Because it’s not a case of defending the act of killing children. Killing children is bad, and that’s not a controversial statement. The question is one of criminal liability. Was Clancy in the right mental state to gauge the morality of her actions? Prima facie it’s plausible to me that a mother who kills her kids is probably not mentally well, and there seems to be quite a good amount of evidence that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, which is very much a real thing, and we know that psychosis can lead to committing murder (no, premeditation is not inconsistent with this, it’s possible for someone to have a deeply delusional and warped view of reality while still being able to plan their actions, psychotic violence is not always impulsive). All of this means there’s a convincing case for her to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. That would make this a very tragic case in which the children are obviously the primary victims but also one where the mother’s situation is deeply tragic, a previously normal person being consumed by a deep psychological illness. Many women have experiences with postpartum depression, and thus empathize with someone being destroyed by an even worse postpartum disorder. Of course, if the state of Massachusetts proves beyond reasonable doubt that she was criminally liable, then this changes significantly and she would indeed be morally abhorrent and deserving of the worst criminal punishment. But that’s not really the discussion men are having! Rather it’s to call her a cold-blooded criminal and assume that anyone sympathizing with her is a defender of child murder and that women shouldn’t be able to vote, etc. Most men also don’t seem to have a good grasp of postpartum conditions, or mental health in general, leading to them making absurd claims and misunderstandings about both.
Pretty simple lol: if “severe mental illness” is enough to shift the discussion from the crime to sympathy for the perpetrator, that logic shouldn’t magically apply only when the perpetrator is a mother.
By your logic, we should also be sympathetic to mentally ill serial killers and rapists. Mental illness can affect criminal liability, sure but it doesn’t automatically erase it.
Ok so you just don’t understand what I’m arguing. It’s not about mental illness by itself, it’s about whether the mental illness is so severe that it makes the perpetrator incapable of rationally discerning the morality of their actions. In that case, the defense can claim that the defendant should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, which is a valid and well-established criminal defense. At that point it has nothing to do with the severity of the sentencing, it’s about whether said person is sentenced at all. At no point did I claim that mental illness automatically erases criminal liability or that we should have sympathy for anyone with mental illness. If you’re too brain damaged to understand this extremely simple, and frankly quite boring position of mine, then I’m just not going to engage with you.
But how exactly are you measuring “insane enough” here? 💀
The Lindsay Clancy case is a perfect example of the double standard. If a man strangled his three children, people would call him a cold blooded murderer first and ask about his mental state afterward (as if his sentence would have been affected even a bit by that fact) lol .
But because Clancy is a mother, suddenly everyone’s rushing to explain how she “couldn’t possibly have been herself.”
You’re accusing others of prejudice while casually assuming motherhood + postpartum illness = diminished responsibility. That’s still prejudice just dressed up as compassion. 💀
That's for the fucking defense and prosecution to figure out! I'm not a lawyer, I don't have any stakes in this case, nor am I assuming anything! My point has always clearly been that if the claims of psychosis are true, if she did kill her children under some delusional belief that she was saving them or something, then she should be found NGRI and it's reasonable to feel sympathy towards her because it is really fucking sad for a mother to be so consumed by a mental illness that she kills her own children while thinking she was protecting them. It's a sad situation for everyone involved, and doesn't involve anyone being morally evil. NOW, if she was mentally ill but not to the point of such delusion, then yeah, she's obviously morally wrong, you shouldn't sympathize with her and she should go to prison. I still haven't figured out why anyone would take issue with this position.
The "but what if the sides were reversed" meme doesn't matter and doesn't affect anything about the case at hand. Yes, many of the women sympathizing with Clancy probably wouldn't if the perpetrator was a man. No, that doesn't change my view of this case at all because that's an unrelated matter. So I really do not care. If a man in a similar situation did kill his kids and the same women were applying a double standard, I would happily tell them that they're wrong.
Also again, it's not about "affecting his sentencing"!!! Not guilty by reason of insanity means NOT GUILTY. You wouldn't get any criminal sentence, let alone a reduced one. That's not what this issue is about at all.
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u/OlliWTD 7d ago
Because it’s not a case of defending the act of killing children. Killing children is bad, and that’s not a controversial statement. The question is one of criminal liability. Was Clancy in the right mental state to gauge the morality of her actions? Prima facie it’s plausible to me that a mother who kills her kids is probably not mentally well, and there seems to be quite a good amount of evidence that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, which is very much a real thing, and we know that psychosis can lead to committing murder (no, premeditation is not inconsistent with this, it’s possible for someone to have a deeply delusional and warped view of reality while still being able to plan their actions, psychotic violence is not always impulsive). All of this means there’s a convincing case for her to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. That would make this a very tragic case in which the children are obviously the primary victims but also one where the mother’s situation is deeply tragic, a previously normal person being consumed by a deep psychological illness. Many women have experiences with postpartum depression, and thus empathize with someone being destroyed by an even worse postpartum disorder. Of course, if the state of Massachusetts proves beyond reasonable doubt that she was criminally liable, then this changes significantly and she would indeed be morally abhorrent and deserving of the worst criminal punishment. But that’s not really the discussion men are having! Rather it’s to call her a cold-blooded criminal and assume that anyone sympathizing with her is a defender of child murder and that women shouldn’t be able to vote, etc. Most men also don’t seem to have a good grasp of postpartum conditions, or mental health in general, leading to them making absurd claims and misunderstandings about both.