A co-offender's cooperation discount (including providing a statement to police and undertaking to give evidence) is a very significant mitigating factor that can justify a sentence double that of the cooperating co-offender without infringing the parity principle. The instigator of a group assault bears greater moral culpability than participants, even where the instigator was not present at the point of death. A sentencing judge's factual error (here, misdescribing the timing of a co-offender's plea) will not be material to a parity analysis where the overall synthesis of differences and similarities supports the differentiation.
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