11 May 2007
The appeal was dismissed because the magistrate's rejection of the appellant's mitigation was supported by the record, the 15 month sentence was within the appropriate range for the offence and there was no demonstrable error of principle or fact warranting interference.
10 May 2007
The court held that the applicant's notice of abandonment was a deliberate and solemn act and not a nullity; there was no fundamental mistake justifying treating it as void, and on sentencing the total term of five years imprisonment was not manifestly excessive despite some reservations about the judge's approach to concurrency and consecutivity, therefore the application was dismissed.
27 Feb 2002
The application for leave to appeal out of time is refused because the sentencing choices were within proper range: the robbery starting point, reduction for guilty plea, and the ordering of part of the immigration sentence concurrent were appropriate; foreignness and unfamiliarity do not justify further reduction and the total term of 4 years is not manifestly excessive.
18 Jan 2000
The judge erred in principle by denying the normal one-third discount for a timely guilty plea on the basis that the defendant was caught red-handed and the evidence was overwhelming; being caught in the act does not justify withholding the normal discount and the sentence must be adjusted accordingly.
20 Jun 1997
Leave to appeal against conviction was refused because the applicant's stated grounds related to sentence rather than to conviction and because the trial evidence — contemporaneous identification by two victims and arrest nearby — was overwhelming and afforded no arguable basis for overturning the conviction.
14 Jun 1995
The appeal was allowed in part: although the magistrate was correct to find no significant mitigating circumstances and to be skeptical of the medical evidence, the court reduced each concurrent sentence from 15 months to 12 months on humanitarian grounds relating to family hardship and the husband's concurrent incarceration.
2 Nov 1993
The court held that s.109A is directory rather than mandatory and that, although there was no error in principle in imposing 15 months for illegal remaining and 3 months for theft consecutively, the accumulated mitigating circumstances (youth, hunger, lack of antecedents, family circumstances) justified, as an act of mercy, ordering the 3‑month theft sentence to run concurrently with the 15‑month immigration sentence; leave to appeal against sentence was granted and the sentence varied accordingly.
29 Jun 1989
Given the appellant's guilty plea, pregnancy and poor physical and mental condition and the humanitarian circumstances (including prior repatriation), the court exercised sentencing discretion and allowed the appeal by reducing the sentence to permit the appellant's immediate release.