{"id":806590,"date":"2026-08-08T07:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806590\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T07:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:42:08","slug":"defense-focuses-on-postpartum-psychosis-as-lindsay-clancy-trial-enters-second-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806590\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense focuses on postpartum psychosis as Lindsay Clancy trial enters second week"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 As testimony continues in the Lindsay Clancy<\/a> trial, the defense appears to be building a case around mental illness. Steve Greenberg, criminal defense attorney and founder of Greenberg Trial Lawyers, warned that insanity-style defenses rarely succeed with juries.<\/p>\n

Greenberg told The National News Desk the Clancy case is not a dispute about who committed the killings, but instead centers on the defense argument that Clancy was not a \u201ccold-hearted, cold-blooded killer\u201d and that \u201cshe suffered from a mental disease, and the mental disease made her do it.\u201d (TNND)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Greenberg told The National News Desk the Clancy case is not a dispute about who committed the killings, but instead centers on the defense argument that Clancy was not a \u201ccold-hearted, cold-blooded killer\u201d and that \u201cshe suffered from a mental disease, and the mental disease made her do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenberg said the defense must first establish that there were \u201cwarning signs\u201d leading up to the deaths and that people close to Clancy noticed changes in her behavior. He said testimony from witnesses such as the nanny and family members can help show the changes were not sudden, and that medical experts can then connect those observations to a mental health condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing they have to do is they have to have people say, this wasn’t something that just happened spur of the moment. There were warning signs. We saw things coming and we saw changes in her behavior,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cAnd then they had the medical experts come on, and the medical experts will say these things that these people saw were consistent. And this end result is consistent with those changes that they saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Greenberg said the defense faces significant hurdles if it is effectively an insanity defense. \u201cLook, there’s always a risk. You know, the insanity defense almost never works,\u201d he said, adding that the legal standard generally requires proving the defendant did not know the act was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I tell people when they want to raise an insanity defense is you almost have to prove that there was a little green man standing on their shoulder telling the person to do it, and the person believed a little green man and didn’t know any better,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

Greenberg said he watched testimony from a therapist and was not persuaded. <\/p>\n

Frankly, the therapist was trying to say that she didn’t do anything wrong. I did not find her very convincing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a separate discussion about the Bryan Kohberger <\/a>case, Greenberg weighed in on Kohberger’s post-conviction petition seeking to withdraw a guilty plea. Greenberg said attempts to undo negotiated pleas are common, but he believes Berger\u2019s chances are nonexistent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, they try all the time. I put his chances at zero,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

Greenberg said he reviewed video of Kohberger’s plea hearing and described the judge as going through the agreement in detail, including whether the plea was voluntary and whether Kohberger’s had discussed it with his attorneys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 As testimony continues in the Lindsay Clancy trial, the defense appears to be building a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":["post-806590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}