Where a co-offender's sentence is inexplicably low, the parity principle requires the sentencing court to impose a sentence toward the lower end of the available range, but not to reduce it to an inappropriately low level or outside the range. The separation of co-offenders' cases into different courts, resulting in different factual matrices, does not relieve the sentencing court of its obligation to sentence on the agreed facts before it. An erroneous classification of an offence as a category 2 offence under the Sentencing Act 1991 is immaterial where there was no realistic prospect of a non-custodial disposition.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 17 later cases that cite this judgment.
1 of the 17 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.