A diagnosis of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder does not automatically find expression in sentence; what matters is the offender's functioning and its demonstrated connection to the offending. Evidence of impaired executive functioning may cut both ways — potentially reducing moral culpability but also undermining a case based on rehabilitation prospects and increasing the weight to be given to specific deterrence. Practitioners seeking to adduce new evidence of neurodevelopmental impairment on sentence appeal must consider whether the evidence would necessarily have resulted in a lesser sentence, given its capacity to undermine the subjective case already led.
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