Broderick Lawyers Hint They May Use Insanity Defense

Elisabeth (Betty) Broderick’s attorneys may contend at her upcoming preliminary hearing that insanity should block her from facing a murder trial in the killings of her ex-husband and his new wife, the lawyers suggested Friday.

The disclosure, at a hearing before San Diego Municipal Judge E. Mac Amos Jr., marked the first time Broderick’s lawyers have hinted in open court that they are preparing an insanity defense and that they might bring it up at the preliminary examination.

However, after the hearing, attorneys Mark A. Wolf and John T. Philipsborn refused to confirm that they had committed themselves to an insanity plea.

Broderick is charged with murdering her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, in the bedroom of their Hillcrest home Nov. 5. She has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at the County Jail at Las Colinas in Santee.

Daniel Broderick, trained as a lawyer and doctor, was a successful medical malpractice attorney and a past president of the San Diego County Bar Assn.

Because of delays in getting evidence in the case ready for the preliminary hearing, Amos decided Friday to push back the hearing until Feb. 13. It had been scheduled to begin next Wednesday.

The disclosure that an insanity defense was possible enlivened an otherwise routine hearing that also saw Amos referee 28 separate disputes over the way Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells shares pretrial information with Broderick’s two defense attorneys.

Wolf and Philipsborn asked for the names and addresses of witnesses who may somehow be involved in the case, Philipsborn saying they needed to know who might have “knowledge of mental state issues (but) that aren’t obvious people at this time.”

That information is important, Philipsborn said, because the attorneys were “anticipating that this case might involve some sort of mental defense,” and they might be “interested in establishing (that) affirmative defense” at the preliminary hearing.

After some tinkering with the precise wording of the request, Amos granted it.

Wolf acknowledged after the hearing that Philipsborn may have implied that the two lawyers were readying an insanity defense. But he said, “I don’t know that we have to address the issue of legal insanity to still deal with the issue of what her intent may have been and to show that the facts were not as the district attorney first thought them to be.”