Tyler v WA

[2005] WASCA 237

Western Australia Court of Appeal

Built by Barristers,
For Australian Law.

1. Criminal law and procedure - Appeal - Application for
1. leave to appeal against sentence - Offences of sexual relationship with child,
1. burglary, assault occasioning bodily harm and threatening to kill - Aggregate
1. sentence of 61/2 years' imprisonment - Applicant

Where a sentencing judge expressly sentences on the basis of an agreed statement of material facts accepted by the offender's counsel, the offender cannot on appeal seek to have the court proceed on a different factual basis.
Totality is ordinarily addressed through the concurrency or cumulation of individually appropriate sentences, and the aggregate must bear a proper relationship to the overall criminality. On the facts, three separate and serious sets of offending justified partial accumulation, and the aggregate was not disproportionate or crushing.
An offender's depression or the effects of prescribed medication mitigate sentence only where a causal connection is shown that reduces moral culpability (R v [name withheld]). Medical notes merely recording that medications were prescribed, without evidence of their effects on the offender, do not establish that link. Offending while affected by amphetamines is not itself mitigating.