The Court of Appeal held that the sentencing judge's failure to declare 479 days of pre-sentence detention was not a contrivance to circumvent s 44(1) of the Sentencing Act 1991, as arson offences are exempt from the CCO/imprisonment cap under Schedule 1 clause 5, and the judge gave full credit for PSD in structuring the overall sentence. The Court confirmed that post-sentence judicial ruminations about whether a non-parole period could be imposed alongside a CCO did not infect the sentence with error where the judge imposed exactly the sentence structure counsel had sought. On parity, the Court found no unjustifiable disparity with the co-accused Mun's sentence, holding that differences were explained by the compressive effect of totality on Mun's multi-incident sentence and the applicant's significantly worse criminal history.
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