Practitioners advising on Crown appeals against sentence should note that where a sentencing judge expressly characterises subjective circumstances as 'wholly exceptional' and delivers a careful reserved judgment, the CCA will be very reluctant to intervene even where sentences are acknowledged to be at the outer edge of available discretion; for juvenile offenders, strong pre-sentence rehabilitation evidence combined with deprived backgrounds (including refugee trauma and family breakdown) can justify significant departures from the statutory non-parole period ratio and lenient head sentences even for serious armed robbery offences.
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