R v Mema

The appeal concerned the sentence imposed on the appellant, who had pleaded guilty to two counts of trafficking in a large commercial quantity of cannabis. The appellant was sentenced to a single term of six years imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years. The appeal was heard by Vanstone, Kourakis, and Peek JJ.

The central legal issues before the court were whether the sentence imposed was manifestly excessive, whether the sentencing judge had given undue weight to the principle of deterrence, whether insufficient credit had been given for the appellant's guilty pleas, and whether the sentence was excessive when compared to the sentence imposed on a co-offender for one of the counts.

The court dismissed the appeal, finding the sentence to be moderate for the nature of the offending. Regarding the comparison with a co-offender, Attenborough, the court held that the parity principle did not strictly apply as the appellant faced two offences while Attenborough faced only one. The court also rejected the argument that the use of section 18A of the Criminal Law (Sentencing) Act 1988 (SA) to impose a single sentence without a notional division between the offences indicated error, stating that such practice is unexceptional, particularly for offences of a similar type representing an ongoing criminal enterprise. The court concluded that the appellant could not properly feel aggrieved by the co-offender's sentence.