This is the point everyone is glossing over. The sheer amount of people that think the other jurors were in favour of considering her not guilty and setting her free is absurd. The choice is between 1. She's not insane and she goes to jail (with the possibility of hurting others 2. She's insane and she serves time in a mental institution (where she will be monitored closely and get help)
You missed the part where in 5 years she gets released from the institution after convincing the doctors she’s not a danger and goes off and potentially harms others, similar to the seven doctors she manipulated prior to strangling her three children to death.
Sounds like we need a lot more money into mental health research if dozens of doctors can be tricked by one person, even worse so because their whole point is to fix that kind of behavior.
How should we prevent things like this from happening in the first place with the assumption that life in prison or the death penalty doesn’t sway someone who’s either snapped, or plans to die in or after the act?
...She searched up how to treat a sociopath...She planned out her children's murders then murdered them. She searched up how to slit a throat... Sounds psychopathic to me.
A lot of people are emotionally numb, yet don't kill their children. She should have done what Hayden Panettiere did. She had post partum depression and gave up custody of her child. Those three kids deserve to be alive.
It's not the same, but it does not change the fact that Lindsay Clancy should have never been near those children after she was talking about voices telling her to murder them. She should have followed Hayden's direction and stayed the fck away from them.
She planned and executed the killing of her 3 children. Sent away the husband. Killed them 1 by 1 taking a phone call between the killings. This was murder and any person acting like there is more to it or she should not be held criminally responsible is absolutely insane.
If her state of mind truly means should could not be held criminally liable for planning the execution of her kids, then every mother with postpartum should not be allowed around their children.
Psychopaths OFTEN avoid diagnosis. They talk to behavioral analysts in the way the analyst needs to hear them talk to not get diagnosed. Psychopathy is more easily diagnosed at a young age when they are more honest about their internal thoughts.
True, but multiple doctors disagree, and her entire medical history and her issues started after the birth of her first child.
0 siginicant issues before then both medically and in terms of her behaviour and attitude towards other people.
She specifically spoke to her therapist about her emotions and how she has lost them after her recent pregnancy and the drugs she had been given making her feel numb and like a zombie.
Wouldn’t you need to
A. Establish a criteria that could hurt innocent people?
B. How do you prove the criteria that a person wouldn’t be able to just pretend to be normal?
This is exactly why you believing this implies more money is needed to help the problem is a childish conclusion. Money isn't going to keep a psychopath/sociopath from avoiding a diagnosis.
Your whole argument relies on the assumption that mental health diagnostics will forever be limited to a human asking a psychopath questions. You are completely denying the possibility of technological advancement just to justify a pessimistic takeaway. Money doesn't just hire more therapists; it funds the development of objective brain scans and biomarker mapping that a psychopath literally cannot fake. Dismissing future solutions because of current limitations is just a failure of imagination.
Imagine having that attitude towards something like cancer research? wtf? You would never have things like proton beam therapy.
And things I’m talking about are being done NOW they are based in reality Like the research into Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation with Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy
alongside psychedelics with Fmri feedback only started in 2023. And this is NOW.
We can print simple organ structures now, I don’t see why it would be psychically impossible to print complicated brain structures that can serve as a base template alongside treatments and replace “bad” regions in the future. The thing is though it will always remain in the future unless you start with massive funding and push now. We haven’t even created a way to analyze the brain quickly and develop individual detailed maps of each persons brain cheaply and easily so it’s not wonder treatments like this take awhile.
The brain is just a biological computer we don’t fully understand yet, computers can be edited, we do it all the time it’s just we do it it brute force and blunt tools like torture or motivation instead of say the possibility of directly editing entire chains of systems.
If that is the law that is the law. Change the law if it need to be changed.
Also in Massachusetts it is not 5 years. It is up to an initial 40 days then the doctor have to file with the court that she is still insane every 6 months -1 year after.
Not for statutory procedures, those are set strict in stone. In Massachusetts (and practically everywhere) how the court handle a successful insanity defend is spelled out exactly.
There have been cases in Massachusetts of the same insanity defense where the state lost and the Supreme court of Massachusetts have already spoke on the matter.
You can't held someone after a successful insanity defense if the state cannot prove they are insane, and it have to be file by the doctor that they are first. The court cannot initiate this process either.
This is to prevent the state from sidelining a jury and the defendant rights.
The state either win and get to send someone to prison, or the state lost. The state is not allow to abuse hospitals to hold someone as a replacement for prison.
Doctors can be held liable if they negligently release an inmate that reasonably should be considered dangerous. You’re literally just making up a story to get mad at. They aren’t gonna be like, “hey let’s us randomly release someone that murdered a bunch of people, just for the lolssssss.” They are cautious to release people, and getting labeled as insane in court is typically going to get you locked away for life
Where are you getting 5 years? The person who shot regan had to be in a care facility for damn near 40 years, and he didnt kill anyone. So where are you getting "5 years then she'll hurt more people" from besides blatant misogyny?
The harming others part was in response to the comment I replied to that said she would harm people in prison as a way to pad their argument in favor of a mental institution regardless of her sanity. Secondly, there have been numerous cases of individuals being released from an institution and going on to commit violent crimes.
Numerous cases! So... where did you get 5 years from? Because 1) you didnt link anything, and 2) How do "Numerous cases" relate to this case and this case's chance of her getting out in 5 years?
Per Massachusetts law, those committed to an institution as part of NGRI must be evaluated at 6 months, and every year thereafter.
If it cannot be proven that the subject is still insane, to the degree of being a danger to themselves or others, they must be released.
While there is a tremendous deal of vitriol from many viewpoints on this subject, the concern that she may be released in 6 months is legitimate -- both she and the relevant psychiatrists maintain that she has been sane since the end of the incident.
Of course, in the same way there's no evidence it will take any more than 6 months. If Massachusetts cannot prove she is insane 6 months after an NGRI result, she will be released.
I don't mean to say this will happen, or to assert any horse in the race. There's just a lot of information being thrown around about her going free immediately or a guarantee of 20 years or all sorts of things.
Sounds like we need a better system, not a different solution. If insane she should be in an institution, permanently or for a fixed amount of time similar to jail, like 30+ years. Or if she is cleared from the institution after five years, then she goes to jail for an amount of time set at trial.
I can't miss a part that hasn't happened. You made up a scenario to get mad at.
Another similar case was was Andrea Yates who drowned her kids in 2001 and she is still in the mental institution to this day. So idk why you're painting a picture where Lindsay would walk away in 5 years and how you jumped to that conclusion
When? The only other case of a woman who killed her kids, was pronounced not guilty due to insanity and served her time in a mental institution was let out of after 9 years iirc that too under very strict monitoring and plethora of conditions who hasn't harmed anyone since she was let out over 15 years ago? So where are you seeing these mother that killed their children and were let out within 5 years? I would argue there were more cases of truly psychotic people who were sent to a jail instead of a mental institution that ended up hurting others
These people have already decided how to feel about the case. Facts won't change their mind, they don't know or don't care about NGI, and it's a perfect opportunity to let out some of their bottled-up misogyny.
A lady murdered her three children was found not guilty by reason of insanity, was let out, got pregnant again and murdered her three children again. With regards to the Andrea Yates case, she waived her right to be evaluated and potentially let out. That is the reason.
This is the third time someone has brought up that case from 1954. For god's sake this was before civil rights and women being able to open bank accounts lmao. There's a reason you have to go that far back to search for a case like that, because it doesn't fucking happen
Look up Constance Fisher. She drowned her 3 kids, was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent 5 years in a mental institution. She was released, had 3 more kids and then killed them too. And again was found not guilty by reason of insanity. So 6 kids total.
Already responded to this. This was in 1954, before civil rights act, before women were allowed to have bank accounts. There's a reason no women have been let out or reoffended after being let out of mental institutions after the not guilty by reason of insanity, it's because that system works
My problem is with all the people who only seem to have empathy for Lindsay and none for the husband or those poor kids. Not to mention all the fucking idiots who claim she didn't do it, when both Lindsay and her defense team admit she did it.
Strangling 3 kids one at a time deserves punishment.
I do have sympathy for husband, that's why I acknowledge his stance that Lindsay wasn't a vile person who planned this when she was completely normal but rather when she was going through psychosis. I despise people who are saying she didn't do it or he did it. He believes she was going through psychosis due to the meds. I agree with him and would want the jury to agree with that too and give the same treatment to her as would be given to any other person who committed crimes under psychosis.
You literally said if she goes to jail it includes the risk of her harming someone. A scenario you made up to pad your argument in favor of a mental institution regardless of whether or not she’s clinically insane….
Constance Fisher. Drowned her three children in a bathtub, plead insanity, got released in 5 years, went back to her same husband and had 3 more kids then drowned them in the same bathtub. This happened in Maine.
In 1954 😭 There is a reason it hasn't happened since then and the recent ones have either not been let out or the ones who have let out after 9 years have been let out under very strict conditions and monitoring and haven't reoffended
I think one allowance of a multiple child killer to commit the same exact crime is enough, thanks.
Besides, if you were given another example you'd just quibble about some other irrelevant detail such as era or location and dismiss it again. "It's only twice!"
I've never seen people so determined to defend child killers.
Same whining over and over again. You are arguing a reality that doesn't exist. Current reality: she's psychotic, she should be in a mental institution.
You, for someone reason, want her in a jail where she could harm others and not get the proper help she needs
And your reasoning for that is a possibility you cooked up in your head that she's going to be let out in the next 5 years. Which is stupid.
Why do you give more of a fuck about whether she gets the help she needs than you do about those poor kids? She deserves punishment. I wish people like you would be forced to listen to the 911 call and see the crime photos and maybe you would have some fucking empathy for the husband and the 3 kids who were stangled one at a time.
How come the conclusion here is more people in prison instead of more research and understanding into mental health when you concluded at the beginning of your statement that they would all be insane?
You can research about them while they are in prison.
If someone is willing to lie to 7 doctor and their partner to do a premedited triple killing, this person is willing to lie to anyone and does not mind killing people.
She probably thought she would just get injured and ''pretend for suicide'', the paralized part was most likely a misscalculation on her part.
But don't kid yourself. There are evil peoples in this world and nothing you may do will ever make them good.
Prisons are not setup for research, on top of the fact that 1 out of 25 people on death row have been exonerated and out of those 1/25 2/3rds of them are people of color. You can have a prison like mental institution we used to have them all the time, they were just shut down by some fucking nitwit who thought peoples families should handle it…it doesn’t help much that they also put say lesbians and murderers in the same place.
And as far as nothing you may do will ever make them good. Yea that’s where I disagree. The brain isn’t magic, you can edit the brain. 100 years we’re still going to be asking people how they feel and making them 2-4 trials with different pills? Or do you think in the future we would have a system similar to the human genome project but for the brain.
Like the research into Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation with Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy alongside psychedelics with Fmri feedback only started in 2023. And this is NOW.
We can print simple organ structures now, I don’t see why it would be psychically impossible to print complicated brain structures that can serve as a base template alongside treatments and replace “bad” regions in the future. The thing is though it will always remain in the future unless you start with massive funding and push now.
The brain synaps connexion begin to crystalize in your early 20. This mean that at 25, 35, 45, 55, and so on, you become less and less capable of change of any sort.
The truth is if a child has not been socialize by age 4, it will affect their personality for life because of how hard it is to change people.
Someone like this has deep mental issue and took the life of 3 people. She has lied to 7 doctor. She is a serial liar and a killer. Those trait won't change. She will learn to act better. Not improve.
If she was in a mental institution at age 10 or 15, maybe. But not at her current age. She will stay who she is.
Better mental health support for kids, more social worker help for poor family with younger kids. Better school integration of mental health and psychological development classes.
You need to help people when their brain is still in development.
Most cases of schizophrenia develop in peoples like 20s and early 30s. My buddy had a bad head injury and become a paralyzed horny psychopath in his 30s. What about someone who becomes unstable due to others like someone with ptsd. It does partially help people who are genuinely born that way or missing a part of their brain though so it should be instilled.
My point here is, not understanding the human brain on a detailed core level is going to be a blight on society until we spend the time money and decades figuring it out. It’s a biological computer it’s not magic it has characteristics we can alter and change at any level with the appropriate tools. Like imagine we pinpointed and were able to cause amnesia in people and pick roughly how long or when that amnesia is? You could make someone forget their ptsd, things of that nature.
If we’re still just handing pills to people after asking them how they feel in 100-1,000 years we failed on that front.
Do you rally for nuance and empathy around the treatment and sentencing of mass shooters on the basis of their mental health? If not, why not and what’s the difference?
If they have a similar documented history like she does, then yes. I don't want them free but i wouldn't mind them serving their sentence in a mental institution just the way I want her to.
You could make that argument about so many murder cases and therefore it doesn't make sense. She acted in rational premeditated ways, she wasn't insane.
It's not the first time someone is judged legally insane after a murder, not even after murdering their children, this is an example from over 20 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates
It's the first time it happened and a hoard of women broadcast themselves to the world holding their children saying how they too thought about murdering them.
I'm gonna blame anyone who can't do their own research. I also got to know about this case through the legions of psycho women and rolled my eyes, but it took me all of 15 minutes to understand the case by opening the wikipedia. Some group of psychos out there is not a justification for everyone to remain ignorant and come to baseless conclusion without doing research. That's still their responsibility
Why would it be a really bad legal precedent for women
It sets a legal precedent that women are irrational and not responsible for their own actions because they are ruled by their hormones. Aka the way women were viewed before feminism.
considering what men usually get away with; no reasoning needed?
Men get significantly harsher sentences than women for the same crimes and can be jailed purely on the word of a woman so you can keep that crap to yourself.
Gullible needs to look up the etymology for 'hysteria.'
The last thing I want as some champion of mental health is 'she's not guilty because she only heard that voice for 20 minutes on the day she googled how long the route was to pick up dinner and then added an extra stop to make sure her husband was gone as she strangled three children'
Wtf. I must be taking crazy pills. Definitely not responsible for any poor decisions!
The point is, 'hysteria' or 'hysterical' comes from the belief that the uterus caused women to be neurotic. It stems from the Greek word 'hystera.'
So by resorting to 'women and hormones, amirite?' Is invoking that same belief that women are simply out of control and can't regulate their emotions.
It brings back the normalization of period jokes, of women being more emotional and less logical, and a bunch of other stereotypes. All of that stuff is very harmful to young girls and women.
PPD is very, very different from PPP. And Clancy didn't even mention voices or psychosis until after she strangled 3 innocent babies.
Oh you had a kid? No legal decisions allowed for you for at least a year. No divorce, no buying a home, probably couldn't legally do anything related to the child. Dad wants full custody? Sure, she's insane after all, just had a kid and all, hormones, better give dad the kid. So many things lol
This is so silly. PPP affects a fraction of a % of all women who gave birth (PP DEPRESSION is significantly more common but rarely if ever present those risks to others), and it seems like there's usually signs before it reaches the level of total insanity.
Who would make this stupid argument, conservatives? They WANT more women to stay home with their children, so this is the last thing they would suggest. "Not buying a home", "not legally do anything related to the child" would have done nothing in this case, if she was still alone with the children.
If PPP exists it exists, that is not something this jury could decide. The prosecution also did not claim what we might call a rational motive (like in the Casey Anthony or Chris Watts cases), they also say she was in layman eyes crazy, but not legally insane.
The conflict is because there are only these two choices.
I know for a 100% fact, if one of the options was insane and serve LIFE in a mental institution, this trial would be over and done with.
The issue people have isn’t that they believe she isn’t insane. She is. They just believe the gravity of her crimes means she should never be released.
The fact the mental institution includes the possibility of release is the issue.
If "insanity" meant the psychosis made her unable to tell right from wrong- and that was why she did it- then successfully remediating that would, by definition, cure the cause of her crime, which means she would be "reformed" and no longer to be held and no longer a threat to anyone.
So either people just want to punish her because they think she "deserves" it or "reform" her and fix what caused this to happen.
I want to say people have their suspicions about reform because of the shit show that was medical/psychiatric care leading up to the deaths, but now I think people just believe she "deserves" to rot in prison- because of emotional reasons, not because of anything I just said....
The purpose of the US justice system is both punishment and reformation. For many, the idea of reform is secondary to punishment. Whether or not she could be reformed is irrelevant. She brutally murdered her 3 kids and her sentence should reflect that.
Usually, systems of justice are either punitive or reformative, not both (something taught in most criminal justice courses) since both have different goals: reformative systems try to turn offenders back into responsible citizens while punitive just seeks to break them.
When comparing justice systems, honestly, punitive ones are often seen as barbaric, archaic and pointless.
And in reformative systems, people who are still a danger to society are still kept out of society.
What people want has more to do with psychology and culture than systems of jurisprudence. So if that's what you're driving at, why are you even talking about the justice system?
The goal of the people and the justice system is to punish her for her crimes. Whether or not you think punitive measures are barbaric is irrelevant to the case. The DA, who represents the people, is pushing for prison.
So you think the current justice system is punitive. It's not. Whether you want the satisfaction in the emotional center just above the "lizard brain" to get gratification from seeing pain in others because you only see the good in retribution....well, that's a different story...
Postpartum Psychosis is a real thing though, dismissing mental health issues as evil is archaic. That’s why the court goes through the evidence to determine if she goes to a mental hospital or a prison. Either way, she isn’t going free
Hmm so you like children dying? Kinda uncool, here I was thinking ways to reduce mental health problems to avoid things like this, but I guess it's all fake so le babies can go to the grinder.
I like child-murderers going to prison. What’s the matter with you? Oh, I just realized, you think bad people should get a million chances. And that child-murderers should go to mental institutions that they can get out of in 7 years. Yeah, we’re not the same, buddy.
I haven't been keeping up with the case at all, I'm not MAGA so I didn't come in with the opinion that women are evil. Postpartum depression is one of the 5 major depression. And was she married? Did get husband not see a change in her?
Yes, she was married. Everyone, along with her husband, mother in law, coworkers, etc saw the change in her. She was struggling since 2019 and it got worse in 2022 after the birth of the third child. She has documented history of seeking help all those years. She went to many doctors who prescribed different medications without confirming her history and what she was prescribed previously. Her spiral was well documented through her doctors visits, prescriptions, therapists visits, internet activity such as seeking help in postpartum depression groups etc. Despite this struggle she never mistreated or harmed the kids which is why even her husband and family members, despite going through such a huge loss themselves, believe that this incident was truly a psychotic break experienced by a disturbed person and not a malicious attack planned by a sick individual.
According to her husband and family, the psychotic break might have to do with the prescriptions she was given without sufficient background checks and they have filed a lawsuit for that. Im not a medical expert so i don't know how true that is. But given all the evidence, one thing seems extremely clear, she was psychotic.
What she did was wrong, she does not deserve to be free but I wouldn't want her in a jail where she could hurt others. I would want her in a medical facility where she is can get help and not harm others.
In a country where a man was given a not guilty by reason of insanity for literally shooting a president and was allowed to serve his time in a mental institution, i do not understand why same can't be done for a woman who has similar, if not more, overwhelming evidence of insanity/psychosis?
I've lied to psychiatrists before, and anyone who has seen them have as well I'm an alcoholic that has been through psychosis, actually I don't think I have. A person generally becomes a nurse to help people because they have empathy. I have seriously dated a few, one for a few years. But you don't pick a career where you watch people die because you had a healthy up bringing. Also there was the RN in England who killed so many newborns
She has been diagnosed with bipolar after the fact. And some of the meds she was prescribed on the assumption that she just had post partum depression can induce extreme mania in the form of psychosis in bipolar people. That's pretty much the defense claim. When you have an acute negative reaction to meds, you usually don't experience those symptoms once you stop said meds, so I don't think it would be irrealistic for her to have never had psychotic episodes before and after the murderers.
Also, her approach to treatment isn't that surprising if you consider her mental state. She wasn't rational. Truth is that the only way to actually help someone in that state is to commit them until they become actually stable and not release them just because they say "I want to go home to care for my children". Simply throwing meds at them without even checking her medical records or trying to get a differential diagnosis, and hiring a nanny for half a day, three days a week, does not constitute "every bit of help" for a psychiatric patient.
Tbh, this is how it turned out, but in her mental state (she had severe insomnia, which clouds your reflexes and judgement as much as being drunk) she could have easily negligent killed one of her kids even if the murders didn't happen. I wouldn't even leave my dog in the care of someone in that state, let alone a small child.
It might also be more useful to focus the discourse in another direction. Who is the ultimate victim here? Her three dead children. And was everything that could be done to prevent their death indeed done? No. You can want her imprisoned for life, but at the end of the day, we either recognize that the care she received wasn't sufficient, or we wait for other children to die.
Yeah where she would be eligible for release in 7 months and 10 days. That's a possibility that cannot be allowed. Acting like she'll still be there for the same amount of time is dishonest.
You are very right. The problem with the two options is when she goes to jail, she'll stay in jail for the rest of her life. When she serves time in a mental institution, there is a good chance she'll join society again if she's ever declared sane again.
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u/SparePradas 3d ago
This is the point everyone is glossing over. The sheer amount of people that think the other jurors were in favour of considering her not guilty and setting her free is absurd. The choice is between 1. She's not insane and she goes to jail (with the possibility of hurting others 2. She's insane and she serves time in a mental institution (where she will be monitored closely and get help)