Below is a report from the Tiser!!!!
10 years - repeat offender, don't know about you but I think he got off lightly - nice to see a longer sentence (than his previous 32 months) but 20 years would have been nice!
Ten years' jail for serial arsonist
By Court Reporter ALEXANDRA ECONOMOU
22sep05
AN ARSONIST who set a national park ablaze in January has been jailed for 10 years under tough new laws.
In sentencing James Andrew Phillip Aplin in the District Court yesterday, Judge Michael David said it was lucky no one died when he caused a fire at the Para Wirra National Park, near Kalbeeba, north of Adelaide.
Aplin, of Ascot Park, was the first person sentenced under "zero-tolerance" bushfire laws, introduced in 2002, which carry a maximum 20-year jail term. His sentence has a non-parole period of four years.
Judge David said Aplin, 36, lit the fire on a windy 35C day and caused 6.5ha of the park to be burned. "The fire, although it was brought under control, came quite close to at least one residence," he said.
"Although, luckily, nobody was hurt or injured and there was no real property damage, nevertheless, that was no fault of yours.
"Bushfires, as we know, have a mind of their own and the fact is that anything could have happened and a life could have been lost."
The court previously heard Aplin was of low intelligence and had harmed himself by consuming rat poison and mercury. "There is some suggestion that the lighting of this fire . . . was, in fact, a suicide attempt," Judge David said. "It is clear that the public needs protection from your clear propensity, for whatever psychological reasons, to dangerously light fires."
In 1996, Aplin was jailed for at least 32 months for lighting fires at Greenhill and Heathfield that burned more than 400ha of land, threatened more than 20 homes and caused $400,000 damage.
A CFS officer was also injured in the fires.
Judge David said the January fire occurred about seven months after Aplin's parole expired.
"Your counsel tells me that the catalyst that caused you to commit this offence was a feeling of rejection and indeed a cry for help," he said.
"It is no consolation to victims who might get killed or . . . lose their entire possessions that the person who caused that by lighting the fire has deep psychological, if not psychiatric, problems."
