Victim impact statements serve a primarily therapeutic purpose and sentencing judges should not act on assertions of fact in such statements (including lay diagnoses of medical and psychiatric conditions) that are neither self-evidently correct nor known by the accused to be correct, without the prosecution calling supporting evidence. A sentence of six years' imprisonment with a recommendation for post-prison community-based release after two and a half years was within range for unlawful wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm involving a single machete blow to the head causing a deep laceration requiring sutures but no permanent injury, where the complainant entered the applicant's property and there was a timely plea of guilty.
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