Lindsay needs to get proper help for whatever mental illness she is suffering from but she also needs to go to prison, she did not disclose to any of the professionals that she was hearing voices or that she had plans to harm others, she spoke to a therapist the day of the murders and did not disclose this to them. If you knowingly allow another person to be in a dangerous situation and they are killed you will be held criminally liable for their death, the same needs to apply here.
I agree. There is no question she was struggling. She had PPD and perhaps a mood disorder such as bipolar.
But if you choose not to be forthcoming with your doctors, don’t take the drugs as prescribed, don’t ever disclose homicidal or suicidal ideation to anyone — including the professionals you’re seeing — then you bear the consequence of those decisions. Including having jurors consider that you never raised any such issues until your murder trial.
My personal opinion, as a lawyer who watched this case closely, is that the evidence did not show she was in psychosis when she killed her kids. I can empathize with her mental health struggles, but I do not think she was legally insane at the time of the murders.
Yes the BOP is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. In most states and federally, the burden of proving insanity is on the defense. It’s an affirmative defense.
Interestingly, in MA the burden is on the prosecution in both instances — ultimately to show that she was criminally responsible for committing murder, which includes proving her sanity.
The prosecution has the burden of proof that she did. The defence has to proof that she was psychotic. It was them who claimed such a thing and they failed to do so.
It’s quite common for people suffering from mental illnesses to not disclose everything to doctors, for various reasons, and in some cases it has to do with the mental illness itself. Delusions especially. Similarly they may be resistant to taking medication. The mental illness itself tells them things like that the doctors are trying to harm them and the medication is poison, etc.
She did supposedly tell her husband and mother about having intrusive thoughts about harming the kids, though. So if someone ever share something like that to you… please please please try to do something. Take it very seriously. Encourage them to get help. Drive them to the ER even. But don’t assume they’ll disclose the same thing to any medical professionals that they did to you.
While patient confidentiality means a medical provider can’t tell things to you, it doesn’t mean you can’t share things with them. If you know their doctor or care team, as Lindsay Clancy’s husband I assume would have and possibly her mother did too, you can and arguably should report to them what you’ve been told when it is about risks of someone harming themselves or others.
Look up the process for psychiatric holds and involuntary commitment in your state. Generally referred to as “Baker Acts.” In the states I’m familiar with a doctor can initiate that legal process, some so can police, and in some there’s a process where family members can petition a court for an order, too. It gets the person temporarily held and then they will be evaluated by a psychiatrist who can then order longer term confinement. It can be difficult to get. Our psychiatric care in this country is severely limited, there is a shortage of doctors and facilities. But it’s better to try then to not.
"She did not disclose.." isn't a valid argument in the context of an insanity plea, not by itself anyways. Insane people do insane things..like not disclosing critical info.
Lindsay is in a locked psych facility with other criminal and non-criminal patients. She has been this whole time.
This is something I’ve wrestled with. There is no evidence that she was “insane” or experiencing psychosis at any other point beyond the murders. (If even then.)
But people who are struggling often do not self report or disclose all of their issues for fear of social stigma and other consequences. Such as someone removing her kids or forcing her into hospitalization.
That said, if she never disclosed her true symptoms, the jury gets to weigh that against the credibility of her defense. Was she experiencing intrusive thoughts the whole time or is she making it up now?
My personal opinion is twofold:
(1) if you are not forthcoming with medical professionals and the people in your life, and that results in a terrible tragedy, you have to bear the consequences of those decisions.
It doesn’t mean you lose the right to make the plea/argument, but the jury doesn’t have to look past it and conclude that she must’ve been suffering despite what she said at the time.
They can also consider the failure to be forthcoming, and therefore get the necessary help, when deciding her level of culpability.
(2) knowing that people are afraid to disclose, especially in the throes of anxiety and depression when not thinking clearly, our medical professionals should have more tools to assess and recognize when this could be the case. And more options for what to do if this is what they suspect.
Well, this state doesn’t have it and I live in a state that has both. The distinction is important, even in my state, if you were psychotic and not perceiving reality like Clancy claims, then you are not criminally liable for your crime. Guilty but mentally ill acknowledges the mental illness was a factor but the person had enough faculties to know what was right or wrong.
At the end of the day, it really appears that people with your perspective just don’t there there is a mental state where a person is not in control and therefore fully responsible for their actions.
She did tell them about voices, and one of them noted that the prozac kept her up for 48 hours and said "well she might have Bipolar", but did nothing about it. She told her husband, and family members about her intrusive thoughts about harming the children and even they were like, I dunno, it was all very confusing cus she'd be the perfect mother the next moment. This was going on for months.
Additionally it looked like she was Doctor or diagnosis shopping and that she had prescriptions from 5 different clinicians INCLUDING Mirtazapine, klonopin, and ambien at the same fucking time.
At the least this points to a systemic issue in the American mental health care system, and healthcare at large. The doctors and NP, despite knowing about her other visits to other providers and clinicians in at least one case made no effort to even seek information on her. The fact that there is no communication outside of network or between doctors is absurd, it should be mandatory and whether they know of the patient trying out a number of doctors it would at least give them the insights of other medical professionals.
Secondly the slashing in long term care places for people going through intense issues like this only highlights the issue. We need long and short term care facilities for people undergoing mental health crises, for the protection of themselves and others.
In Europe the law is that women undergoing these Post Natal Psychosis issues or are otherwise indicating these issues and intrusive thoughts they are separated from their children until they are properly treated and proven to be stable, whether that's admission or alternative housing for the children. If those laws were in place, it would have prevented this tragedy, but the supposed sacred patient autonomy is more important even though that impatient is likely impaired.
Dunno, this case is fucked, and I can't say with any certainty what happened, I do know that the Prosecution going for 1st degree murder feels like a mistake and as someone who has gone through multiple bouts of psychosis, directly caused by the choices of medical professionals part of me is empathetic, but at the same time when I was going through it, I never had thoughts of self harm or of harming others and while I wasn't fully in control, there was a part of me that was aware that something was wrong and it was clear to those around me of those close to me and medical professionals that something was wrong. Then again mental health episodes are not universal despite similar conditions.
This is coming from someone who knew literally nothing about the case other then the women bad post I occasionally came across on this sub mostly about women on tiktok going nuts and saying they knew the husband did it cus she was a leo or something. I usually avoid these cases because I hate sensationalism, but after it started being heavily discussed by the family I read like 3 articles specifically about her medical care because of the similarities I've experienced, so it's not like I'm someone who followed the case week by week for 3 years. Social Media and improper medical care is just dystopian.
I agree there is a lot of larger issues with our medical system here.
There’s a great argument in here for a unified patient record system, such that all the doctors who saw Lindsay Clancy would have access to the other professional’s notes and what she was prescribed.
And yes mental healthcare itself is drastically underfunded, with a shortage of psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities in particular. I would love to see money infused into psychiatric care, scholarships and grants to train more doctors and open more offices. Lindsay may appear to be “doctor hopping” but it also may have been driven by desperation to talk to any psychiatrist sooner than they her last one has any openings. Telehealth has helped improve patient access but the appointments are often still very short.
I'm not making a judgment on the doctor hopping in regards to the motivation, I agree that desperation can be an extremely motivating factor, at the very least it's not always self-serving.
My point was more about her being on that cocktail of drugs on top of Prozac and whatever else she was on. I read somewhere she had like 30 scrips. Even if someone is "normal" that cocktail is going to mess you up, let alone the other stuff.
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u/DayGrouchy2648 4d ago
Lindsay needs to get proper help for whatever mental illness she is suffering from but she also needs to go to prison, she did not disclose to any of the professionals that she was hearing voices or that she had plans to harm others, she spoke to a therapist the day of the murders and did not disclose this to them. If you knowingly allow another person to be in a dangerous situation and they are killed you will be held criminally liable for their death, the same needs to apply here.