesterday.
The 38-year-old, who amassed more than 50 burglary and violence convictions in his teens and early twenties, has a string of convictions for serious violence from the early 1990s. He has been in prison since 1995.
Prosecutor Deborah Marshall urged further preventive detention, a recommendation Justice Stevens accepted, citing the numerous aggravating factors in Vincent's offending.
Those included his use of a weapon, the serious injuries inflicted and the premeditation of the attack: Vincent had had the knife used to stab his neighbour smuggled into prison in a TV set.
Vincent will serve a minimum of nine years before being considered for release.
