An offender or their counsel has the right to cross-examine the maker of an adverse pre-sentence, psychological or other report going to sentence, constrained only by relevance and weight. Counsel's failure to challenge such reports may constitute a denial of procedural fairness, but will not result in a miscarriage of justice unless the disputed matters would have led to a different sentence. It is incumbent on counsel to examine pre-sentence reports and take the client's instructions on their content before sentencing.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 14 later cases that cite this judgment.
2 of the 14 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.