ACT laws are still preventing appeal judges from reducing non-parole periods for excessive sentences in some cases, despite calls for legislative reform last year.
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The problem prevented the ACT Court of Appeal on Wednesday from reducing the earliest release date of Jackson Allred, 22, despite finding his sentence was "manifestly excessive".
Allred was sentenced to five years and six months imprisonment in June 2013, for a plot to rob an occasional drug dealer of cash and drugs at his home.
The plan was hatched with a prisoner of the Alexander Maconochie Centre, who wanted to pay off a drug debt he incurred after accidentally consuming drugs smuggled into the prison for other inmates.
Police intercepted Allred and others before the armed robbery could be carried out.
Allred appealed his sentence to the ACT Court of Appeal, an appeal that was upheld in a judgment handed down on Wednesday.
The court found it was not a gravely serious example of the offence, and that Allred was still youthful and without a serious criminal record.
The three judges – justices Richard Refshauge, John Burns, and Hilary Penfold – found the sentence was manifestly excessive when compared to similar sentences for aggravated robbery, and say the disparity is "not easily explained".
They reduced his maximum sentence by a year, to four years and six months.
But the court encountered a difficulty when trying to adjust Allred's non-parole period.
Allred had been sentenced for other offences in the ACT Magistrates Court, taking his total term of imprisonment up from five years and six months to six years, with a non-parole period of four years and nine months.
He has already successfully appealed the Magistrates Court sentence, securing a reduction in his non-parole period.
Because he had already had his non-parole period altered in the earlier resentencing exercise, it could not be interfered with again on Wednesday, save to increase it.
That left the ACT Court of Appeal powerless to reduce the non-parole period, despite its findings that the sentence was manifestly excessive.
"This is a most unsatisfactory situation," the judges wrote.
"Where a sentence earlier imposed is set aside on appeal, the court should be able to give full effect to the court's decision."
"This is not the first case where this problem has been encountered and which has the potential adversely and unfairly to affect the interests of an offender."
The same problem was encountered last year, prompting Justice Refshauge to call for legislative reform.
No such reforms have taken place.
"As a result, Mr Allred will have to serve the full period of the non-parole period set for the later sentence, even though it was based on an earlier sentence that has been significantly reduced in overall length," the judges wrote on Wednesday.
Allred will be eligible for parole at the same date of 6 January, 2017.
