A 17-year jail sentence handed down to a Canberra man who robbed and brutally murdered Liang Zhao on Northbourne Avenue was ''manifestly inadequate'', a court has heard.
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But lawyers for the offender, who cannot be named because he was a juvenile at the time of the incident, argue the sentence was fair given his age.
Mr Zhao, a 27-year-old university graduate, was walking along the busy thoroughfare hoping to be picked up by his mother after he arrived in Civic from Melbourne one night in August 2011.
The juvenile and his co-offender, Taylor Schmidt, had armed themselves with a machete and baseball bat with the intention of committing a robbery, and were walking towards the city.
They confronted Mr Zhao, knocked him to the ground and dragged him several metres from the footpath where they took his mobile phone and $21 cash.
Schmidt struck Mr Zhao with the bat.
The juvenile then tried to frighten Mr Zhao into silence by swinging the machete in a threatening manner and telling him to ''be quiet, shut up, don't tell the cops''.
The pair then fatally beat him, breaking his skull and leaving his brain exposed.
Mr Zhao's bloodied and battered body was discovered on the road at Braddon about 6.40am on August 4.
The juvenile, who was 17 at the time of the murder, and Schmidt, 22, pleaded guilty to murder in the Supreme Court last year.
The young man wrote a letter, read out at a September sentencing hearing, in which he apologised to Mr Zhao's family and his own for the pain and suffering he had caused.
The offender was sentenced to 17 years' jail in October last year.
He will be released from custody in 2022, aged 28.
His co-offender was sentenced to 20 years and six months in jail.
ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Jon White told a full bench of the ACT Court of Appeal on Monday there was nothing in the police facts to suggest the younger man played a ''lesser role'' in the brutal murder.
Mr White argued a longer sentence was justified as the offence was very serious and adult-like, and the juvenile had been close to 18-years-old when he committed the crime.
He said the rehabilitation provisions often afforded to juveniles were designed for ''run-of-the-mill situations with young offenders''.
''They were really clearly not drafted thinking about such a serious offence by someone so close to 18.''
Mr White said the court should consider whether the offender's age, the nature of the crime, his criminal history and other similar criminal cases, justified the disparity between the head sentences handed down to the two men.
The three-and-a-half year difference made the younger offender's sentence appear ''manifestly inadequate'', Mr White said.
But Barrister Steven Whybrow argued the sentence handed down to the young man was valid and appropriate.
He said there should be some difference between the length of the jail sentences for the two men, given the gap in their ages.
The full bench of the Court of Appeal - consisting of Justice Helen Murrell, Justice John Burns and Justice Iain Ross - has reserved its decision.
