Where unchallenged expert psychiatric evidence establishes that an offender was floridly psychotic at the time of offending and the psychosis was causally linked to the offending, moral culpability should be very substantially reduced if not eliminated entirely, and the sentencing considerations of denunciation, general and specific deterrence are all but eliminated. A sentencing judge is not entitled to reject such unchallenged expert opinion in the absence of a sound foundation for doing so. A lay witness's assessment of mental state is wholly overtaken by expert psychiatric opinion. In such cases, a community correction order with treatment conditions may be the appropriate disposition even for serious sexual offending, where community protection is best served by addressing the psychiatric causes of offending.
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