ITA. I don’t think it’s a winning defense, but I think it may be her ONLY defense if LE has enough evidence to show that she was heavily involved in the murders of her children.
IMO, she did not believe the gospel according to Chad, and she planned and is responsible for these crimes. Regardless of that, her team needs to defend her, and I think this is a plausible strategy that seems to be allowed in Idaho, despite the fact that the insanity defense is not. The Supreme Court‘s example in that document struck me; IMO, Lori will argue that she believed her children were “wolves”, so to speak.
In his opinion, Justice Breyer gave two examples of mentally insane criminal defendants. One of the defendants believed the victim was a wolf. The other defendant believed that a wolf ordered him to kill the human victim, so he shot and killed the human to comply with the wolf’s demand. The first defendant, because he lacked the requisite mens rea for the crime of murder in that he lacked intent to kill a human, is not guilty. But the second defendant, even though mentally insane, would have no defense to the crime of murder, because he knew he killed a human and he had the requisite criminal intent to kill the human. Under current Idaho law, even though both defendants are mentally insane, the second defendant would be guilty.
That said, I don’t think it will be difficult for the prosecution to disprove that she truly believed her children to be zombies at the times of the murders.