The Court held that a sentencing judge's finding that an offender's background did not reduce moral culpability was not erroneous merely because the judge used terms like 'level' or 'degree' when evaluating the evidence against Bugmy principles, provided the judge engaged in a genuine evaluative assessment rather than imposing a threshold. The Court further held that prior convictions may legitimately 'illuminate' moral culpability under [name withheld] (No 2) while simultaneously being taken into account as an aggravating factor under s 21A(2)(d) CSPA without constituting double counting, but that an offender's failure to acknowledge responsibility for an offence before arrest does not bear upon moral culpability. Despite finding error on this last point, the Court on resentence imposed the same sentence of 12 years imprisonment with a 9-year non-parole period, having regard to the very serious objective circumstances and the offender's subsequent custodial violence.
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