Office of ACT Director of Public Prosecutions winning record number of appeals

The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions succeeded in the majority of cases it took to the ACT Court of Appeal last financial year.

Notable successes included the matter of remorseless killer Jayscen Newby, who had four years added to the two-decade jail term that was initially imposed over the brutal Charnwood stabbing murder of his former partner's Tinder date.

Others include two child sex offenders, who cannot be named for legal reasons, having their prison stints stiffened after the prosecution launched what have historically been called Crown appeals.

Seven Crown appeals were filed in the ACT Court of Appeal during the year ending June 30, with some still awaiting determination and others, including a bid to lengthen the 20-year sentence handed to Kokomo's nightclub killer Frederick Tuifua, yet to be argued.

Amid raging community debate about the effectiveness of sentencing in the territory, Shane Drumgold SC said his office had succeeded in a "significantly higher" number of Court of Appeal cases in 2021-22 than in previous years.

"Most of the Crown appeals sought to address sentences for murder and child sexual offending that we considered fell clearly short of community standards for offending of this type," the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions wrote in the latest ACT Bar Bulletin.

"At least half of the Crown appeals to the Court of Appeal were successful, and in total, the Crown were successful in 68 [per cent] of all appeals to the ACT Court of Appeal."

He wrote that his office had also initiated 15 per cent of last financial year's ACT Supreme Court appeals, challenging decisions made in the Magistrates Court.

"In total, the DPP were successful in 56 [per cent] of all appeals from the Magistrates Court to the Supreme Court," Mr Drumgold wrote.

Speaking to The Canberra Times, Mr Drumgold stressed that Crown appeals must be "rare and exceptional".

He said they had to be limited to circumstances in which an error of principle needed correcting, where a sentence did not reflect legitimate community expectations, or when a penalty was so disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime it was manifestly unjust.

"Part of our appeal role might be to look at a particular category of offending, like murder, for example, and we might think that murder sentences are shifting too far down," Mr Drumgold said.

"And what happens is, if we let that go unaddressed, you end up with a collection of precedents that become the precedence.

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"So our job is to make sure that the ... precedents are correct and reflect community values."

Mr Drumgold added that one of the most valuable things about the ACT Court of Appeal was that three judges, at least one of whom usually came from outside the jurisdiction, collectively reviewed decisions of a single judicial officer.

He said this guarded against precedents being "skewed" by, for example, one judge sentencing five different murderers and taking a particularly lenient view that would later bind other judicial officers.

Sentencing of criminal offenders has been a hot topic in the capital recently, with the likes of the Australian Federal Police Association and Tom McLuckie, whose son Matthew was killed in a car crash earlier this year, leading calls for reviews of the justice system.

A consistent feature of the ongoing community debate has been the suggestion that sentences are "soft", with too much emphasis placed on the rehabilitation of offenders and not enough on the other six purposes of sentencing. These include deterrence of others.

Mr Drumgold referred to these purposes in his comments to The Canberra Times, noting that rehabilitation, while an important factor in sentencing, was only one of many considerations.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the number of successful prosecution appeals was "significantly higher" in 2021-22 than in previous years. As a result of incorrect information published in the ACT Bar Bulletin, it previously said the number of prosecution appeals filed was "significantly higher".

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