Lindsay Clancy Trial
Social media is abuzz with comments for and against the criminal trial of Lindsay Clancy. Clancy, a mother of three, murdered all of them in cold blood in the basement of their home. The facts of the killing are not disputed; Clancy stipulated to the fact. The question is not whether she is a murderer but whether she is criminally responsible for her actions due to postpartum psychosis or the commonly known insanity defense.
Throughout the course of the trial, Clancy’s defense attorney did his best to place medical care and pharmaceuticals on trial without focusing on the horrific murder of three small children at the hands of their own mother. Many have come to support Clancy and have justified that mental illness is an excuse for unthinkable violence. Every murder (not killing as in self-defense) means willfully wishing for another’s death at the perpetrator’s hand is some level of mental illness.
The reason human beings, in general, do not slaughter each other is that they have an interior governor called conscience, directing them to do good and avoid evil or to know right from wrong. A person doesn’t have to listen to it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean mental illness. People can know something is wrong and choose to do it. Supposedly, Clancy heard a voice telling her to kill her children, then herself. Curiously, it is the only time she heard this voice. Why the voice couldn’t be her decision to kill, no one knows.
At the heart of the defense’s case is that Clancy should not be held accountable because she had postpartum psychosis. What we have learned from the so-called experts is that the medical profession has no idea what psychosis is. Approximately 1 in 1000 women is supposed to suffer from the ailment, but very rarely does it end in murder, especially of their own flesh and blood. Again, the experts have no idea.
Another fact which has never been mentioned is that four states do not have the insanity defense on their books at all. Massachusetts obviously is not one of them. Evidently, these jurisdictions have determined regardless of a mental state, a violent murder is still a murder demanding justice. It is long overdue; other states must follow suit. The medical community has no idea what is in anyone’s mind, and this trial made that clear. Instead of science, psychiatry relies on consensus, not observation of facts. You can’t base a legal system on such flimsy knowledge and conjecture. Regardless, a murder is still a murder.
Any way you parse it, Lindsay Clancy is an admitted serial murderer. She viciously killed her children by strangling them one by one. Then she attempted to kill herself. The taboo observation that cannot be mentioned without reprisal from feminists is that if a man killed his three children, then attempted to kill himself and was deemed to be in psychosis, he would be sent away post haste with the key thrown away.
Lindsay Clancy, according to her own admission, is a serial killer and has lost her opportunity ever to have a chance to live in civil society. With her mental illness and supposed bouts of psychosis, the public can never be sure she would not fall into that state again and harm other people. It is the government’s responsibility to protect the public, and Clancy poses a threat due to her unstable mental condition.
We will never know what motivated Clancy to kill her children violently, but we don’t have to. In our civil society, she, like other murderers, must pay a price, must be accountable for her actions. The only correct decision is to sentence her to life in prison. If not, expect more gruesome killings in the future. A mental hospital is a lot better than a prison cell.
Don’t ever forget the fallout and true victims. This isn’t about how Lindsay Clancy was a good mother and a victim of her mental issues or how the medical profession failed her. She failed to act as a person who can live alongside other law-abiding people in society.
The true victims are three innocent children: Cora, Dawson, and Callan, who never had a chance to live their lives, all due to what she did to them.