An Alaskan man who suffered abuse at his step-father’s hands has been sentenced to 23 years in jail for attacking and robbing registered sex offenders after the judge rejected pleas for leniency.
42-year-old Jason Vukovich attacked three men after looking up them up in the state sexual offenders register in June 2016.
“It was not the purpose of the registry to allow people to do their own brand of justice,” Marston told Vukovich. “The purpose of the registry was to keep the community safe.”
Marston sentenced him to 23 years, plus five suspended, after Vukovich pleaded guilty to one felony assault charge and one felony robbery charge, following a plea bargain.
Vokovic has encouraged other victims of abuse to take a lesson from his case.
The names of his three victims were on a list of nine he had copied from the sexual offender’s register into a notebook.
He entered the homes of the three men over five days in June, attacking one with a hammer and the other two with his fists.
The hammer attack left that victim with a lasting traumatic brain injury, making it hard for him string words into sentences, reported Anchorage Daily News (ADN).
He also stole from them, taking items including a truck and a laptop.
“We’re lucky we’re not dealing with a murder charge,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick McKay told the judge, during the sentencing hearing, reported ADN.
Vukovic’s lawyer had argued for leniency given that physical and sexual abuse by his step-father as a child had pushed him into a spiral of mental and emotional torment.
“He liked to administer beatings with various instruments, belts, eventually a custom 2x4 he made. He used to disrupt the night by coming in to sexually assault myself. It was rough,” Vukovic told the court, according to KTVA.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, Vukovic is eligible to apply for discretionary parole once he’s served Five years and nine months of his sentence, reported KTVA. He will be eligible for mandatory parole after serving about two-thirds of his sentence, provided he commits no further crimes.
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