The High Court has
delivered judgment in the related cases of Barbaro v The Queen and Zirilli v The Queen, which examines the role of the prosecutor in making
submissions as to the available range of sentences for an offence.
In each case the
appellants pleaded guilty to various drug-related offences under the
Commonwealth Criminal Code. Following discussions between the
appellants legal representatives and the Crown prosecutor, the appellants had
entered into a plea agreement with the Crown. In the course of those
discussions the Crown prosecutor had provided an indicative sentencing range to
the appellants’ legal representatives.
In R v MacNeil‑Brown (2008) 20 VR 677, the Court of Appeal of the Supreme
Court of Victoria held that if a sentencing judge asked, the prosecution was
bound to submit what the prosecution considered to be the available range of
sentences that could be imposed on an offender.
A practice had developed in Victoria to prepare such an indicative
sentencing range in order to make it available to the Court is requested by the
court, or if the prosecutor believed there was a significant risk the court
would fall into error if a submission as to range was not made.
In the present case, the
sentencing judge made it plain that she did not want to hear submissions as to
range from anyone, and would not take them into account. The sentencing
judge proceeded to impose sentences outside the prosecution’s indicative
sentencing range. The appellants challenged their
sentences in the Court of Appeal, including on the basis that it was
procedurally unfair for the sentencing judge to have refused to hear a
submission from the prosecution on the available range of sentences in light of
the discussions between the appellants and the prosecution.
The High Court unanimously dismissed
the appeals. The plurality considered that the appellants’ arguments depend on
two flawed premises. The first was that the prosecution is permitted (or
required) to submit to a sentencing judge its view of what are the bounds of
the range of sentences which may be imposed on an offender. That premise, in
turn, depended upon a second flawed premise, namely that such a submission is a
submission of law. The plurality held
that the prosecution's statement of what are the bounds of the available range
of sentences is a statement of opinion. A statement of the bounds of the
available range of sentences is a conclusion which depends upon identifying
(and in many cases assuming) the facts and circumstances relevant to the
offence and the offender and striking a balance between the many competing
considerations which may bear upon the sentence. Its expression advances no
proposition of law or fact which a sentencing judge may properly take into
account in finding the relevant facts, deciding the applicable principles of
law, or applying those principles to the facts to yield the sentence to be
imposed.
Not only is the prosecution not
required to make such a statement of bounds to a sentencing judge, it should
not be permitted. This is because the
statement by the prosecution of the bounds of an available range of sentences
may lead to erroneous views about its importance in the process of sentencing
with consequential blurring of what should be a sharp distinction between the
role of the judge and the role of the prosecution in that process. If a judge
sentences within the range which has been suggested by the prosecution, the
statement of that range may well be seen as suggesting that the sentencing
judge has been swayed by the prosecution's view of what punishment should be
imposed. By contrast, if the sentencing judge fixes a sentence outside the
suggested range, appeal against sentence seems well-nigh inevitable.
Gageler J concurred in the result,
but departed significantly from the plurality’s reasoning. His Honour
considered that a submission that a sentence within a given range would or
would not be available to be imposed by a sentencing court in the circumstances
of a particular case is a submission
of law. It is a submission that a sentence within that range would or would not
meet a limiting condition of the discretion conferred on the court to sentence
for the offence, and therefore would or would not fall within the limits of a
proper exercise of the sentencing discretion.
His Honour regarded R v MacNeil‑Brown correct to hold that the prosecution duty to assist a sentencing court
to avoid appealable error requires the prosecutor to make a submission on
sentencing range if the sentencing court requests such assistance or if the
prosecutor perceives a significant risk that the sentencing court would make an
appealable error in the absence of assistance.
However, in this case the
experienced sentencing judge made clear that she would derive no assistance
from a prosecution submission as to the available range. The appellants did not
suggest that the prosecution in those circumstances failed to perform its duty
to assist the court to avoid appealable error. Nor did the appellants suggest
that the sentence imposed on them was “unreasonable or plainly unjust” on the
facts found by the sentencing judge. It
was for that reason that his Honour joined in the orders of the plurality to
dismiss the appeals.
No comments:
Post a Comment