Theranos' Holmes May Pursue 'Mental Disease' In Her Defense (bloomberg.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Former Theranos Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes is exploring a "mental disease" defense for her criminal fraud trial, in one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched cases. That possibility was revealed Wednesday when the judge overseeing the case ruled that government prosecutors can examine Holmes. The ruling was in response to the failed blood-testing startup founder's plan to introduce evidence of "mental disease or defect" or other mental condition "bearing on the issue of guilt," according to the filing. Holmes may be seeking to introduce the evidence to challenge the requirement that prosecutors prove her intent to do something wrong or illegal.
Holmes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, according to the filing. Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving "interpersonal violence," according to her faculty profile on the school's website. Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school, said mounting a so-called insanity defense won't be easy, as the defendant must meet a high standard of proof. "Contrary to what you may see in the movies, an insanity defense in federal cases is rare and hard to fake," McQuade said in an email. Holmes must show that, at the time she committed the alleged offenses, a severe mental defect made her "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of (her) acts." In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila rejected Holmes's argument that she shouldn't have to submit to a psychological examination by government experts. The judge ruled that such an examination is fair given Holmes's intent to use testimony from Mechanic.
Holmes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, according to the filing. Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving "interpersonal violence," according to her faculty profile on the school's website. Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school, said mounting a so-called insanity defense won't be easy, as the defendant must meet a high standard of proof. "Contrary to what you may see in the movies, an insanity defense in federal cases is rare and hard to fake," McQuade said in an email. Holmes must show that, at the time she committed the alleged offenses, a severe mental defect made her "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of (her) acts." In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila rejected Holmes's argument that she shouldn't have to submit to a psychological examination by government experts. The judge ruled that such an examination is fair given Holmes's intent to use testimony from Mechanic.
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Also please don't propagate troll subjects (Score:2)
'Nuff said.
The mental disease afflicting C-suiters (Score:5, Insightful)
is called psychopathy.
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Psychopathy is not a "disease". It is a character trait. And society is making it an advantageous one. Meaning, there will only be more psychopaths running the world
Re: The mental disease afflicting C-suiters (Score:2)
Concisely put.
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Amen.
--
"Amen." - Jesus Christ
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Psychopathy is not a "disease". It is a character trait. And society is making it an advantageous one. Meaning, there will only be more psychopaths running the world
When you tell good men they are bad, only the bad men stick around.
Re:The mental disease afflicting C-suiters (Score:4, Informative)
I am unsure if you meant that post in-jest or not, but from my research "psychopathy" is both a mental illness and a personality trait, but not a "character trait."
From the dictionary [merriam-webster.com]:
Definition of psychopathy:
mental disorder especially when marked by egocentric and antisocial activity, a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies
The wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] goes into more depth, and makes it very clear that this is a mental illness, but also has a link to this article about the Dark Triad [wikipedia.org] which lists "psychopathy" as one of three "personality traits" (ostensibly using the word "psychopathy" in the same sense as it is used in the prior article describing it as a mental illness).
But everything I found about "character trait" is that the phrase is used to refer to positive and desireable aspects of a person, whereas all of the above considers psychopathy to be distinctly negative. The "dark triad" theory seems to be that psychopathy as a personality trait helps one to succeed in life, despite being evil and undesirable. So, still not a character trait.
Maybe I am just splitting semantic hairs. I dunno. I am just finding this stuff online and trying to make sense of it.
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Personality trait! Yes, sorry, it can be described as an illness. However, it is still a highly valued characteristic(?) in today's institutions that seek prosperity only for themselves at the expense of all else.
Re:The mental disease afflicting C-suiters (Score:4, Interesting)
The developing trend is there are two catergoies. Pyschopathy which is entirely genetic, incapable of properly recognising human emotions because the emotion is not triggered in them, when they see them expressed, that is how you recognise emotions, you feel them to an extent, it is an evolutionary social learning tool, for a social species (they also lack a full range of emotions, their brains are simply incapable of getting a happy on, which is why they can become so readily addicted to oxycontin, the happy drug). The other sociopathy, that results from abuse, most often caused by psychopaths abusing normies and turning them into sociopaths.
You can now infallibly test for psychopath by directly measuring brain emotional response and controls and the easy way, check the DNA. The description fits sociopaths, those made by psychopaths and not born that way, often abused from birth there on by a psychopath.
They should be tested for and excluded from all roles of governance, control and influence. General statistics 1% of the population, 15% of the prison population and 50% of violent crimes, all down to a birth defect of the brain, bad genes, so probably good cause to eliminate them prior to birth. Only psychopaths defend psychopathy, they know exactly who they are and why they should be excluded from any control roles in society and should likely be isolated as a continuing threat to society. When a psychopath gets triggered by frustration people often die for no reason, other than the psychopath easing the mental discomfort of frustration by controlling others, in the most extreme ways rape and murder.
Women keep blaming all men for violence against women, fuck off bitches, it is mostly just the psychopaths and that is a societal problem that can be easily solved by testing and constraint. Parents demand you child's potential spouse be tested for psychopathy.
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You can now infallibly test for psychopath by directly measuring brain emotional response and controls and the easy way, check the DNA.
What on earth are you talking about.
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no psychiatric or psychological organization has sanctioned a diagnosis titled "psychopathy"
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Psychopathy is not a "disease". It is a character trait. And society is making it an advantageous one. Meaning, there will only be more psychopaths running the world
Although there is no officially sanctioned psychiatric diagnosis called "psychopathy", there are official diagnoses of "antisocial personality disorder" and "dissocial personality disorder"; both of these include what is commonly referred to as "psychopathy". And yes, a personality disorder is definitely a mental illness.
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Elizabeth Homes is a psychopath, and mentally ill. She still needs to serve time in prison.
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Being a psychopath does not equate to being legally insane. Most criminal psychopaths are well aware that their illegal acts are wrong; they just don't care. They also usually try to conceal their bad acts to avoid being caught and punished, which shows awareness of the illegality. That is what disqualifies them from using their personality disorder as a defense. Only an incompetent defense attorney would try to go down that path. From what I've read, it looks as if she may claim some sort of traumatic abus
Re:The mental disease afflicting C-suiters (Score:5, Funny)
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Well now, don't completely discount good old-fashioned avarice and rationalization. I mean, even if she knew the product and company was certain to fail, she may have seen it as her best shot to get rich quick on someone else's dime. Since rich people don't get their asses nailed to the wall the same way poor people do in this country (ditto for young and attractive women), she probably figured she would get away with minimal damage.
Yes, she may be a complete psychopath/sociopath, but she may not. She may h
Coolest part of the defense (Score:5, Funny)
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Can she get a handicapped car sign for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a fine line between sociopathic, lying, con woman, and being actually mentally ill.
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The trick is she has to demonstrate no understanding of the law.
That isn’t likely to fly.
There isn’t any point along this process that you get to “completely defaming your customers” and you didn’t know it was wrong.
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The real problem for Holmes, she did so much stuff on camera and the courts can demand that only be used and not Holmes current psychological state as a result of a likely extended custodial sentences.
Holmes psychological state can be assessed by all of her on camera appearances and so Holmes ego, that camera time, will screw her insanity defence (spent a whole lot of time in front of a camera not showing signs of mental instability and instead demonstrating a full understanding of what she was doing).
So t
Re: Can she get a handicapped car sign for this? (Score:1)
Letâ(TM)s not forget the bizarre voice she affects.
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There is a fine line between sociopathic, lying, con woman, and being actually mentally ill.
The problem is a sociopath will attempt to convince you of whichever is most convenient.
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Not really. Nobody really knows because the human mind is still poorly mapped. Almost any criminal act could be blamed on a "mental defect" of some kind. If you are born without the wiring for empathy such that you lie and cheat without remorse, that's arguably a mental defect.
Suppose it was possible to scan the brain, find missing empathy neurons compared to a normal brain, and have this shown to the jury?
And a lot
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Yes, I believe that line is called "legal liability".
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There is a fine line between sociopathic, lying, con woman, and being actually a total bitch.
FTFY.
In related news ... (Score:5, Funny)
Holmes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, ...
Mindy used a 5-minute psych test developed by Holmes ...
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Re:In related news ... (Score:4, Informative)
Mindy specialized in "battered woman criminal defense" cases. In other words, specializes in denying women agency for their actions.
A clear case of affluenza (Score:5, Insightful)
If I ever saw one.
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I got yer mental disease right here (Score:2)
Elizabeth Holmes' problem isn't mental disease. It's moral and ethical decay.
Lock. Her. Up.
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The second alternative seems preferable. I think she's demonstrated pretty comprehensively that she has no regard for human life. I don't see how empathy can be instilled into somebody like that. She is probably intelligent enough to fake it, but not human enough to actually experience it.
Mental disease was certainly in the reporting... (Score:5, Insightful)
... on her "successes" and how she was so great a woman who was so better than all the men. When I read that back then, it was immediately clear to me that this was exceptionally unlikely to be true. She does not even have a full education in the field where she supposedly made fundamental breakthroughs. That does not happen this century, there are no fruits left that are hanging this low. Even an incredible genius needs to spend a decade or two getting conversant with the state-of-the-art these days.
The whole thing nicely exposes a certain type of fundamentally misandrist "feminism" that is all grand claims and no actual skills. Women that want to be regarded as fundamentally superior just because they are women and not because they have ever proven competence or skill. Consequentially, they typically have no or massively sub-standard skills and are all about hot air. This seems to be a special "feminist" version of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Holmes is basically a victim of these defectives, because without them cheering her on, she would have just done a standard failed business and no fraud charges because she felt she had to deliver somehow.
Or to sum it up, women are not inferior to men, but they are not superior either. They are just human beings with the wide range of skills and insights that implies and, on average, not very good versions of those skills and insights, just like the men.
Re:Mental disease was certainly in the reporting.. (Score:4, Interesting)
She does not even have a full education in the field where she supposedly made fundamental breakthroughs.
She was 19 when she dropped out of college and started her company. There is no human being in existence who can start a complex medical technology business at 19 with very little formal education.
This should have been a huge red flag, but instead, everyone went along with it. She couldn't have done what she did without the help of a lot of people, and they all need to go to prison with her.
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She does not even have a full education in the field where she supposedly made fundamental breakthroughs.
She was 19 when she dropped out of college and started her company. There is no human being in existence who can start a complex medical technology business at 19 with very little formal education.
This should have been a huge red flag, but instead, everyone went along with it. She couldn't have done what she did without the help of a lot of people, and they all need to go to prison with her.
So even worse than I remember. I though she had a partial bio-med university education. Even with that it would sill have been completely impossible to do what the claim was she could do.
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So, what you are saying that this weak mental illness argument is distracting us from maybe considering she is a "fall girl" in this.
Kind of how major banks make billions of dollars and then they blame a middle manager who makes $70k a year for engineering the fraud.
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She was 19 when she dropped out of college and started her company. There is no human being in existence who can start a complex medical technology business at 19 with very little formal education.
She was an amazing salesperson. Her problem was she didn't have anything to sell.
they did no due dilligenece (Score:2)
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Anyone that has done actual blood testing has already discovered that a drop of blood isn't enough to get a proper sample. This was smoke and mirrors from the start. There is no magic, a single drop, especially the first drop, doesn't contain enough of what you are looking for.
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Maybe. And maybe it all depends what exactly is in that 'drop' of blood. How big is a drop? 20uL? I suppose it depends on what you are looking for and how you are testing. To say that a teenager came up with some new tech is a big stretch. In my experience that first drop of is mostly water and not very useful.
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I don't think this has anything to do with feminism. She is a sociopath. Women are just as likely to be sociopaths, but they have a much harder time getting into a position where they can destroy thousands of lives with it. They usually just make everybody within their personal circle miserable.
I think the reporting had. Very much so. And it got her the funding she would otherwise never have had a chance to get. No argument about her nature though.
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+1
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A female Trump?
Well, Trump has so far successfully managed to hide that he is likely bankrupt and probably owned by the Russians. So there is something he seem to be able to do competently that Holmes failed at.
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I hope her evidence (Score:2)
Simple (Score:3)
If you have the mental capacity to be a CEO of a company, you have the mental capacity to stand trial and be punished under the fullest extent of the law. Not to mention if she wins based on that, it means that the courts basically said "Abused women are mentally unstable and cannot be held responsible for their actions" which will go down well with the incel brigade.
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If you have the mental capacity to be a CEO of a company, you have the mental capacity to stand trial and be punished under the fullest extent of the law. Not to mention if she wins based on that, it means that the courts basically said "Abused women are mentally unstable and cannot be held responsible for their actions"
What abuse? In all the accounts of her time as CEO and before, I don't remember reading anything about abuse. Sounds like she is inventing fake abuse as her defense.
And that's the humorously ironic part. If you say "women are mentally unstable and cannot be held responsible for their actions" you are called a misogynist and many other names. But it's perfectly OK for a woman to use that defense when it is convenient.
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What abuse? In all the accounts of her time as CEO and before, I don't remember reading anything about abuse.
Actually, there are lots of reports concerning her abusive behavior towards her employees.
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The cunt she hired (and yes, she is a cunt. If you try to get someone off on a fake made-up disorder you are a cunt and will be called a cunt) "specializes" in such a thing according to the summary.
Couldn't she (Score:2)
Just use the results of a blood test to get a solid diagnosis?
It's the old... (Score:5, Insightful)
..."a man made me do it" argument.
"Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women...."
She has a mental disease (Score:2)
Lock her in a mental asylum where she can't do any more harm to others.
I read this as Thanos (Score:1)
Pussy Defense (Score:2, Insightful)
"...an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women...
I'm sorry, but what kind of grab-'em-by-the-pussy defense are we going for here? Is she also too pretty to go to jail too?
As if we don't have enough inequality when it comes to female prison sentences...
DNA Database (Score:3)
If she were just front-running a scam or promoting vaporware that would be a normal crime. But having known NWO war criminal Henry Kissinger on the BoD makes it very much not a tiny scam company.
The theory that they could come up with the technology they needed with enough funding and thereby take over the market, while also compiling realtime DNA tracking on everybody is somewhat plausible. But the music apparently stopped and they got caught with their pants down.
One may suppose she had a deal to get wealthy and famous or take the fall and she made her bet and lost.
The thing is, if she would actually admit to this there's no chance most jury members wouldn't consider trying to sell out her countrymen to be a mental defect. But lots of people in prisons have mental defects.
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Tesla has collapsed due to accounting fraud?
Must have missed that bit of news.
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having known NWO war criminal Henry Kissinger on the BoD
Known NWO war criminal Henry Kissinger? You mean the Henry Kissinger who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973? Yeah, I know about the Nobel committee members who resigned in protest over it; still, I think you'd have trouble convincing a trial jury that his presence on the board of directors meant anything sinister.
The Rich Woman's Alibi (Score:3)
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Lying about your crimes is evidence that you know right from wrong and that you aware that you were breaking the law. That disqualifies you from being considered legally insane.
Another glitch in the matrix (Score:3)
Being a woman is NOT a mental disease. (Score:1)
It just seems like it.
But what defense.. (Score:2)
...for the idiots that invested in what was transparently a load of colossal bullshit from the beginning?
well, ya.. (Score:2)
The old Steve Martin SNL joke fits here:
You say to the judge, “I forgot armed robbery was illegal.” Let’s suppose he says back to you, “You have committed a foul crime. you have stolen MILLIONS of dollars from people at random, and you say, ‘I forgot’?” Two simple words: Excuuuuuse me!!“
Since she's sorry NOW (Score:2)
I'm sure she's given back all the money, sold off a fancy house and taken up a more fitting career as a barista.
Her real problem (Score:2)
Her real issues were actually greed, incompetence, and narcissism. If those were mental disorders, then I know at least a few powerful people in business and tech who should be sent to mental institutions.
Re: Her real problem (Score:2)
I meant business and politics.
Anyway, she certainly had issues, terrorizing the office, dressing like Steve Jobs, changing her voice, being a generally shitty person. She didn't care about the science, she just wanted to be a billionaire. It was her life long dream (check out the Behind the Bastards podcast episodes about Elizabeth Holmes).
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Is this "disease" real? (Score:2)
Or just an imaginary one detected by a Theranos Edison blood testing machine?
<— insert picture Holmes doing the ok symbol here...
TV Documentary (Score:1)
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Wall Street for sure.
Maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe she can come up with a micro-needle treatment for that...
One Condom Could Have Prevented Elizabeth Holmes (Score:2)
At least we have freedom of speech on Slashdot (Score:1)
She's doomed (Score:1)
From TFAs I've read she knew damn well what she was doing and took active steps to prevent the fraud from being exposed. If she's hanging her hat on that she's going to be found guilty.