Physical disabilities, not just impaired mental functioning, are relevant to the burden of imprisonment as a mitigating factor in sentencing, consistent with the Verdins framework. Where an offender suffers from severe cerebral palsy making incarceration significantly more onerous, this must be given considerable weight in the sentencing synthesis alongside other mitigating factors. A sentence that implies offending is an extremely serious example of the offence must be supportable by the objective gravity of the offending, and cannot be sustained where the injuries were superficial and the mitigating circumstances were numerous and weighty.
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