Jesse Bering:

In other words, sexsomniacs are basically lascivious zombies. There’s presently no way to determine with absolute certainty if the phenomenon, when invoked as a defense, was really the cause or just a really convenient alibi. Still, certain criteria (detailed sleep pattern data from a nocturnal polysomnography, or PSG; sleepwalking and sleep-related sex in the past; known trigger factors, such as intoxication, fatigue, and stress; timeline of the alleged assault, since episodes typically occur within two hours of sleep onset during non-REM sleep; amnesia for the event; no attempt to conceal or “cover up” the incident, but instead confusion) can at least aid a jury in its decision-making. It’s tempting, to say the least, to be skeptical that a sleepwalker could act so purposefully as to fiddle successfully with a condom wrapper yet be conscious as an orthopteron, but London sleep researcher Irshaad Ebrahim reminds us that sleepwalking behaviors are highly variable and can be very detail-oriented, citing people preparing meals and eating, driving motorbikes and cars, even riding horses, all while getting a good night’s sleep.

Sex, Sleep and the Law: When Nocturnal Genitals Pose a Moral Dilemma

Peter Watts, in response to the culpability of unconscious acts:

It all comes down to what qualifies as “I”. A lot of people seem to think that “I” is the conscious self, the little illusory homunculus looking out through the eyes and experiencing qualia. If that’s the case, then yes: Libetian1 experiments demonstrate pretty convincingly that “we” have no free will. But over at the other end of the bleachers, the People’s Front of Judea argue that “I” am more than the conscious subroutine: I am the whole damn brain in all its glory, the thing making the decisions and the thing sending the memo as well as the pointy-haired boss who ultimately receives it and hogs all the credit. A decision is a decision, argues the JPF, regardless of whether it is made consciously or otherwise.

And you know, I have to agree with them. What is the conscious self, after all? A short-term cache; a scratch pad; the little post-it note used to remind you to pick up a dozen eggs on the way home from work. The damn thing is barely big enough to hold a telephone number, for chrissakes; some folks claim that the bandwidth of conscious experience is a measly 20 bits/sec. Do you really want to define your self-model as something so limited? Do you really want to cram the human soul onto a post-it note?

A Prick in a Poke: Penises and the Preconscious Mind

And Robin Hanson: 

To conclude from this that unconscious acts should be forgiven, however, one must presume that unconscious mind harms are unplanned or are accidental side effects of other plans. Yet almost all conscious plans are first made unconsciously. So why should we presume unconscious acts are never planned?

Punish Sleep-Rape