Ex-Theranos CEO Holmes puts mental state at issue
reuters.com
reuters.com
Ok, so my theory is that based on the expert her lawyers are calling, they are going to argue that Sunny groomed/abused Holmes over the course of their relationship (probably by calling attention to the age difference/power dynamic difference when they first met), which left her with trauma that led to her making the decisions she made.
So “Battered Woman Syndrome” [1] but applied to fraud instead of assault/murder.
If that’s the case, it really seems like they aren’t going to argue that Holmes didn’t deceive and commit fraud, but that her PTSD is a defense.
Novel. This may have worked in the 1980s, the era of the the Twinkie defense [2] and other ways of arguing diminished capacity, but I’m not sure it’ll be successful here.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense
I also think it's kind of BS to be honest. To me it feels like one step away from "the defendant is a psychopath that feels no remorse, so never developed the ethics needed to understand that murder is wrong, so they shouldn't be culpable."
It's rich people paying "experts" to skew the perception of what's right and what's wrong.
This is very troubling thinking. The problem here is - not only are you sentencing them for future, 'possible' crimes but you are doing it on the basis of demographics - there are huge issues to consider here.
And what would it buy that isn't accounted for by using something more individual and predictive of re-offending -- like whether (and how frequently) they have offended in the past -- which is used in sentencing guidelines?
That’s necessary but insufficient conditions for her to re-offend, but if she doesn’t feel any significant personal consequences due to the fraud she committed at Theranos, why wouldn’t she try it again?
[1] https://www.eonline.com/news/1026009/after-the-1-billion-dow...
2nd - if you wanted to drop the reoffense rate, as well as the offense rate, what would you do? Why aren’t we doing it?
2. Several broad categories of solutions spring to mind with their own tradeoffs:
2.1 Invest in rehabilitation. Difficulties are cost and probably political problems due to ignorance (or maybe I'm ignorant for my faith in rehabilitation?).
2.2 Longer sentencing (or rather require prisoners to serve more of their sentence more frequently, as opposed to early probation, etc). Downside is cost, ethics, and politics (a lot of well-meaning, typically upper- and upper-middle-class folks believe that longer sentences harms communities of color more than violent re-offenders, or rather they don't consider the costs of the latter).
2.3 Death penalty. Downside is ethics.
2.2 - We punish more people for longer than anywhere else in the world. Our prison population backs that up. (https://www.apa.org/images/2014-10-incarceration-chart2_tcm7...). Its absolutely not the case that we get better outcomes. There's no evidence to support that longer sentences will solve anything.
2.3 - Has its own problems - a nontrivial amount of people are put to death who are later exonerated. Its costly. Its also not an effective deterrent
Further reading: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration
2.2 Point blank if you imprison people they aren’t a threat to society while they’re being held. It’s not a good idea IMO, but you didn’t ask for my preferred ideas.
2.3 right, like I said: ethics
In general I think we’re agreeing, but your tone seems to suggest otherwise. Hopefully I’m just misreading.
There’s solutions, just not realistic or affordable ones :(
Payed from the same side as the prosecutor? And the prosecutor just gets the 'normal' pay or millions too?
Those are normally Not the Superstars Defenders right? That's what we talk about here, if your rich you can afford the best Defender/Attorney-Team.
Your wrote that:
>A poor person that magically had the kind of lawyers Holmes uses would do just as well. Unequal access to legal resources is the root of the problem.
Ordinarily, it wouldn't cost that much to have a decent public defender system. Unfortunately, the entire system is built around people pleading to charges, and if every single defendant had high quality representation, the resulting flood of actual trials would paralyze the system.
I don't remember where I heard the following claim: a substantial rate of death row inmates in some study were shown to have prefrontal cortical abnormalities.
It's an interesting question if it's possible that understanding of the brain ever reaches a point where things of that nature can be detected and/or treated, either before or after a crime, instead of jailing people or sending them away.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/magazine/when-not-guilty-...
It's interesting how before she got into legal trouble, she was the poster child for the strong powerful woman, but now it turns out she was too weak to be anything but a victim ... or I'm supposed to believe.
But at the same time, she started when she was very, very young, and was in that bubble from the start.
It's not a defence but I can see how someone gets caught up in a cultish situation like that.
"The defense expert, Mindy Mechanic, is a California State University at Fullerton professor specializing in psychosocial consequences of violence, trauma and victimization, including violence against women, and often testifies in cases involving interpersonal violence,"
...which might give a clue as to what the mitigating mental issue could be. Obviously they are not going to say she's a psychopath.
Based on what we know right now, I think any claims that “I committed fraud because I was abused” — assuming that is the defense — trivializes the real men and women who suffer from abuse every single day and don’t do the things Holmes did.
Hell, we don't even know to what extent Covid is transmitted via droplets vs aerosols. "Based on what we know right now" is highly appropriate preface for claims about an uncertain future. I wish more people would use that phrase.
I, personally, have popcorn in hand.
I have a $500 bet that Holmes won’t serve any jail time (not that she won’t be convicted and putting aside any plea deals), so I have a vested interest in whatever her defense is as working. But on a personal level, I think she’s a terrible person and I’m just excited to watch the case unfold.
What I was trying to say is that there is sometimes an implicit contradiction when people say "based on what we know right now".
In a philosophical way, you could say that "based on what we know right now", the sun has always risen in the morning, but we do not know that it will rise tomorrow. But then, to plan as if it won't, is not really "based on what we know right now".
Claiming something or other will be different about the sun tomorrow might, seem plausible to one person and absurd to another; that can be debated.
But for it to suddenly vanish without a trace is not "based on what we know right now". Pretty much anything else is more likely.
What's the meaning of saying "we have no idea" as if someone was predicting it? I am not predicting it.
When you know there is going to be relevant information coming out, prejudging as if there isn't going to be, is just wrong. Not in the sense of injustice, but in the sense that there's no realistic chance of being correct.
I don't think that is a "weird" outlook. I am making no prejudgment on whether her actions were justified, just that context matters, and in this instance, context will be provided later.
The compulsive need to judge without information rather than waiting is "weird" to me personally, but I acknowledge and accept it's normal human behavior.
That being said, she also seemed to be a bit of a tyrant herself, and it's very possible she latched on to him at 19 to use his money and connections, and found it handy later on to have a co-conspirator as ruthless as she was who was willing to feed the falsehood treadmill.
I reserve my sympathy, as the length to which she and Sunny went to to intimidate and threaten people was chilling.
I'm not sure I understand the question overall.
Why would this case be any different of say, someone that grew up in an extremely poor neighborhood and had most of their life working against them, and then turn to crime. Instead of just throwing such young offenders into jail for a long time, a lawyer might argue that this high profile case is a precedent for the young offenders - because they couldn't help themselves.
It feels really unfair, though.
It sounds like the courts are preempting the defense strategy by forcing a gov psych review instead of one paid for by the defendant.
In criminal law cases it’s not an instant get out of jail free card if you’re found to have some mental issues. Nearly every lawyer brings up mental states in serious crimes. These judges aren’t stupid.
There are some people with medical degrees in this world who will say anything for money. Wealthy people pay these individuals to try to get them out of jail. Normal people can't afford that.
Even with jury trials, that's not really true, except that alignment with the jury verdict is required for criminal conviction (but not acquittal, or any civil judgement.) Because summary judgement/judgement as a matter of law/judgement non obstante veredicto is a thing, and even if one isn't issued in a particular case, it's because either no one petitioned the judge for it (unlikely) or the judge decided against it.
Actually fits the profile of someone who sends an army of lawyers to intimidate a whistleblower.
But can we like all get such good defence. Where do I sign up or who to vote for so every American citizen gets a legal representation like this.
Normally if you defraud somebody, you are going to prison for a long, long time very very quickly.
The legal system is built by the rich, for the rich. If money wasn't so powerful in systems like this, people wouldn't pursue it with the vigor that they do.
The sad reality is that not every American will ever get legal representation like this. Even well-off Americans won’t get a defense like this.
It's a win-win but both wins are for the same person.
My guess — and I’m not a lawyer — is that her lawyers are hoping to make this a mitigating factor as part of sentencing.
But...you're saying feeling bad is not a type of comprehension? That is, empathy is not comprehension?
The Andrea Yates case [1], was the last time I can remember it being argued in a high profile case. This was the woman that drowned her five children. She was convicted in her first trial (though the jury refused to give her the death penalty) and that was overturned a few years later, after one of the prosecution’s psychiatrist admitted to giving materially false testimony. She was found not-guilty by reason of insanity in the retrial and confined to a state mental health facility.
The Yates case is a good example of how high the burden of proof of an insanity defense is in a murder case. No one on either side disputed that she was severely mentally ill at the time of the killings. The state’s argument was that despite that, she knew the difference between and wrong enough to be legally responsible.
There was a whole bunch of stuff in that case too — and it is truly tragic situation for everyone involved (there were reports that after Yates was properly medicated in prison awaiting trial and found out/remembered what she did, she became highly suicidal/went into shock), and there is an argument to be made that she was not given the proper care by her doctors leading up to the murders - but my point is more to say, in what as an outsider, appears to be a textbook case for successfully using the insanity defense, it was still unsuccessful until appeal and retrial, in part because of the question of comprehension.
Not in the sense in which the law requires you to comprehend the consequences of your actions. An insane person could feel bad after killing someone because they respond with empathy after the fact, but still not have comprehended before the fact that what they were doing was going to kill someone. The latter, if established beyond a reasonable doubt, would mean they would not meet the legal comprehension requirement.
And, conversely, a psychopath could comprehend perfectly well before the fact that what they were doing was going to kill someone, but feel nothing because they don't care. They would still meet the legal requirement for comprehension.
(Disclaimer: IANAL.)
No, I'm just saying that to establish legal comprehension, you can't look at empathy, because they're two different things. They might go together--in normal, sane people they almost always will go together, both before and after--but you can't rely on it, since the people you are going to ask the question about in the first place--the people for whom you might have to evaluate a possible insanity defense--are precisely the people in whom you can't rely on them going together.
This seems like a real Hail Mary from the defense, I'd be shocked if she is able to avoid jail time.
I assume incarceration also comes with psychiatric care. If I went to prison I’d probably need a lot of therapy even if I accepted my punishment. More, if I didn’t.
The mind is a bunch of fingers.
I also read an article about her childhood and family life. It was sad, overwrought with anxiety, and a formula for the exact kind of pathology she appears to have had at Theranos. Even if she had lost my investment capital instead of other people's, I'd still feel sorry for her rather than angry.