Where a complaint is based on lack of balance or fairness in a summing-up, the Court need not rigidly adopt a two-stage analysis of first finding miscarriage and then applying the proviso; rather, it may assess the materiality of irregularities in the summing-up as a whole, in the context of the evidence and counsel's addresses. The combined effect of mental illness and prison segregation must be taken into account in sentencing, not merely one or the other in isolation. However, a sentencing error in failing to account for such factors may not result in a lesser sentence where the original sentences were generous in being wholly concurrent for offences causing separate harm.
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