The Court entered special verdicts of not guilty by reason of mental impairment for two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault, where the accused — already subject to a conditional release order for prior attempted murders — attacked students on the ANU campus while suffering from chronic, treatment-resistant schizophrenia. The Court nominated life imprisonment as the term for each attempted murder count, holding that this was the proportionate penalty warranted by the exceptional circumstances including the accused's treatment-resistant illness, his demonstrated ability to conceal psychotic symptoms from experienced clinicians, and the extreme seriousness of the near-fatal attacks. The Court adopted [name withheld]'s analysis in [name withheld] that nominated terms function as upper limits on detention analogous to the proportionality principle in [name withheld] (No 2), and do not constitute sentences, such that the ACAT should not refuse release solely because a nominated term has not expired.
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