The Verdins principles do not dictate automatic mitigation of sentence merely because an offender suffers from mental illness; cogent evidence of a causal relationship between the illness and the offending is required. A sentencing judge is not obliged to address every Verdins factor as a checklist, and where an offender is represented by counsel, the judge is not ordinarily required to consider effects of psychiatric disability beyond those expressly relied upon by counsel. A Pemble-type obligation to consider defences not raised does not apply in the sentencing context.
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