Background
Raymond Fritz pleaded guilty in the District Court at Armidale to four principal offences — two counts of armed robbery (with co-offender Wesley Blair, variously armed with a machete and screwdriver), one count of taking a conveyance without consent, and one count of aggravated break and enter while armed — all committed over ten days in September and October 2023. The robberies targeted an apprentice baker at a bakery in the early hours of the morning and a hotel cleaner at a rear entrance before dawn. The aggravated break and enter involved Fritz forcing through a locked door while armed with a metre-long piece of wood, encountering the victim’s elderly father inside. A further armed robbery of an 85-year-old man and several drug possession offences were taken into account on a Form 1.
Payne DCJ sentenced Fritz in the District Court on 25 October 2024 to an aggregate term of eight years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of four years and three months, commencing 10 October 2023 and incorporating a 25% discount for the utilitarian value of his guilty pleas. The indicative sentence for the aggravated break and enter — an offence attracting a standard non-parole period (SNPP) of five years under s 112(2) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) — was four years three months with an indicative non-parole period of two years six months. Her Honour found special circumstances and moderated both general deterrence and moral culpability in light of Fritz’s severely dysfunctional upbringing, youth, drug dependency, and genuine remorse, applying the principles in Bugmy v The Queen (2013) 249 CLR 571.
Fritz sought leave to appeal on two grounds: first, that the Sentencing Judge erred by failing to assess the objective seriousness of the aggravated break and enter on a notional scale of seriousness; and second, that the aggregate sentence was manifestly excessive.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Criminal Appeal (Sirtes J, with Free JA and Rigg J agreeing) granted leave to appeal but dismissed both grounds. On Ground 1, the Court confirmed — consistently with the High Court’s analysis in Muldrock v The Queen (2011) 244 CLR 120 and this Court’s recent decision in Daher v R [2026] NSWCCA 26 — that there is no requirement to locate a finding of objective seriousness on a putative or notional range, even where an offence carries a standard non-parole period. What the sentencing judge must do is identify the facts, matters and circumstances that bear on the gravity of the crime. Section 54B(6) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) expressly confirms this. Here, the Sentencing Judge described each offence in detail, enumerated the aggravating features — including the vulnerability of the victims (an elderly father encountered in the home, a cleaner approached before dawn, a victim asleep in bed) — and characterised the totality of the conduct as “very serious.” That global assessment, made ex tempore, disclosed no error and was not required to be expressed in any particular form.
On Ground 2, the Court held that no misapplication of the totality principle was apparent. While an applicant may use indicative sentences as a guide to error in an aggregate sentence, the Court reiterated that neither an excess in individual indicative sentences nor an arguably elevated comparison against Judicial Information Research System (JIRS) statistics is, without more, sufficient to establish that an aggregate sentence is manifestly excessive. The Sentencing Judge was not required to specify the precise degree of accumulation and concurrence applied. Nor was there any suggestion that her Honour had misapplied the guideline judgment in R v Henry (1999) 46 NSWLR 346. The aggregate sentence was within the available range given the gravity and multiplicity of the offending.
Key Takeaways
- A sentencing judge is not required to place objective seriousness on a hypothetical scale of low-to-high seriousness, even for offences carrying a standard non-parole period; what matters is a full identification of the facts, matters and circumstances bearing on the gravity of the offence.
- Ex tempore sentencing remarks are to be read fairly and with allowance for the pressures of a busy court — shortcomings in structure or precision of expression do not necessarily disclose error.
- JIRS sentencing statistics are of limited utility in establishing manifest excess; even if indicative sentences appear “arguably high” against comparable cases, that alone will not ground appellate intervention in an aggregate sentence.
- There is no obligation on a sentencing judge imposing an aggregate sentence to articulate specifically the degree of accumulation and concurrence applied to the indicative sentences.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the settled position — recently reaffirmed in Daher — that the standard non-parole period regime does not impose an obligation to grade objective seriousness on a numerical or descriptive scale. Defence practitioners who challenge sentences on the basis that a judge failed to situate an SNPP offence within a low/mid/high range will face a high threshold: the question is whether the judge identified the relevant facts and circumstances, not whether they applied a particular verbal formula. The decision also serves as a practical reminder that guideline judgments and statistical benchmarks function as checks on, not substitutes for, the holistic sentencing discretion.
For practitioners, the case underscores the difficulty of challenging aggregate sentences through comparison of indicative sentences with JIRS data. The focus of any manifest excess challenge must be the aggregate sentence and overall totality of criminality, rather than a forensic dissection of individual indicative terms against statistical averages.