By -

Key decisions

  • Mattiussi v R [2023] NSWCCA 289
  • R v DK [2023] NSWCCA 281

Mattiussi v R [2023] NSWCCA 289

Sentencing practice – backdating – calculations of time in custody

The Court of Criminal Appeal (‘CCA’) has criticised the over-complicated way that time in custody is often expressed in submissions and suggested a simpler way to express the same information.

The applicant was sentenced in the District Court for a variety of sexual and domestic violence offences. He received a sentence of 7 years, 6 months, with an (oddly specific) non-parole period of 5 years, 3 months and 2 days. That sentence was to date from 9 March 2021. The commencement date is important to this summary because the principal ground of appeal was that the sentencing judge had failed to backdate the sentence to take into account a period during which the applicant would have otherwise been on parole.

The Court (R A Hulme AJ, with whom Adamson JA and Button J agreed) observed that the sentencing judge had been provided with inaccurate information as to the applicant’s pre-sentence custody. The ‘Crown Sentence Summary’ ­– a pro-forma which will be familiar to any practitioner who has ever done a sentence matter prosecuted by the NSW DPP – noted the total time in custody was 2 years, 3 months and 2 days, of which the time ‘solely referable to subject offending’ was 1 year, 1 month and 4 days. For part of the time that the applicant had been in custody he had been serving an unrelated Local Court sentence.

You've reached the end of this article preview

There's more to read! Subscribe to LSJ today to access the rest of our updates, articles and multimedia content.

Subscribe to LSJ

Already an LSJ subscriber or Law Society member? Sign in to read the rest of the article.

Sign in to read more