The Court of Appeal upheld a record 13-year sentence for culpable driving causing death, holding that current sentencing practices do not operate as a cap on available sentences and that the case attracting the highest sentence need not be shown to warrant a more severe sentence than every other case. The Court reaffirmed that the 'worst case' concept from Kilic relates to the statutory maximum, not the highest sentence in current sentencing practices, making resort to the notion generally unhelpful. On the second ground, the Court allowed the appeal in part because the sentencing judge had been incorrectly informed that s 11A(4) of the Sentencing Act 1991 required a non-parole period of at least 70% of the total effective sentence, when the applicable figure for a sentence under 20 years was 60%; the non-parole period was reduced from 10 years and 9 months to 10 years.
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