Bayley's plea hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court on Tuesday heard he has twice been jailed for rape and was still on parole when he raped and killed Ms Meagher in a laneway in Melbourne.
Bayley, of Coburg, has pleaded guilty to raping and murdering the 29-year-old on September 22 last year.
Crown Prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC said Bayley was in 1991 jailed for five years with a non-parole period of three years over six charges including rape and attempted rape relating to three different victims.
He was released on parole after three years before being jailed again in 2002, Mr Silbert said.
Mr Silbert said Bayley, 41, was jailed that time for 11 years, with a non-parole period of eight years, on 16 counts of rape against five victims.
Mr Silbert said Bayley was also on bail when he raped and murdered Ms Meagher.
Bayley had been jailed for three months for recklessly causing serious injury but had lodged an appeal and was on bail awaiting his appeal, Mr Silbert said.
Bayley's lawyer Saul Holt SC said Bayley should not be given a life sentence and called for a non-parole period to be imposed.
He said the Crown submission that Bayley should be jailed for life with no parole was not appropriate because the case was not "on that level of severity".
"It is an awkward submission to make," Mr Holt said. "It sounds hollow and falls flat.
"My submission is this is not offending that, even taken in combination with Mr Bayley's prior convictions ... should mean that the key gets thrown away forever." He said his client had expressed genuine remorse and self-loathing and read a letter of apology from Bayley to the court.
In the letter, Bayley said he was truly sorry for what he had done and would not ask for forgiveness.
"I cannot begin to imagine what the family and friends of Jill are going through," he said.
"That night, I destroyed a precious life." Bayley admitted he lied in a sexual rehabilitation program while serving a prison term in order to get parole, psychologist Professor James Ogloff told the court.
"I basically went through the motions and told them what they wanted to hear," Bayley said, according to an extract of an interview between Bayley and Prof Ogloff which was read to the court.
The court heard Bayley admitted to Prof Ogloff he typically blamed his victims for his crimes and lashed out physically whenever confronted or challenged.
Prof Ogloff diagnosed Bayley with borderline personality disorder during a psychological exam in May.
He described Bayley as a violent sexual predator, who fantasised about assuming a position of power and control over his victims.
Prof Ogloff said he believed Bayley had remorse for his offending, despite trying to hide Ms Meagher's body and initially denying responsibility in his police interview.
Ms Meagher's husband Tom told the court in a victim impact statement that he is half a person since he lost his wife to a grotesque and soulless human being.
He said he was constantly haunted by visions of what happened to his wife in the laneway just metres from their Brunswick home.
Mr Meagher said his future had been taken away and replaced with a life of fear, insomnia and anger.
"What was stolen from me on the 22nd of September 2012 was love, my best friend and my entire world," he said.
"I think of the waste of a brilliant mind and a beautiful soul at the hands of a grotesque and soulless human being.
"I am half a person because of this crime."
Mr Meagher said what happened to his wife, as well as talk in the aftermath that he had been involved in her death, had destroyed his faith in mankind.
"(The thought that) she had crossed paths with evil haunts me every day," Mr Meagher said.
"What has been given to me ... is firsthand knowledge of how deeply depraved and disgusting a human being can be."
Ms Meagher's father George McKeon broke down as he read his statement to the court, saying he and his wife would never get to see their daughter have children.
"That is a life we just will never have," Mr McKeon said.
A friend of Ms Meagher, Effie Lyons, said she will be forever haunted by the 'what ifs', having declined an invitation to meet up with her friend on the night she died.
"I had a missed call from her shortly before she died, I was asleep, about 100 metres from where it happened," she said in her victim impact statement.
"I am acutely aware that under slightly different circumstances, Jill could be here reading a statement about me."
