Where a sentencing judge makes favourable findings about an offender's rehabilitation, remorse, and motivation to reform, the non-parole period must adequately reflect those findings; a non-parole period only 22 months less than the total effective sentence was manifestly excessive where the judge had found genuine rehabilitation and low risk of reoffending. A late guilty plea entered after victims have already given evidence at a first trial is entitled to very limited weight in mitigation. Where defence counsel is aware that the sentencing judge lacks details of an earlier sentence and makes a deliberate forensic decision not to provide them, the applicant cannot later complain of the judge's failure to have regard to those details.
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