A sentencing judge who refers to the utilitarian value of an early guilty plea but immediately follows that reference with observations about the strength of the Crown case and the difficulty of any defence, without expressing any discount, commits a sentencing error requiring resentencing. The strength of the Crown case remains irrelevant to the assessment of the utilitarian value of a guilty plea.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 3 later cases that cite this judgment.