Where an offender offers to plead guilty to a lesser offence and the Crown refuses the offer but the offender is ultimately convicted of that lesser offence, the offender is entitled to full consideration for the offer and to equal value for the willingness to facilitate the course of justice. The young age of a juvenile offender (here, 16½ years) may be of such significance that comparable sentences imposed on offenders even two and a half to four and a half years older are of little assistance. A head sentence of four years' imprisonment for a 16½-year-old who committed a brutal unprovoked attack causing permanent brain damage was held to be within the proper range of the sentencing discretion.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 2 later cases that cite this judgment.