A sentencing judge dealing with a mentally disabled offender must separately address each of the ways mental illness affects sentencing: its contribution to the offending, its effect on culpability, its impact on both general and specific deterrence, and the harsher experience of imprisonment. Merely reducing the weight of general deterrence is insufficient where the offender also has significantly reduced intellectual functioning. Where a Table 1 offence could have been dealt with in the Local Court and the facts do not make it unsuitable for summary disposal, the sentencing judge must take the Local Court jurisdictional limit into account.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 6 later cases that cite this judgment.
1 of the 6 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.