Everett v The Queen; Phillips v The Queen

These proceedings before the High Court of Australia concerned applications for special leave to appeal by Dwayne Edward Everett and Phillipa Phillips. The applicants sought to challenge decisions regarding their sentences. The core issue presented to the Court was the principles that govern an application by the Attorney-General for leave to appeal against a sentence, and more specifically, the factors to be taken into account when considering such an application.

The applicants contended that there was no authoritative statement of principle applicable to these leave applications. While the Court had previously made some comments in *Malvaso* concerning relevant factors for the exercise of discretion to grant leave, these were observations from a dissenting judgment. The applicants sought to distill the principles further, questioning whether the observations of Chief Justice Barwick and Justice Murphy in *Griffiths* regarding appeals by the Attorney-General, which suggested such appeals should be rare and primarily for establishing matters of principle, applied to applications for leave to appeal.

The Court was invited to consider the passage from *Griffiths* where Chief Justice Barwick stated that an appeal by the Attorney-General should be a rarity, brought only to establish some matter of principle to guide sentencing courts. The applicants argued that the judgments below were divergent in their approaches to the application for leave as distinct from the appeal itself, and that the context in which *Griffiths* was cited in the lower courts was not entirely clear. The Court indicated that it would need to be demonstrated that there was an error of principle affecting the exercise of discretion.