Terrifying ransom kidnapper appeals sentence Mark Cane appeals six-year sentence

A man who led a group that kidnapped, assaulted, and threatened to pour boiling water over a young man over 11 hours has appealed against his six-year sentence.

Mark Cane successfully appealed his six-year sentence for kidnapping, reducing it to five years.

A man who led a group that kidnapped, assaulted, and threatened to pour boiling water over a young man over 11 hours has appealed against his six-year sentence.

57-year-old Mark Cane pleaded guilty in April 2022 in Cairns District Court to one count of kidnapping for ransom over an incident in which he and his co-offenders attempted to settle a $3500 debt.

The man owed the money to Mr Cane.

After finding the man, Mr Cane and his group forced him into their car, punched him and drove him around to different houses to see if other people would pay the man’s debt.

Later in the afternoon, they took him to a residential unit where they hit him with a chair, telling him they would put him in a car and set it alight unless he paid.

The man was driven out to different addresses and told to go on Facebook to raise $3500.

After that, one of the co-offenders turned the kettle on and threatened to pour boiling water over him as the man scrambled to send out Facebook messages asking people for money.

One co-offender said to him: “You’re not going in the boot. You’re going to go in the ground”.

At one point, a female friend of Mr Cane arrived at the unit and would later tell the court his eye was swollen and blackened “it looked like it was popping out of his head”.

The man managed to track down his brother, who agreed to meet Cain and the co-offenders at a shopping centre to give them $1500 and agreed to let the man go.

Unbeknown to Mr Cane and his co-offenders, the complainant’s brother and mother had contacted the police, who arranged to attend the meeting place covertly.

After a short road chase, police arrested Cain the next day

The complainant suffered serious injuries, including fractures to the right eye socket, a fractured right cheek, a fractured nose and a fractured jaw.

The original sentence was for six years in the Cairns District Court.

Judge Tracy Fantin sentenced Cane to six years’ imprisonment with parole eligibility to start immediately due to spending more than 1000 days on remand.

On Wednesday, October 4, the Court of Appeal found that the Judge Fantin made an error in referring to Cane allegedly inflicting violence on the victim as part of her assessment of the gravity of the kidnapping offence.

The prosecution had earlier dropped his two other charges of common assault and assault occasioning bodily harm.

“It was impermissible for the sentencing judge to treat the fact that (Cane) had inflicted actual violence … rendered (the kidnapping) a more serious example of the offence,” the judgment said.

The judges reduced Cane’s sentence to five years alongside a nine-month term imposed for the dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.

Originally published as Terrifying ransom kidnapper appeals sentence Mark Cane appeals six-year sentence