AN ANALYSIS OF A RECENT CRIMINAL TRIAL INVOLVING SEXUAL MISCONDUCT WITH A CHILD, ALCOHOL-ABUSE AND A SUCCESSFUL SLEEPWALKING DEFENSE - ARGUMENTS SUPPORTING 2 PROPOSED NEW FORENSIC CATEGORIES

The final judgment from a recent criminal trial in the British Columbi a (Canada) Supreme Court is summarized and discussed. The trial involv ed sexual misconduct with a child, excessive alcohol use, and a succes sful 'sleepwalking (SW) defence' (non-insane automatism). Our comments on this trial provide an opportunity to present our arguments buttres sing two newly proposed forensic categories: (i) parasomnia with conti nuing danger as a non-insane automatism, which originally was proposed for cases involving recurrent, sleep-related violence, but which can also be applied to SW cases involving sleep-related sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse (and other high-risk self-abusive behaviours); (ii) (intermittent) state-dependent continuing danger, an intermediate cate gory within the 'continuing danger' concept, with the core feature bei ng that a person acquitted of a criminal charge on the basis of the 'S W defence' (or some other parasomnia defence), in which the SW episode was provoked by a high-risk behaviour (e.g. alcohol intoxication) sho uld bear full legal culpability for any future episode that was provok ed by a recurrence of the high-risk behaviour - provided that the indi vidual had wilfully engaged in that behaviour.