The Crown appealed the conditional sentences imposed on two black single mothers who pleaded guilty to importing cocaine.
The trial judge had introduced his own research on systemic racial and gender bias, concluding these factors mitigated their culpability and justified conditional sentences.
The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge overstepped his role by acting as advocate, witness, and judge, and erred in principle by imposing conditional sentences for a serious offence like importing cocaine.
Although the appropriate sentences would have been custodial terms of 20 months and two years less a day, the Court dismissed the appeal because the respondents had already served 17 months of their conditional sentences, and incarcerating them now would cause undue hardship.
