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[2020] QCA 50
respondent. Leave to appeal against sentence was granted; the appeal was allowed only to correct order 3 to credit 571 days in custody and was otherwise dismissed.
No linked legislation citations have been extracted yet.
The Court did not find a reason to change the prison sentence or serious violent offence declaration. It did find that the order gave the wrong number of days the applicant had already spent in custody. It corrected that figure from 557 to 571 days. The appeal therefore succeeded only on that narrow point.
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2,239 words · generated 02/10/2026
Akol pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent. The Court of Appeal’s account says that the offending occurred after a group had been drinking. The complainant invited the group to continue the gathering at his home, but told Akol that he did not want him to come because he was too drunk. Akol went to the house anyway. After a physical altercation involving Akol and another person, the complainant asked those present to leave. Akol and several others did not leave. Akol took a 30-centimetre knife from the complainant’s kitchen and stabbed him six times.
The injuries were grave. The complainant was admitted to intensive care, spent six weeks in hospital and suffered severe internal injuries described by the Court as life-threatening. These circumstances formed the background to the sentence appeal, but the Court of Appeal’s task was not to retry the offence: Akol had pleaded guilty, and the appeal concerned the sentence and the accuracy of the custody credit recorded in the orders.
The judgment also recounted personal and sentencing material before the sentencing judge. Akol had immigrated to Australia with his family when he was about 11 or 12, having lived in Yemen and Sudan. He had previous convictions in Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland. The Court specifically referred to Victorian convictions between 2011 and 2016 for violent offences, including intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury, attempted robbery and assault in company. It also noted that he had committed several Queensland offences while subject to a Victorian community corrections order.
A psychological report suggested the possibility of an underlying condition related to his propensity for violence. The Court described the more significant feature of the report and the submissions as a pattern in which Akol, when stressed and overwhelmed, was liable to seek comfort in alcohol, and then engage in reckless and violent conduct. He expressed remorse, which the sentencing judge accepted as genuine and took into account.
The sentencing judge imposed eight years and nine months’ imprisonment with a serious violent offence declaration. The judgment says the judge considered submissions proposing sentences in the range of seven to 10 years for Akol and nine to 10 years for the prosecution, as well as relevant authorities. The judge also accounted for three months of incarceration that was non-declarable under the statute, reducing a nine-year sentence to eight years and nine months.
The appeal turned in part on a small but concrete record-keeping error. The sentencing judge had been told that Akol had spent 557 days in custody before sentence. The Court of Appeal was informed that the correct period was 571 days, from 9 February 2017 to 3 September 2018. It varied the custody order to record 571 days. The judgment contains no numbered paragraphs, so paragraph-number citations are unavailable; the references here are to the judgment’s stated passages and orders.
The Court separated the challenge to the sentence itself from the error in the custody declaration. On the first point, Sofronoff P said that Akol had not demonstrated an error of fact or an error in the application of principle, and that the Court had found none. The Court also considered whether the sentence was so severe that an error could be inferred from the outcome. It concluded that it did not appear to be.
That conclusion was supported in the judgment by a comparison with three sentencing authorities: R v Whittaker [2011] QCA 237, R v Nguyen [2006] QCA 542 and R v Eade [2005] QCA 148. The Court said the sentence was “not inconsistent with” cases dealing with similar incidents. The judgment does not set out the facts, sentences or reasoning in those authorities, so it supports only the limited observation that the Court regarded them as relevant comparators. It does not support a more detailed account of what those cases decided.
The Court’s short reasons do not identify a particular alleged error in the sentencing judge’s treatment of each individual factor. Instead, Sofronoff P records that the sentencing judge considered the relevant circumstances and authorities, and then states the appellate conclusion that no error had been demonstrated or found. Fraser JA and Callaghan J agreed. The judgment therefore records the outcome and the Court’s concise reasoning, but does not provide a lengthy analysis of how each mitigating or aggravating feature was weighted.
The custody issue was different. The Court had a specific discrepancy to resolve: the sentencing judge’s figure was 557 days, while the correct figure supplied to the Court was 571 days. The Court treated that as an important, although “minor”, issue. It replaced order 3 with wording that declared the 571-day period between the specified dates as time served. The alteration did not change the stated term of imprisonment; it corrected the order’s record of time already spent in custody.
The disposition captures that distinction. The application for leave to appeal was allowed, and the appeal was allowed to the extent of the correction. The Court otherwise dismissed the appeal. In its oral explanation to Akol, the Court said it had “dismissed your appeal except that we have made sure that the time that you have spent in custody is correct in the order.”
This judgment does not announce a new general rule of sentencing law or describe a change in the law. Its central result is an application of appellate review to the particular sentence and a correction to the particular custody order. It should therefore be read narrowly.
Before the Court of Appeal’s decision, the sentencing orders recorded 557 days in custody, despite the Court being informed that the actual period was 571 days. After the decision, order 3 recorded 571 days spent in custody between 9 February 2017 and 3 September 2018 as time served. That is the clearest “before and after” effect established by this judgment.
As to the sentence, the Court left the term of eight years and nine months and the serious violent offence declaration undisturbed. It found no demonstrated factual or principle error and did not consider the sentence so severe that error should be inferred. The judgment therefore illustrates that, on the material and arguments before this Court, the sentence was not altered merely because the applicant sought appellate review. It does not set out a comprehensive test for sentence appeals, nor does it explain the statutory operation of a serious violent offence declaration.
The reference to Whittaker, Nguyen and Eade shows that the Court considered the sentence in light of other cases involving similar incidents. But the judgment supplies no case summaries or comparative calculations. It would go beyond the source to describe those decisions’ rules, factual similarities or sentencing ranges. The safe statement is only that the Court said the sentence was not inconsistent with them.
The ruling on custody is similarly confined. The Court corrected an incorrect figure after being informed of the actual number of days. It does not explain the statutory framework for custody declarations, address how disputes about custody calculations are generally resolved, or discuss any consequences beyond substituting the correct count in this order.
The judgment says: “The applicant has not demonstrated, nor has the Court been able to find, any error of fact on the part of the learned sentencing Judge or any error in the application of principle.” In plain English, the Court did not accept that the applicant had shown the sentencing judge made a factual mistake or applied sentencing principles incorrectly. The Court also found no such error itself.
Sofronoff P added that “it does not appear that the sentence in itself is so severe as to indicate that some kind of an error must have been committed in the process of reasoning towards a conclusion.” This records the Court’s view that the length of the sentence did not, by itself, signal that the sentencing process must have gone wrong. It is a case-specific statement in a short judgment, not a detailed exposition of the law governing sentence appeals.
The Court described the custody discrepancy as an aspect “which, while minor, is nevertheless important.” It then identified the two figures: the sentencing judge acted on 557 days, while the Court was informed that the actual period was 571 days. In plain English, the error was limited in scope but mattered because the formal order needed to reflect the custody period the Court understood to be correct.
The substituted order read: “The 571 days spent in custody between 9 February 2017 and 3 September 2018 be declared as time served.” This is the operative correction. It identifies both the number of days and the relevant dates.
Finally, the Court told Akol that it had “dismissed your appeal except that we have made sure that the time that you have spent in custody is correct in the order.” That is a concise plain-language account of the mixed result: the sentence challenge otherwise failed, but the custody entry was corrected.
The judgment is most directly relevant to a sentence appeal in which the appellant challenges the sentence but the court finds no demonstrated factual or principle error and does not consider the sentence so severe that error can be inferred. Its stated facts involve a guilty plea to causing grievous bodily harm with intent, a serious stabbing, substantial injuries, prior violent offending, a psychological report, alcohol-related behaviour under stress, and accepted remorse. Those are the circumstances the Court recorded; the judgment does not say that any one factor alone determined the result.
A second, more specific pattern is where the custody period recorded in a sentencing order differs from the period established before the appeal court. Here, the discrepancy was between 557 and 571 days, and the Court changed the wording of the custody order. The precedent’s practical content is limited to the correction made on these facts. It does not explain how to resolve a contested custody calculation or what evidence must be provided in other cases.
The decision also offers a limited example of sentencing comparison. The Court stated that the sentence was not inconsistent with three identified Queensland Court of Appeal decisions concerning similar incidents. It does not specify the features that made those cases similar, so users should not treat the bare citations as a complete sentencing guide.
The judgment’s usefulness is therefore greatest when the question is about what this Court did with an inaccurate custody figure, or what it concluded about this particular sentence appeal. It is less suited to questions requiring a broad account of sentencing ranges, the statutory operation of a serious violent offence declaration, or a general statement of appellate principles beyond the language the Court used.
The supplied judgment contains no later decisions discussing R v Akol [2020] QCA 50. It also does not provide information about subsequent citation history. On this source alone, it is not possible to say whether later courts have followed, distinguished, applied or otherwise treated the decision.
Within the judgment itself, the Court cites R v Whittaker [2011] QCA 237, R v Nguyen [2006] QCA 542 and R v Eade [2005] QCA 148 as cases dealing with similar incidents. It says the sentence imposed was not inconsistent with them. That is the extent of the judgment’s discussion of those authorities; it does not reproduce their reasoning or describe their later treatment.
The panel consisted of Sofronoff P, Fraser JA and Callaghan J. Sofronoff P delivered the reasons reproduced in the judgment, and the other two judges agreed. The Court’s order was unanimous as presented in the text.
Several matters are not resolved by the judgment’s short reasons. First, the Court does not explain in detail which grounds of sentence appeal were advanced, or how particular submissions about the sentencing judge’s assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors were addressed. It records the overall conclusion that no error was demonstrated or found, but not a full factor-by-factor analysis.
Second, the judgment does not set out the facts or sentencing outcomes in Whittaker, Nguyen or Eade. It therefore leaves open what specific similarities the Court regarded as important, and what comparative sentencing analysis those authorities might support.
Third, although a psychological report suggested a possible underlying condition related to Akol’s propensity for violence, the reasons do not discuss any diagnosis, evidentiary disputes, treatment implications or the precise weight given to that report. The Court identifies alcohol use under stress as a significant feature of the material, but does not elaborate on how that feature affected the sentencing assessment.
Fourth, the judgment does not explain the statutory provisions governing the serious violent offence declaration or the “non-declarable” three months mentioned in the sentencing account. It records the declaration and the sentencing judge’s adjustment, but offers no broader statutory interpretation.
Finally, the Court accepts the 571-day custody figure as the information given to it and substitutes that figure in the order. It does not explain the method used to calculate the period or address any potential dispute about the dates. Those issues should not be filled in by inference from this judgment alone.
This is general legal information, not legal advice. Zoe can make mistakes. Before acting on this, relying on it or using any draft, have a qualified Australian lawyer check it.
Source: Queensland Judgments (Supreme Court Library Queensland) (www.queenslandjudgments.com.au). Converted to plain text by ZoeLaw. Not the official version.
[2020] QCA 50
COURT OF APPEAL
SOFRONOFF P
FRASER JA
CALLAGHAN J
CA No 3 of 2019
SC No 1761 of 2017
THE QUEEN
v
AKOL, Akol Deng Applicant
BRISBANE
FRIDAY, 20 MARCH 2020
JUDGMENT
SOFRONOFF P: The applicant pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent. The offence arose in the following way. There was a group of people who were drinking together, and at some point during that night the complainant invited the group to continue the party at his house. The complainant told the applicant that he did not wish him to join them because he was too drunk, but the applicant nevertheless went.
There was a physical altercation between the applicant and another person. The complainant then asked everybody to leave, but the applicant and several other people ignored that request. The applicant then obtained a 30 centimetre long knife from the complainant’s kitchen and attacked the complainant. He stabbed him six times, and the result of the stabbing was very serious for the complainant. He was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital and spent six weeks in hospital. He suffered severe internal injuries which were life-threatening.
The applicant is an immigrant to this country. He lived in Yemen and Sudan before his family immigrated to Australia when he was about 11 or 12. He did not at that point know how to speak English but went to school and gained some proficiency in the English language.
He has a previous criminal history in three states, namely, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland. It is unnecessary to deal with these in any detail. It is sufficient to mention that in Victoria between 2011 and 2016 he had been convicted of offences involving violence, including intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury, attempted robbery and assault in company. He was sentenced in Victoria to terms of imprisonment. In 2016 he was placed on a community corrections order in Victoria, and while subject to that order he committed several offences in Queensland.
A psychological report was prepared and submitted and read by the learned sentencing Judge. In substance, according to that report, it may be that the applicant has some kind of underlying condition that is related to his propensity for violence. The most significant fact that emerges from the submissions that were made on his behalf and from the report itself is that he is a person who is, for reasons to do with his upbringing and his history, liable, when stressed and overwhelmed, to find comfort in alcohol. When he does so, he engages in reckless and violent behaviour. That is consistent with the circumstances of the offence with which he has been charged.
The applicant expressed remorse for his actions, and the learned sentencing Judge accepted that the applicant was truly remorseful, and his Honour took that into account. At sentencing, the prosecution submitted that a sentence in the order of nine to 10 years imprisonment with a serious violent offence declaration would be appropriate. Counsel for the applicant submitted that a sentence in the range of seven to 10 years would be appropriate and was unable to make any substantial submissions against the imposition of a serious violent offence declaration.
It was in those circumstances and after a consideration of relevant authorities that his Honour decided that the appropriate sentence to impose was one of nine years imprisonment with a serious violent offence declaration. His Honour took into account three months of incarceration that was non-declarable under the statute and accordingly reduced the sentence from one of nine years to one of eight years and nine months imprisonment. The sentence imposed in that way is not inconsistent with cases dealing with similar incidents, namely, R v Whittaker [2011] QCA 237, R v Nguyen [2006] QCA 542 and R v Eade [2005] QCA 148.
The applicant has not demonstrated, nor has the Court been able to find, any error of fact on the part of the learned sentencing Judge or any error in the application of principle. In addition, it does not appear that the sentence in itself is so severe as to indicate that some kind of an error must have been committed in the process of reasoning towards a conclusion.
There is, however, one aspect which, while minor, is nevertheless important. It is that his Honour was given an incorrect figure for the number of days that the applicant had spent in custody prior to sentence. His Honour acted upon the basis that the applicant had spent 557 days in custody before being sentenced. In fact, as we have been informed this morning, the applicant spent 571 days in custody before being sentenced. To that extent, therefore, the application should be allowed and the sentence imposed below should be varied so that order number 3 reads:
“The 571 days spent in custody between 9 February 2017 and 3 September 2018 be declared as time served.”
Otherwise, I would dismiss the appeal.
FRASER JA: I agree.
CALLAGHAN J: I agree.
SOFRONOFF P: The order of the Court is that the application for leave to appeal against sentence is allowed. The appeal is allowed to the extent that order 3 is set aside and, in lieu thereof, order 3 should read:
“The 571 days spent in custody between 9 February 2017 and 3 September 2018 be declared as time served.”
Anything else, Ms Wooldridge?
MS WOOLDRIDGE: No. Thank you, your Honour.
SOFRONOFF P: Mr Akol, we have dismissed your appeal except that we have made sure that the time that you have spent in custody is correct in the order.
R
Akol [2020] QCA 50
Leave to appeal against sentence was granted; the appeal was allowed only to correct order 3 to credit 571 days in custody and was otherwise dismissed.