13 Responses

1. WOW!!! Some guts Greenberg has!!!

2. He may be crazy. Doesn’t mean he’s not evil.

3. What’s Greenberg’s point? Who cares if he quits law? He can eat tuna sandwiches with his new schizophrenic friend for all I care.

4. Even if he IS insane…which I agree totally.. He is still GUILTY and should be punished the utmost.

5. to do that he had to be insane.

6. Insanity doesn’t mean he didn’t do it and doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

7. Given that it appears a psychiatrist had previously determined him to be severely mentally ill (which is why he had powerful psychiatric medicine lying around), getting some flavor of insanity finding shouldn’t be too hard. However some insanity findings are a life sentence without possibility of parole whereas others make it possible the person can “recover”.

   And of course, a finding that the psychiatrist was guilty of malpractice would help the victim’s family since they might be able to sue him (though third party malpractice is tricky).

8. Of course he’s insane. Only a crazy person would do what he did. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be punished to the full extent of the law and put in jail forever.

9. I don’t doubt that he was insane, I am just going to question his lawyers motives in announcing this to the press. The Insanity Defense is very difficult to succeed with because you are admitting your client’s guilt but saying he can not be held accountable because he is insane and THEN you have the burden of proving that to everyone else. Unless Mr. Greenberg has some wild card piece of evidence up his sleeve that the public doesn’t know about, being that this was such a high profile case, and the fact that the DA said they were going for blood on this one. I think it best for Greenberg to do himself and his client a favor and keep his mouth closed.

   As an aside, if found guilty by reason of insanity the defendant is not thrown in to jail, they are usually put in to a mental institution.

10. Commenter No. 6: Congratulation. Of the first 8 comments on this article, yours is the wrongest. Under American law, a jury finding of insanity means that the defendant cannot be held criminally responsible for his/her actions.

    Insanity is a legal concept, not a medical or psychological concept. And insanity of the killer does not make this story any less tragic or heart-breaking.

11. The Bais Din only kills people that are insane, because if you can kill after being quoted the halacha where it is and you know that, and 2 aidim are watching and u were warned you 2 sec before u did it YOU ARE INSANE

12. I believe courts will be very careful in allowing such a defense. They will have to take into account the many, many people suffering from various different mental disorders who function under psychiatric supervision and medication. These individuals live in regular normal neighborhoods, hold regular jobs and drive vehicles. To determine that the psychiatrist missed the mark and that since he was taking these drugs he was “insane” or “schizophrenic ” that will open up a whole new can of worms and will keep employers from hiring people with mental disorders, keep landlords from renting to them, etc. I can imagine that the civil liberties union and the committees for the mentally disabled and mentally challenged will have what to say about that.

13. #12

    They won’t take that in to account because no two mental disorders or patients, for that matter, are alike. A mental disorder is an uphill battle and if indeed there was a “schizophrenic break” as Greenberg is calling it, then there is really nothing anyone could have done. Saying that he lived a relatively normal life until ‘that’ point doesn’t matter, saying that other people struggling with schizophrenia don’t kill young children doesn’t matter. He will have to be judged based on HIS evidence, HIS psych eval/analysis, HIS doctor’s assessment etc.