Sentencing judges in NSW are encouraged but not required to quantify the discount for a plea of guilty in percentage terms; failure to do so is not an error of sentencing principle. The utilitarian discount for a plea of guilty should be applied after contrition and remorse are taken into account in determining the starting point, as they are conceptually distinct. For a large-scale heroin importation (76kg pure), a starting point of 22 years before discounts was considered appropriate for a participant below the organisational principals.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 6 later cases that cite this judgment.