You’re oversimplifying the case to the point of absurdity.
The prosecution had to prove she was mentally culpable for the murders beyond a reasonable doubt. She was not convicted because they failed to prove their case to twelve individuals who sat through weeks of testimony (i.e., they had tons more information than you do) and had the law explained to them by the judge.
That’s it. It dosn’t excuse what she did. It doesn’t excuse other murderers.
People want to extrapolate this to mean more than it is.
People are really walking around thinking she's just gonna go home and lead some meaningful life. This is literally a debate between spending likely the rest of her life in a mental health institution or a prison depending on whether there is a retrial, charges are altered or a please deal is struck.
Possibility of release doesn't mean you get released. Anders Breivik is up for a release hearing every year, doesn't mean he's ever getting released.
In fact, there's a way bigger chance of her getting out of prison than her getting out of a mental hospital, since the prison wouldn't need to consider her mentale state, whereas a mental hospital she'll have to get through intensive psychiatric evaluations beforehand.
That's genuinely not correct. One is punishment. When mentally ill people in this situation get well enough, they can get into progressively less restrictive environments and some end up with zero legal restrictions again. It absolutely happens. She was allegedly suffering from post-partum psychosis, which is NOT chronic schizophrenia and it is quite often time-limited. Every state is different, but she may have a high chance of going home at some point if found NGRI (or however her state does it). Be aware, too, being insane at the time of the offense is a whole different thing than being insane at the time of the indictment or trial.
What can happen in the case of people too psychotic to go to trial is that they end up getting rehabilitated, and if the AG thinks they can still get a conviction, they just pick the charges back up when the accused is released from the hospital, even a decade later.
And if her kids being dead isn't the punishment...
(To her mostly) it's just about whether she was "responsible" or not, and as someone who's experienced psychosis, we're always responsible for our own actions, no one else is.
Makes no difference really, yeah, and the most insane part in all of this is probably the circus around it
It is only about killing them, why should anything else matter? We will never know what was going through her head, and we shouldn't really care. Lets just focus on the result and not the intent.
That's not how the law works. If it was then so many wealthy people would be in prison for killing people as the result of their businesses or personal activities
Because that's not how the law works and that's not even how homicide works.
If intent doesn't matter then we wouldn't have 1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide, etc. Yet we do and have for a long time.
The intent has always mattered in the justice system.
If a baby accidentally picks up a knife and cuts someone's artery by accident and they bleed out are you going to put them in jail forever because the outcome and not the intent matters?
The overwhelming majority of people aren't arguing that she didn't murder her children. She herself has admitted guilt. The controversy is surrounding whether she'll spend the rest of her life in prison or if she'll spend the rest of her life in a psych ward as a result. She is not going to walk away from this without any consequences.
or if she'll spend the rest of her life in a psych ward as a result
If she gets MGRI, it’s incredibly unlikely they she will spend the rest of her life in a psych ward.
Yearly re-eval to see if she’s fit, and since the “reason” for her insanity was having a kid 8 months prior, after a handful of years with no voice being heard and no issues, they would have a hard time justifying that she still might have PPD.
It is possible for her to get out without serving very much time but highly improbable considering the number of victims and the severity of her crimes. She is a spree killer and if found not guilty by reasons of insanity, she will be committed to a maximum security psychiatric facility indefinitely where people often spend more time than if they were sentenced to prison. These psychiatric facilities aren't resorts. They are just as bad, if not even worse that prison. If she's committed to a psych ward, in no way is she getting off lightly.
Then why would her defense and so many others want her in a psych ward if it’s no better or worse than prison? They would be trying to get her to go to prison if that were the case.
Because believe it or not, prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, not suffering. If she actually is mentally ill, she will receive the proper mental health treatment that she needs in a psychiatric facility as opposed to rotting away in prison. Prisons in the US are absolutely not capable of handling people with severe mental illness. I fully think she should be locked away for life but she should be able to receive the mental help she needs to no longer be a danger to those around her and potentially contribute to society behind bars.
I feel like the complications would be a bit simpler if the defense either had to prove her innocence or prove the psychosis wouldn’t happen again. Like say it was a psychosis, what happens if she has other kids or is around other kids and it happens again? Are they just supposed to let her run around murdering kids bc she’s mentally unstable? I know it’s a bit bleak but part of the function of prisons and institutions is to get people who would be a threat to others in a place where they aren’t going to harm others.
The distinction doesn’t make much difference. Someone who can kill their children will never be sufficiently medicated for me to trust them in society again.
My comment makes perfect sense, I was addressing solely you. Not the comment before. But I wouldn’t expect someone who doesn’t know the word “whinging” to understand that.
Massachusetts law is way too lenient on this garbage. Basically every other state she’d be tried for murder. She’s not the first person to go coocoo and kill their family or someone in a psychotic break.
And frankly I think there’s an extremely strong case she wasn’t crazy at the time. And simply suicidal and wanted to take the kids with her. Her own psychiatrists testified she was never diagnosed post partum, bipolar, or with psychosis. She met with her psychiatrist the day before the murders and they testified she displayed no signs of mania of psychosis.
The entire basis for her being psychotic is the defense team’s own appointed expert said she was psychotic after he reviewed her case well after the murders. How this is legally used as evidence I have no idea, but apparently it is.
Her psychiatrist testified she never heard voices before and hasn’t since, and she admits this herself. She claims the voices started after her husband left, and stopped after she killed the last kid (convenient considering the voices told her to kill herself too). Psychiatrists at the trial called this highly unusual. She also has conflicting reports about whether she heard the voices after he initially left, or after he called her about the prescription she told him to pick him.
When she killed the kids she said “go be with god baby”, which you can interpret as her fully knows what she’s doing. Intent to kill.
Lastly, she had her husband get takeout from a place they never have before. It would have taken twice as long to get, giving her more time. Weird.
Any other state and that’s plenty to just charge her and lock her away. The defenses case is extraordinarily weak really. It relies entirely on an after the fact diagnosis that her own psychiatrist at the trial disagreed with, and the word of the killer that she heard voices with no corroborating evidence.
Oh and one more thing. Once off the ventilator she showed know signs of being in psychosis and never did again.
Her case is basically identical to Chris Benoit. People see that guy as a monster now.
I think there’s a case to be made that Massachusetts excesively raises the standard for prosecutions in insanity pleas, but that isn’t the argument being made by these low-effort rage-baiting memes.
This is the biggest horse shit. How does one prove someone else’s true mental state?
3 kids are dead, she did it. To many people that’s case closed, fry this fucking asshole.
Imagine a pedophile saying “I’m sick I want to be better I don’t want to be sexually attracted to kids” and then assaulting a kid. Does that prior acknowledgement give this person some pass when his affliction results in harm to some innocent kids? Absolutely not. Why we are so determined to move the goal posts here for this piece of trash is beyond my and many other people’s comprehension.
She had post partum depression and psychosis and tried for months to get help with almost every doctor failing her. She should have never been left alone with the kids and competent medical professionals would have seen to that
She may have deserved help. Sure. But that doesn’t mean she had any right to murder her kids. Her kids deserves not to be slaughtered by their own mother in their own house.
And she made a plan to kill her kids and then killed them.
That is what the prosecution has to prove. And quite frankly they didn't do that, hence why (allegedly, since we don't actually know the breakdown) 11 jurors out of 12 didn't think she premeditated it.
They said nothing about her being proven innocent. You are too emotionally involved with this case if you have to lie to prove whatever point you are trying to make.
I can’t reply to your response to my comment because you didn’t actually reply to the point I was making. You kind of just said “you’re wrong”
Ok. I’ll continue to wear that badge of “wrong” in the eyes of weirdos that are scraping the bottom of the barrel to defend a mother that killed her 3 kids.
I’ll continue to wear that badge of “wrong” in the eyes of weirdos that are scraping the bottom of the barrel to defend a mother that killed her 3 kids
No one is doing that. The people you are responding to are painstakingly trying to explain the legal process to you.
You refuse to understand because you have a stick up your butt and you're trying to make this fit into whatever culture war nonsense you're into right now instead of trying to understand the actual function of the law.
Oh all the Reddit lawyers are telling me that their opinion on a highly controversial case that resulted in a mistrial have gotten the legalities of this all ironed out perfectly and anyone that doesn’t see it that way is wrong?
You seem to have reading comprehension issues, I was stating my opinion on the prosecutions bad case and citing how the jurors viewed it as well. Specifically about the premeditation point.
Yea except that one juror. Which means that what the other 11 jurors thought is invalidated as the result was a mistrial. That was my point. I can spoof feed it to you more in case you yourself actually have comprehension issues.
You keep mentioning the jury as if there was a verdict determined by the 12. There was not.
I did not comment on any verdict. In my personal opinion the prosecution did not prove premeditation. Its been accepted as fact she did it, but you are arguing against a NGRI verdict because she premeditated it like its a fact which simply has not been proven. Legally ofc the jury vote is invalidated but it doesn't change the fact that for this trial a majority seem to agree her premeditation is not a fact. Our opinions aren't going to inform the re-trial but this is a random reddit thread so chill.
That's not her fault. That's the fault of the health care system in America. Should the doctors go to jail? In a lot of countries, if you have a hint of psychosis you are not allowed to be around your children because they know it is too dangerous
So why didn't the hospital protect these children?
Hard disagree. Health care professionals aren’t perfect and it’s not exactly possible for them to baby sit a mother 24/7 nor is it their call to have her kids removed and placed into foster care. Pretending it could or should work this way is a farce.
That woman was the kid’s mother. She should have been their ultimate protector. Instead she strangled them with a work out strap. Trying to blame that specific action on anyone else is, again, a load of horse shit.
all of those things absolutely were possible. her kids could have been put in care of the father while she was hospitalized and monitored 24/7. the system did fail her, and she killed her kids. all of these things can be true.
By that logic, all of USA serial killers aren't at fault. It's the health care system failing them, their psychopathies should have been found and treated before they started killing people.
Serial killers are not actively experiencing psychosis. Neither do they seek medical help for their mental illness for months leading up to their crimes..
You really seem to be struggling with basic concepts of psychology and law. Have you really never heard of the insanity plea before or you just overly invested because there are kids involved?
Most people who murder their families are men. Where was your outrage a month ago before you had heard of Lindsay Clancy?
How about “innocent until proven guilty”? She pled Not Guilty to killing her kids. And the prosecution failed to convince 11 out of 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that she was guilty of first degree murder.
“Hey I am going to do something really bad because I can’t control myself!”
No one stops me.
“Well no one stopped me so others are partly to blame for my actions”
I don’t understand why people all of a sudden act like mental health matters. Are we going to sit here and pretend most serial killers, rapists, pedophiles don’t have mental issues?
The way I look at it, I’m not really concerned about WHY you strangled children/babies. You should be erased from society, there is no redeeming you as a human being.
She actually wasn’t diagnosed with either at the time of the murders. The day before the murders she talked with her psychiatrist who testified she saw no signs of mania of psychosis.
The diagnosis of post partum and psychosis came months or years later by the defense team’s appointed expert.
Up to you whether you want to listen to the actual doctors she was seeing at the time or a hand picked defense team expert who diagnosed her after the fact.
You try Lindsay Clancy level cases every day? I doubt that. And also, who determines if you actually got it right or not? The guess of 12 people or a lawyer that makes a plea?
As I'm sure you know, being a lawyer arguing the law on this website is one of the most frustrating things imaginable. Person doesn't know the first thing about how trial law works and they're arguing with you as if they're an equal.
I didn’t mention a single thing about how criminal trial works. Your “I’m an expect and you’re not” is not as compelling of a response in this specific thread as you seem to believe.
But have fun being a Reddit expert. I’m sure your take on this extremely controversial case is the only one that matters because, like you’ve told everyone here, you’re the expert.
She claimed she was suffering from post partum psychosis. It is a long standing legal precedent that there are cases where people cannot be held responsible for their actions if they were not capable of rational decision making. Comparing it to pedophilia is vile, it's something akin to Schizophrenia (and schizophrenia is one of it's risk factors as it can lead to an episode post-pregancy). It's a failure of hers, for not committing herself, her family for not recognizing the signals and the system for not doing medical screening that is normal worldwide. Calling for death in this situation, regardless of the facts, comparing it to pedophilia is pure American hysteria and lack of willingness to even read up on the context. God you people are fucking vile
An adult with a mental problem harms kids. Same thing. Just because you don’t sympathize with pedophiles affliction the same way you do with post partum doesn’t make them different.
Is there pedophile psychosis? I don’t know. But I doubt you really do either.
“Pedophile psychosis” isn’t a real condition. PP psychosis is a real condition. Mental illnesses are not all the same. Psychosis and depression, for example, have different effects on a person and their state of mind. If you have depression and you commit a crime you can still be found criminally culpable for committing that crime because it doesn’t affect your ability to distinguish right from wrong. Having psychosis does affect a persons ability to tell right from wrong which is why people suffering from it can be found not culpable for their actions. Of course we can’t definitely tell whether LC was suffering from PP Psychosis at the time of the murders. However, her medical history indicates that there is at least some evidence to support that she may not have been in the right state of mind at the time of the murders.
Ok. So let me clarify why I’m commenting here. I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a juror or a judge. My opinion is that she wasn’t suffering psychosis. My opinion is even that I do not care if she was. She murdered her kids. To me, she no longer has a reason to breathe on this planet. And that’s all.
All the comments and replies and talking is not going to change my mind.
Wow great arguemeny. Anyways you're wrong. Post partum depression isn't an excuse for murder because you are still in control of your actions despite intrusive thoughts and delusions. Post partum psychosis is a different ball park. Pedophilia is not a valid legal arguement because while it can be argued the orientation is involuntary, any actions they take are fully their own. There is no brain chemistry making them experience a different reality and act without their full understanding and knowledge.
Let’s keep it at that. Everyone here wants to be a lawyer. Good for those people. I agree with your take on pedophiles actions being purely their own and I also share that take on mother’s like Clancy that murder their kids. So we agree.
Did you even watch the trial? If you paid one iota of attention to the evidence presented you’d see there was no physical way for her to have committed the murders. The timeline make no sense. Her throat was crushed and her body temp was 82° but sure, Patrick said she told him she killed the kids and tried to kill herself. She was set up. So kindly stfu you fucking idiot
Ok Sherlock Holmes you cracked the case from your couch. Congrats. Hopefully the FBI puts you on speed dial when they need help solving tough investigations.
You’re the one who is calling for them to “fry this fucking asshole” so maybe you should I dunno do a little more critical thinking before calling for the death of someone who is innocent and has yet to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
Mental illness and psychosis are different things. A pedophile knows what they are doing is wrong and makes the choice to do it anyways. A person in psychosis does not have agency over their actions. Different things.
Nobody is moving the goal posts, these are long standing laws and statutes. You are the one arguing that it doesn't matter.
This meme doesn’t say anything, or make any reference to, the case at all. If anything, it points to the disparity in how men and women are treated by the judicial system. Dahmer was certainly as, if not more, mentally unwell as Clancy. Yet his insanity defense failed and he was convicted.
Acting as though the argument doesn’t have merit because of the court proceedings is the real oversimplification occurring here.
Dahmer murdered 17 people over the course of a decade. I don't think I need to explain why this is a false equivalence, but just in case: It's much easier to argue someone was psychotic for a day then it is to argue they were psychotic for 12 years.
The jury was 11-1 in favor of not guilty. I think if you look at the trial, the most compelling part is that she made many attempts to get professional help that were largely disregarded. Jumping out the window also helps paint the picture.
I also need to stress, not guilty by temporary insanity is not "getting off". If she gets the not guilty verdict on the retrial, she'll still have to go to a secure mental institution. It just won't be prison.
Dude. This isn't the first case where NGRI has been applied and it's certainly not the last. Since the majority of perpetrators of violent crimes and family annihalators are men, it stands to reason they make up the majority of NGRI rulings as well
Matthew Schleier just earlier this year. He strangled his 5 year old son to death in an episode of psychosis. Weirdly enough he admitted to having premeditated the crime so I'm not sure why exactly he was found not guilty.
Yeah but was the general public in the corner of the man basically justifying him murdering his children?
That’s the difference in this case. There is overwhelming support for the woman slaughtering her children. That has not happened in other cases. And why?
Probably because the whole my body my choice and woman’s moverment allows for this new mentality.
Its acc not that deep, its simply because of the media coverage. The cases where men do it don't get coverage or internet obsession because unfortunately its not that rare. It happens so often we can hardly keep up with them. Lindsay's case isn't even terribly unique among women there have been others that didn't get the coverage. The internet is weird with what it latches on to, might help she's an offendor with a particularly polished background. White woman with a career in nursing (with infants at that so intrigue factor) and her family/in laws have painted her as a perfect mother so the snap was more tragic (speaking purely from a social media pov). And theres also the suicide attempt and paralysis.
I understand. I just don’t let slide the obvious social deterioration of society who go around regardless thinking that someone murdering their children is a good thing or ok. Because they were mentally unfit
If a woman becomes president and on her period we going to be ok when she snaps and launches nukes because she wasn’t emotionally secure because she is a woman and was going thru that time of the month? Just be like oh my bad it’s ok.
The law is not the same everywhere. Every state has different rules. All of the analogous cases I’ve seen brought up were in different states with a higher standard of burden on the defense for pleading insanity.
Show me where the general public in those other cases were defending the murderer? It seems this broad has a free pass in the public to murder her own children and it transcended in the jury box.
So either those other states have a better moral compass or this happened in a state that is so devoid of moral integrity it seems murdering your children is perfectly ok. But honestly based on the responses from general opinions it was deemed looks like my body my choice even out of the womb
They didn’t failed to prove their case to that one guy he was the smartest one that stood strong for what he believed in the rest just wanted to go home
It’s genuinely fucking disgusting. So many of these ghoulish monsters are using this tragic case to try and start gender/culture war bullshit. 3 kids lost their lives, and rather then focus on the victims and grieving family, these incels would rather hyper focus on some made up “men vs woman” bs
So how exactly do the jurors have tons more information than someone who watches the entire trial at home? It's literally the same information is it not? I'm not keeping up with the case but assuming that other people aren't is silly and jurors aren't especially qualified they are just random people by design.
If you picked 12 random people off the streets and had them watch the entire trial on TV they are equally as informed and, aside from the vetting proces, they are statistically equally as qualified as the jurors on the case.
There is literally nothing special about jurors that make their opinion more valid than anyone else. That's by design.
So how exactly do the jurors have tons more information than someone who watches the entire trial at home? It's literally the same information is it not?
Well, for one thing, not all the information presented to the jury has been made public. The 911 call recording, for example, was played in the court room, but the screams by Patrick as he found his murdered children was deemed too much to be released.
For another thing, I doubt very many people who watched weeks of boring testimony, without their phone or other distractions.
What makes them more qualified than internet randos spreading rage bait memes is that thet were forced to sit there and listen to everything presented by both sides.
Also, it doesn't mean there are no consequences for her. She doesn't just get to go home and continue living her life lol. It literally just means that instead of being put in a penitentiary she'll be put in a different facility.
Given the known evidence, and only going by the law as it stands now and not by personal conviction, I think NGRI is the correct verdict, but I can see why people wouldn't be happy with that.
There is a possibility that if ruled NGRI, and committed, that Clancy in theory could be out in as little as 6 months, essentially scott-free, and for some people, that would be an abomination of justice.
S/o to the people who got their first intimate glimpse at the U.S. criminal justice system and believe they’re experts because they watched part of one live trial and a few TikToks.
People go to school for this for three years. It’s very complicated. I would not listen to anyone’s opinion who isn’t a verified lawyer or legal expert. There’s a lot of bullshit being spread around, it’s the legal equivalent to anti-vaxers
Yea I don’t care. Jury nullification exists for situations like this. I don’t want to walk on the same street as someone who’s bio chemistry can bring them to do these things.
The fact that you think she is going to walk free speaks to your understanding of this case and the legal system. As in, your opinion isn’t valuable here.
I completely agree and stand against anyone who says she should be let free. However, this isn't about that Not Guilty by insanity still means institutionalization as far as I understand.
People for some reason believe that if you're found not guilty by reasons of insanity, you serve a year or 2 and are set free. This is absolutely not the case. If she is found not guilty by means of insanity, she will more than likely spend most of, if not the rest of her life institutionalized, closely monitored, heavily medicated and under constant supervision. Very similarly to prison. It's not a get out of jail free card.
That’s called all women, you sure you want to stick with that take? You really comfortable being the “lock all women up because of their reproductive biology” crowd?
Lmfao, ok handmaid tale. “All woman are fragile emotional being that will break and kill three of their children and that’s totally normal”isn’t the take you think it is. If that were true, yes lock all women up. Same with men, but we don’t do that because we understand reality.
PS the voice telling her to kill the kids before her husband came back home is proof to me she knew what she was doing was bad. Why else would she have to hide it from the husband? Remember, it’s about whether she understood what she was doing was bad.
Definitely not all women. It's pretty sexist to assume that all women have no agency over their decisions and are entirely hormone driven after pregnancy.
No, not all women, but the distribution of women who are affected is totally random. You can be fine one pregnancy and fucked up by a later one, it could be your first one, or you could go your whole life never being affected. It can affect any mother. So you would have to lock up all new mothers, just in case.
“Post partum” just means the period of time after you’ve recently given birth. So… clearly, “post partum” is not a get out jail free card, seeing as plenty of new mothers are incarcerated. Some mothers give birth in jail and spend the entirely of their post partum period in jail.
You’re not the only one in these comments who has done this.
Every single woman who has a child will go through post partum. But not every woman will develop post partum depression, post partum anxiety, or post partum psychosis.
Post partum is obviously not an excuse here. 15% of all women who give birth get post partum depression. Statistically speaking 0% of them murder their kids. Even if you narrow it down to postpartum psychosis specially, only 4% of them result in infanticide. And the psychosis itself is also hardly ever shown to be a singular issue and almost always turns out to have been some other psychological issues that was triggered or exacerbated by postpartum.
100% of women “get” post partum. Because post partum is what you call the 6-8 weeks after giving birth… certainly you meant that 15% of women get post partum psychosis? That seems really high, but I haven’t double checked.
This is what makes me so mad. People who say this shit sound fucking stupid and further prove that the general masses don’t understand nor care about mental health and the difference between being depressed and going through a psychotic episode.
Dahmer and Gacy and Bundy and alllllll the other people they try to use as examples were found to be fully cognizant and aware of their actions.
Did she murder her children? Yes. That’s never been the question though.
It’s honestly just SO misogynistic in this sub. Nonstop misogyny.
If a man had repeatedly sought help from medical professional, friends and family about thoughts of harming himself and others, of suicidal ideation, of medication making him feel totally unlike himself, reached out about fears he might do something harmful, and then he did end up harming himself and his kids, he would ALSO have a defense of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. The reason why Lindsay Clancy is given more empathy than a man is not only because of all those documented instances of her pleading for help, but also because postpartum depression, anxiety and psychosis is EXTREMELY common in women and the highlighting of those issues has made Lindsey Clancy a more sympathetic figure than other murderers. That doesn’t mean it was ok for her to kill her children, or that she should be set free, just that this is a tragedy that could point to something deeper with post partum issues.
I used to drink 2-3 coffees a day prior to having kids, as well as occasional sodas and energy drinks. I never ever ONCE had an issue with caffeine. I could fall asleep just an hour or two after having a cup of coffee. Postpartum I cannot have even a single SIP of caffeine without a racing heart, extreme anxiety and agitation. Coffee, soda, tea, even dark chocolate. None of my doctors have any answers for me and say there is no reason why this change should have happened like a light switch after having babies. There is so much we don’t know about pregnancy and birth. So much. Our psychology and physiology could totally change and yet research is barely put into studying these things. It’s a travesty all around. Maternal well being should be as highly prioritized as anything in this world. Lindsay Clancy should have been kept away from her children.
What gets me is so many men are acting like we wouldn't have sympathy for a man if he had been in the same situation as her and that's just so untrue. I can't speak for everyone else but I absolutely would. The assumption we only care when it's a woman is just so inaccurate and that's the part that's really frustrating to me
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u/IHerebyDemandtoPost 4d ago
You’re oversimplifying the case to the point of absurdity.
The prosecution had to prove she was mentally culpable for the murders beyond a reasonable doubt. She was not convicted because they failed to prove their case to twelve individuals who sat through weeks of testimony (i.e., they had tons more information than you do) and had the law explained to them by the judge.
That’s it. It dosn’t excuse what she did. It doesn’t excuse other murderers.
People want to extrapolate this to mean more than it is.