A Court is to give very strong consideration to jointly recommended proposals for disposition in a criminal matter

R. v. Lawrence, 2011 NSCA 84 deals with the responsibility of a Court to give very strong consideration to jointly recommended proposals for disposition in a criminal matter.  A joint submission resulting from a plea bargain, while not binding on the Court, should be given very serious consideration.   This requires the sentencing judge to do more than assess whether it is a sentence he or she would have imposed absent the joint submission: see, e.g., R. v. Thomas 2000 MBCA 148 (CanLII), (2000), 153 Man. R. (2d) 98 (C.A.) at para. 6.  It requires the sentencing judge to assess whether the jointly submitted sentence is within an acceptable range - in other words, whether it is a fit sentence. If it is, there must be sound reasons for departing from it: see, for example, R. v. MacDonald 2001 NSCA 26 (CanLII), (2001), 191 N.S.R. (2d) 399; N.S.J. 51 (Q.L.)(N.S.C.A.); R. v. Tkachuk 2001 ABCA 243 (CanLII), (2001), 159 C.C.C. (3d) 434 (Alta. C.A.) at para. 32; R. v. C.(G.W.) 2000 ABCA 333 (CanLII), (2000), 150 C.C.C. (3d) 513 at paras. 17-18; R. v. Bezdan, [2001] B.C.J. No. 808 (C.A.) at paras. 14-15; R. v. Thomas, supra, at paras. 5-6; R. v. B.(B.), 2002 Carswell NWT 17 (N.T.C.A.) at para. 3; R. v. Webster 2001 SKCA 72 (CanLII), (2001), 207 Sask. R. 257 (C.A.) at para. 7.   Even where the proposed sentence may appear to the judge to be outside an acceptable range, the judge ought to give it serious consideration, bearing in mind that even with all appropriate disclosure to the Court, there are practical constraints on disclosure of important and legitimate factors which may have influenced the joint recommendation.

 

The Court in Lawrence wrties:

 

 

 

[7]              We agree.  The trial judge erred by refusing to accept a perfectly reasonable and appropriate sentence which was jointly recommended by counsel, and then failing to follow well-settled law that must be applied whenever a judge chooses to depart from joint submissions on sentence which accompany negotiated admissions of guilt.  See for example, R. v. MacIvor, 2003 NSCA 60 (CanLII), 2003 NSCA 60; R. v. Zinck, 2003 SCC 6 (CanLII), 2003 SCC 6; and R. v. Wright, 2010 NSCA 30 (CanLII), 2010 NSCA 30.