A sentencing judge's misapprehension as to the maximum penalty for one offence among many does not necessarily vitiate the sentence where the judge was required to consider overall criminality in fixing the head sentence and the error did not bear upon the head sentence or the individual sentence. An increase in the maximum penalty for an offence does not necessarily mean all offences committed after the amendment should attract higher penalties; only those at the more serious end of the spectrum could be expected to do so.
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