Vic: Judges speak out against sentencing law changes

AAP General News (Australia)
08-04-2008
Vic: Judges speak out against sentencing law changes

MELBOURNE, Aug 4 AAP - Two Victorian judges have hit out at a new law aimed at making
their sentences more accountable.

Changes to the Sentencing Act recommended by the state's Sentencing Advisory Committee
now require judges to declare what discount, if any, they award an offender following
a guilty plea, News Limited newspapers said today.

Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls said the measure did not undermine judicial discretion
but would increase sentencing transparency.

But in sentencing murderer Michael Flaherty to a minimum of 16 years' jail on July
22, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye said it was "highly artificial, if not impossible"

to ask him to ignore a guilty plea to determine what sentence he might have imposed.

He estimated "doing the best I can" that Flaherty's guilty plea reduced his sentence
by two years but said adding and subtracting time for aggravating or mitigating factors
distorted an approach long considered correct, the newspaper said.

County Court Judge Leo Hart said the new law asked him to "venture into hypothesis"

and he was "unable to comply sensibly or rationally" with it as he sentenced Geoffrey
Bromilow to 16 months' jail, with all but three months suspended, for a charge of dangerous
driving causing death.

"I can say a plea of guilty has a mitigatory effect on sentence, and I can say it would
have been a longer one, but that's all I can sensibly say."

The new laws came into effect on July 1.

AAP jrd/wf

KEYWORD: JUDGES VIC

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