The jury deciding Lindsay Clancy’s fate has been asked to answer an extraordinarily narrow question. Outside the courtroom, however, a much louder constituency has tried to turn Clancy into something larger. To her fans, Clancy is a symbol of postpartum mental illness and medical failure, a woman who should be believed—and forgiven.
The trouble for Clancy is that this contaminates the question the jury must answer: Is the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children criminally responsible for what she did? Her defense depends on evidence about her mental state and the difficult legal distinction between severe mental illness and criminal responsibility. A movement that asks people to choose Clancy’s side before that distinction has been resolved risks making a serious legal defense look like an article of faith.
That may be the worst defense of Clancy available. The spectacle outside Plymouth Superior Court made this problem highly visible. Around 300 supporters gathered there on August 20, many dressed in pink and wearing messages including “Believe,” “She Needed Help,” and “Peace For Lindsay.” They applauded defense attorney Kevin Reddington, formed hearts with their hands and joined in the Lord’s Prayer.
Although the intention was to be sympathetic to a woman’s mental plight, sympathy becomes less useful to Clancy when it hardens into certainty. There is an important distinction between taking postpartum mental illness seriously and deciding in advance what that illness meant for one defendant’s criminal responsibility. The former is a public health argument, and the latter is a legal judgment grounded in evidence.
Clancy admits to killing her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. The discussion and differing opinions focus on the intent behind the act. Her lawyers argue that postpartum psychosis left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she did, while prosecutors contend that, whatever her psychiatric condition, she still understood that killing her children was wrong.
That is the case the jury has to decide. Not whether Clancy suffered, but what her suffering meant under the law. The rhetoric surrounding her can easily obscure that question.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
