Where co-offenders are sentenced in different courts, the jurisdictional limit of the lower court is irrelevant to the application of the parity principle; the relevant yardstick is the maximum penalty for the offence. The existence of a jurisdictional limit in the Magistrates Court does not affect or reflect the maximum penalty for sentencing purposes and cannot be used to differentiate between co-offenders. The case also reinforces the desirability of co-offenders being sentenced by the same judicial officer, or at least in the same court.
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