- Ed Treleven, Wisconsin State Journal
Calling him a “serial sexual predator,” a Dane County judge sentenced a man whose DNA tied him to five sexual assaults between 2008 and 2014 to 10 years in prison, atop the sentence he’s already serving for one of those rapes.
Mariono L. Weaver, 51, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for the 2014 rape of a woman on Madison’s South Side, was sentenced to five years in prison and five years of extended supervision for each of two cases in which Weaver pleaded guilty in February to third-degree sexual assault.
Both occurred on separate days in October 2010.
All of Weaver’s sentences will be served consecutively. With his current sentence set to end in July 2026, the new sentences will keep Weaver in prison until 2036, when he is 65 years old. The sentences handed down by Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds were the maximum Weaver could have received for the two assaults. Deputy District Attorney William Brown asked for the 10-year sentence.
Reynolds said she generally opposes long sentences, except for in a “handful” of cases in which public protection is a key factor. She told Weaver his case is one of those, and “rises to the top” in terms of seriousness.
“You are a serial sexual predator, and there is no other conclusion,” Reynolds said. She added that the sentence she imposed is “not about revenge. It’s about protecting the public.”
Weaver’s attorney, state Assistant Public Defender Stanley Woodard, asked Reynolds not to order the maximum sentence, but to give Weaver another four years atop the four he has remaining on his current sentence. He argued that as a sex offender, Weaver would be well supervised for the remainder of his life.
One of the women who was raped by Weaver, speaking by phone, said she’s forgiven Weaver, but what he did to her still has an impact on her, such as making her wary around strangers.
“I feel bad for you,” she said. “I feel really, really bad for you because you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison for something you have done. I wish you had help. I wish I knew why you’ve done this to me.”
Weaver apologized “to the victims for the trauma and emotional pain I put them through.”
He said at the time he committed the assaults he was abusing drugs.
“It’s not an excuse,” Weaver said. “It’s just who I was at the time.”
Weaver was sentenced for an Oct. 15, 2010, rape in Fitchburg, when he offered a woman a ride to Walmart, but instead drove her down a gravel road off Seminole Highway and raped her.
The other was an Oct. 29, 2010, incident, in which Weaver drove up to a woman, told her he had marijuana and drove her to an area just outside the UW Arboretum and raped her, after first offering her money for sex. He did not have money.
Weaver was identified as a suspect in the 2010 cases after his DNA turned up during an effort by the state Department of Justice to process a backlog of untested rape kits.
Weaver’s DNA also tied him to two other sexual assaults. The victim of an assault in 2008 has since died, while a victim in another assault in 2014 did not want to pursue charges. DNA also led to Weaver’s arrest and conviction in the other 2014 case, for which he is currently in prison.