Idiot Defense

The idiot defense is a satirical term for a legal strategy where a defendant claims innocence by virtue of having been ignorant of facts of which the defendant would normally be expected to be aware. Other terms used for this tactic include "dumb CEO defense," "dummy defense," "ostrich defense," and "Sergeant Schultz defense."

The term was popularized as a result of a number of high-profile corporate accounting scandal defendants claiming that all wrongdoing was performed by others, without the defendant's knowledge or consent. Attorneys for these defendants claimed that their skill was in valuation and deal-making, and that they lacked the training to recognize fraudulent accounting practices they claimed that they would have needed. However, in many cases the defendants' subordinates testified that the defendants ordered them to falsify the accounts.

No major instances of the idiot defense being successful in criminal proceedings have been reported in American jurism to date. Instead, all such uses are widely believed to have resulted in the defendants employing idiot defenses being found guilty on at least some if not all counts.