An inmate who used laxatives to shed 31 pounds so he could squeeze through a hole in a prison wall had been frustrated by the indefinite sentence he was serving, a judge said Friday.
Robert Cole, 37, spent three days on the run from police in January after slipping his 123-pound frame through a 15-centimeter wide hole he had chiseled with a butter knife in the widow frame of a hospital wing at Sydney's Long Bay Jail.
Cole, who had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, spent three weeks scraping the brickwork near the window bars to widen the space, the New South Wales state District Court Judge Roger Dive said.
Dive sentenced Cole on Friday two years and two months imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to a charge of escape. The sentence was backdated to his recapture on Jan. 21.
When he escaped, Cole had been serving an indefinite sentence in the prison hospital after a jury found him not guilty of armed robbery in 2003 on the grounds of mental illness.
Dive accepted Cole was "very frustrated" at the time of his escape, as "he did not have a definite date of release and no apparent treatment plan."
Cole's sister, Australian television actress Denise Roberts, told the court her brother had "put on a lot of weight" since he was recaptured and sent to a different prison.
After serving his sentence, Cole will remain in the prison hospital until government authorities decide he is no longer a public danger.
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