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Comment by rootsudo | Hacker News Reader

He didn't really walk away:

"A 24-year-old Australian man who ordered uranium and plutonium to his parents’ apartment has been allowed to walk away from court on a two-year good behaviour bond.

After ordering various radioactive samples over the internet in an effort to collect the entire periodic table, Emmanuel Lidden pleaded guilty to two charges: moving nuclear material into Australia and possessing nuclear material without a permit.

While his actions were criminal, the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent"

The court established he had mental helath issues and has 2 years probation basically.

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"Mental health issues" sounds like both a fig leaf for the prosecution and a last-ditch smear of the man involved. Now he's stuck being publicly associated not just with "criminal", but "criminal with mental health issues".

> "Mental health issues" sounds like both a fig leaf for the prosecution and a last-ditch smear of the man involved.

Mental health issues shouldn't be seen as a smear though – is it a smear if someone has physical health issues (who doesn't, at least from time-to-time?)

A recent study carried out on behalf of the Australian government estimated that 43% of Australians aged 18-to-65 had experienced mental illness at some time in their lives, and 22% at some time in the last 12 months.

The same study estimates that in the 12 months prior to the study, 17% of Australians had an anxiety disorder, 8% an affective disorder (depression or bipolar), 3% a substance use disorder.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/overview/prevalence-an...

It shouldn't be, but it is.

No doubt to some people it is, but to a lot of people it isn’t. It isn’t a smear to me, nor to many people I know.

This is entirely missing the point. Until more or less everybody shares this opinion, being publicly labeled as such will still have adverse effects.

You can say the same about a lot of other things, e.g. being divorced, being in a same-sex relationship, being adopted: somebody out there will judge you negatively for it, but fearing their judgement is part of what gives it power.

The stigma for mental issues is still a lot more severe than sexuality etc, and the court knows they can do it without consequences. Mental health issues are often viewed as a moral failing or a weakness of a person who can't get their life sorted out, a bit like how people are judged for laziness. Very easy to stick to a "criminal" without anyone batting an eye.

If the judge instead said "this guy's not that bad, he's just gay" it wouldn't go over so well.

The mental health evidence is introduced by the defence, not the prosecution. In most cases, the prosecution has no interest in raising defendant’s alleged mental heath issues (since it may well result in a lighter sentence, in more extreme cases even be grounds for an acquittal), while the interests of the defence is obvious.

And if the defence introduces mental health evidence into the sentencing, the judge is legally obliged to rule on it - explaining whether it was accepted or not, and if it was, how big an impact it had on the sentencing decision-if the judge didn’t do that, they risk either party successfully appealing the sentence, in extreme cases even being disciplined.

And even if it is a “plea deal” - the sentencing procedure is fundamentally the same as if there isn’t one, it is just the prosecution commits not to ask for a harsher sentence than agreed, the defence still has to introduce mitigating evidence and the judge has to rule on it; if the defence doesn’t, there’s a risk the judge may decide the agreed sentence is too lenient and overrule the agreement.

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