Darwin prisoner Tevan Baxter to serve more time for setting fire to cell and bashing a fellow inmate unconscious

A prisoner who set fire to his cell and beat another inmate unconscious will spend more time behind bars.

A DARWIN prisoner who set fire to his cell and beat another inmate unconscious will now spend at least another year and four months behind bars.

Tevan Baxter, 26, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to arson and causing serious harm to the other man in September last year.

In sentencing, Chief Justice Michael Grant said Baxter was locked up on an earlier serious harm charge when he and another prisoner decided to set fire to their cells on the evening of June 5.

“We can only imagine what was going through your mind at the time and your counsel does not offer any excuse or even explanation for your conduct,” he said.

“At the same time you were forming this common intention with your co-accused, there was a third inmate who also decided, independently, to set fire to his own cell.”

The court heard Baxter’s co-accused used “an ignition source” to start a fire in his cell and attached the burning items to a rope which Baxter then dragged into his cell where he used them to set fire to his mattress.

Baxter and the third inmate — whose cell was also now ablaze — were removed from their cells and one of the prison guards ended up in hospital where he was treated for smoke inhalation.

Then in September, while awaiting sentence for the earlier serious harm charge and when he “really should have known better”, Baxter approached a 41-year-old fellow prisoner and “king hit” him from behind while he was mopping his cell.

“The victim fell onto the bed and was unable to defend himself,” Chief Justice Grant said.

“You then placed your body weight on top of the victim and punched him to the face and jaw region repeatedly over a period of about two-and-a-half minutes.”

The man lost consciousness and was taken to hospital where he underwent surgery for a fractured cheekbone.

In handing Baxter a six-year jail term with a three-year non-parole period, Chief Justice Grant said violent offences committed in prisons heightened the importance of “general deterrence” in sentencing.

“That is because victims of those offences have a clearly reduced ability to take prudent measures for their own safety and because the courts cannot allow prisons to deteriorate into a Lord of the Flies state of anarchy,” he said.

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