The Victorian Court of Appeal held that a sentencing judge errs by excluding the parity principle solely because co-offenders were convicted of different offences; following Green v The Queen, formal identity of charges is not a necessary condition for the principle's application, though the effect given to it may vary with the circumstances including the degree of difference between offences. On the facts, the Court reduced the sentence for the first incident from 7 years 6 months to 6 years' imprisonment, finding that while a substantive disparity with the co-offender's sentence remained warranted given the appreciably different and lesser offence, some adjustment was required. No adjustment was made for the second incident where the co-offender's conduct was completely discrete and separate from the appellant's most serious offending.
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