Where a co-offender's sentence is manifestly inadequate, the court should not entirely disregard it for parity purposes; rather, the court should reduce the impugned sentence to the lowest point within the appropriate sentencing range to ameliorate the disparity. A comparison of starting points before differentiating discounts may reveal unjustified disparity even where the final sentences appear explicable by different discount entitlements. However, the broader propositions about manifestly inadequate comparators were endorsed only by Adams J and McClellan CJ at CL, with James J reserving his position.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 3 later cases that cite this judgment.
1 of the 3 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.