Sentencing in complicity cases — abettors, accessories and other secondary participants (Part 2)
This Sentencing Trends and Issues paper discusses sentencing offenders whose criminal liability is framed on the basis of either being a secondary participant who aided, abetted, counselled or procured the commission of an offence or as an accessory after the fact to an offence. Part 1, Joint criminal enterprise, discussed joint enterprise and extended common purpose. The liability of a person convicted of a crime on the basis of joint enterprise or extended common purpose is, in the words of Hayne J, “separate from the liability of an accessory before the fact, who counsels or procures the commission of the crime; it is separate from the liability of a principal in the second degree, who aids or abets in the commission of the crime.”