When sentencing a mentally ill offender, the cause or origin of the mental illness — whether 'primary', 'secondary', or 'derivative' — is irrelevant to the assessment of moral culpability; what matters is the offender's mental state at the time of the offending. Post-offence recovery from mental illness is similarly irrelevant to moral culpability and the weight to be given to general deterrence. The parity principle applies even where co-offenders stand for sentence on materially different bases (here, murder and manslaughter), and a marked disparity may give rise to a justifiable sense of grievance warranting appellate intervention. The reach of s 22(1)(c) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) remains largely unexplored.
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