The Court of Criminal Appeal held that life sentences for two murders were not manifestly excessive despite the applicant's pleas of guilty and a powerful subjective case involving severe childhood abuse, where the murders involved extreme sexual brutality against a domestic partner and the suffocation of a 2½-year-old child with a sexual motivation. The Court confirmed it was reasonably open to the sentencing judge to reject a psychiatrist's opinion on the causal connection between childhood trauma and the offending where the expert relied on the applicant's inaccurate, incomplete and deficient account of his conduct. The Court reaffirmed that a life sentence may be imposed notwithstanding pleas of guilty where the level of culpability is so extreme that the statutory language in s 61(1) is satisfied.
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