Where an offender's admissions are critical to proving the Crown case — particularly where without those admissions the charge could not have been established — the sentencing judge must give adequate weight to the value of those admissions. A sentence of four years for supply of very small quantities of heroin on three occasions within 30 days by an 18-year-old with limited intelligence, who pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and whose admissions proved the Crown case, was manifestly excessive; three years with an 18-month non-parole period was substituted.
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