Lauren Cassimatis

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471 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 28 Jun

Lauren Cassimatis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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Australian True Crime · The Only Australian Woman Sentenced to Life Without Parole · 25 Jun 2026 podcast

And so what happens with mental impairment and fitness is that

Without getting into really complicated legal jargon, if you're deemed unfit to plead, that means you're unfit to partake in a trial.

That means who are you right now?

So if I was brought to court right now for a trial and psychiatrists felt that I just did not have the mental capacity or cognitive ability to understand what was happening right now, I'd be deemed unfit.

To stand trial.

Correct.

But what if you were like that when you committed the crime?

So that's a mental impairment defence.

So that's the other type of, if I can say, unfitness.

So with mental impairment, there has to be some very solid psychiatric evidence and usually a prosecution call their own experts as well.

to support the fact that you just could not understand at all that what you were committing was a crime or even a wrongdoing.

So I had a client, for example, who had severe schizophrenia and he was at a train station here in Melbourne and

was pushing people onto the train tracks.

But there was all sorts of evidence to suggest that he was hearing voices.

The police, when they entered his house, found graffiti on the wall, his own blood, where he's sending the demons off and begging for the demons to let him be.

And the prosecution's psychiatric expert and the defences were both on the same page, that he had no idea what was going on.

He could not control his actions.

He could not even understand what he was doing was wrong.

He was being told by these voices that these people were evil and he needed to save the world and rid them.

So that is mental impairment.

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