[132]Those sentencing objectives also reflect the primary sentencing considerations that have been taken into account for terrorism offending in Australia and the United Kingdom.[1] Personal mitigating factors, including rehabilitation, are to be given less weight.[2] Because of the ideological motivations of terrorism offenders, community protection and general deterrence are to be afforded greater importance notwithstanding that the force of such motivations may mean that such deterrence may not be effective.[3] However, an order to serve a sentence of life imprisonment without parole can only attach, in this country, to a sentence imposed for murder.
Sentence of life imprisonment without parole
[133]An order that a murderer serve their sentence of life imprisonment without parole has not previously been made in this country. This Court has taken the view in the particular circumstances of other cases that the requisite objectives of sentencing could be achieved by the imposition of a finite minimum term.[4] That approach has been taken in the knowledge that the sentence of life imprisonment means just that. Unless after the elapse of the minimum period of imprisonment the Parole Board can be satisfied that an offender can be safely released into the community, a person sentenced to life imprisonment will spend the rest of their life in prison.
[134]The longest minimum non-parole period imposed in this country was 30 years for the murder of three people and the attempted murder of another during the course of an aggravated robbery.[5] A sentence of life imprisonment without parole was not
- ↑ R v Alou (No 4) [2018] NSWSC 221, (2018) 330 FLR 402 at [165], as cited by Taylor J in R v Shoma [2019] VSC 367 at [54]; R v Lodhi [2006] NSWSC 691, (2006) 199 FLR 364 at [92]; Lodhi v The Queen [2007] NSWCCA 360, (2007) 179 A Crim R 470 at [274]; and R v Khazaal [2009] NSWSC 1015 at [47].
- ↑ Alou (No 4), above n 13, at [166]; R v Lodhi, above n 13, at [89]; Lodhi v The Queen, above n 13, at [274]; Khazaal, above n 13, at [41]; and Regina v Kahar [2016] EWCA Crim 568, [2016] 1 WLR 3156 at [19].
- ↑ Alou (No 4), above n 13, at [167]–[169]; and Director of Public Prosecutions (Cth) v Besim [2017] VSCA 158 at [112]–[113].
- ↑ R v McLaughlin [2013] NZHC 2625 at [32]; and R v Tainui [2019] NZHC 626 at [53].
- ↑ R v Bell CA80/03, 7 August 2003. The next longest minimum periods of imprisonment (MPIs)imposed on life sentences in New Zealand to date are as follows:
- (a) Tainui, above n 16 — 28 years. Mr Tainui broke into the victim’s home and waited overnight for her to return. He bound and gagged her before raping her, then stabbed her, strangled her, and cut her throat nearly to the point of decapitation. He had committed an almost identical murder in 1994.
- (b) R v Tully [2016] NZHC 1133 — 27 years. Mr Tully was found guilty on two charges of murder and one of attempted murder after entering the offices of Work and Income New Zealand with a pump-action shotgun. He fired the shotgun at four employees,
