Some defences are real and some are excuses. That is why we have a legal system that attempts to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I think we need to be more analytical with sweeping generalisations.
But it seems that every time someone is up before the courts these days, their defence is that it wasn't their fault due to some illness/condition/past treatment/ethnicity etc etc. Enough with the excuses!
Where is the evidence for this statement? Perhaps it's true perhaps it's not. Perhaps those 'excuses' when properly tested after being claimed, are in fact upheld.
We learn more and more about the mind and it's effects all the time, however, because unlike a broken limb, it's not obvious, we tend not to believe it. How could someone's mind make them do that???
Now, if this person is found guilty, then of course there should be consequences, I have never claimed otherwise. Those consequences should reflect the damaged caused and the causal factors behind those actions.
I fear we are becoming a non thinking society that simply accepts what we are told without giving proper analytical consideration to it.
As for the increase in Autism diagnosis, there are a number of possible factors, diagnostic substitution, or a change in diagnostic criteria, are but two.