When Do You Finally Walk Away From Someone You Love?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers, Half Year in Review. A look back at some of the most compelling cases of 2026 so far.
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:15)
Nick Reiner walked into a Los Angeles courtroom this week, sat behind a glass barrier and a brown jumpsuit, with his head shaved and spoke exactly two words when it mattered. Not guilty.
And I can already hear the reactions.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:30)
How can he plead not guilty?

**Tony Brueski** (0:31)
We know what happened. His parents were found stabbed to death in their bedroom. He was arrested the same day. There's allegedly security footage. Witnesses who saw him at a party hours before, a documented history that leads like a roadmap to tragedy. How did this happen? Well, if you've been following any court cases ever, you'll see a trend of people who are clearly guilty of a crime pleading not guilty. So what's he doing? What is the play here? That's what we're going to get into. And I'd love to get your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube as we work our way through it. The links to get there are in the descriptions. Just search Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski on YouTube. We're hitting killers.substack.com. Here's what most people don't understand about the play. It wasn't a defense. It was a door.
And what's behind that door?
Number one or two is the real question we should be asking. Because not guilty in a California courtroom doesn't mean what you think it means. Not in a case like this. Not when mental illness is going to be the centerpiece of whatever comes next. Let me explain how this actually works. In California, you don't just walk into an arraignment and announce that you're pleading insanity. That's not how the system is set up. If you want to pursue a not guilty by reason of insanity defense, you enter what's called a dual plea. And you plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity at the same time. And then something interesting happens. The court splits your case into two separate trials. Phase one is about guilt. Did you do it? The jury decides that question first and during that phase, your mental state isn't even part of the conversation. You're presumed sane. If they find you not guilty of the act itself, you walk.
Case over. But if they find you guilty, if the jury decides yes, you did in fact do this thing, then and only then do you move to phase two, the sanity trial. That's where a jury decides whether you understood what you were doing, whether you knew it was wrong, whether your mental illness was severe enough to excuse the act you've already been found to have committed. Two trials, two separate questions, guilt first, sanity second. So when Nick Reiner stood in that court room today, or the other day, and his public defender said not guilty on his behalf, that wasn't him claiming innocence, that was him preserving options.
That was a placeholder. Well, the defense figures out which door they're going to walk through.
And there's really only three available. Door number one.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:09)
Let's see it, Bob.

**Tony Brueski** (3:11)
It's a brand new insanity defense.
Not guilty by reason of insanity under California's McNaughton standard. This is the one everyone thinks about when they hear insanity plea. And it's also the hardest to pull off, Bob. Here's what McNaughton requires. You have to prove the burden is on the defense here, not the prosecution, that the moment you committed the act, you either didn't understand the nature of what you were doing or you didn't understand that it was morally wrong. It's a high bar. It's not, I was having a mental health crisis. That's not, my medication was off. That's complete detachment from reality. Believing your parents are demons, thinking God commanded you to do it. Not understanding what a knife does to the human body. That sort of thinking. And here's a problem for Nick Reiner. Hours before his parents were found dead, he was at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party. Multiple sources reported that he argued with his father there, got into it with Bill Hader. Witnesses described him as disruptive, acting strangely, interrupting conversations. But he was arguing, he was engaging, he was present enough to disagree with people about things. Legal experts have already weighed in on this. Former prosecutor Nima Romani, who's been on the show many a times, put it bluntly, if you're capable enough to have an argument with your parents at a Christmas party, you're not legally insane. The standard requires total psychosis. Thinking your victims are aliens, complete inability to distinguish right from wrong. Having a bad night at a party doesn't meet that standard. Professor Lori Levinson at Loyola Law School said the insanity defense is actually really tough to win. It depends entirely on what experts say about whether the defendant had a mental disease or defect severe enough that he didn't know what he was doing or didn't know it was wrong. That's the bar, basically. Nationally, only one, about one percent of criminal defendants even attempt an insanity defense, and of those, most fail. So if full insanity is there, it's a long shot.