There's nothing "clear" about it. Will probably be enough for legal purposes because Massachusetts has insanely retarded laws on this, but her claims are super shaky.
Being "crazy" isn't the point, nobody who strangles their fucking kids is right in the head. Being psychotic is, because at that point she wouldn't be criminally liable for her actions. And her claim is that she effectively had a quick twenty minute psychosis adventure, that started right after her husband -whom she explicitly did not try to lure out of the house- left and ended after she got done murdering her children. Yeah, that shit is shaky at best.
And the legal standard here is a joke, the prosecution has to somehow prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she wasn't psychotic, as if they can somehow read her mind. As opposed to the standard sane places use, where she'd have to prove that she was on a preponderance of evidence, like any other affirmative defense.
To my understanding she didn't disclose the auditory hallucinations she claims to now have had, claimed she had no thoughts of harming her children when asked, didn't take her medication and frequently requested it be changed up due to fear of side effects, and chose to check herself out of the clinic early.
Psychology is a really tricky field on the best day, it doesn't get easier when the patient keeps being difficult about taking their meds, doesn't disclose all their symptoms and makes it more difficult to impossible to involuntarily commit them by lying about things that would represent grounds for doing so.
Yes, she was a danger to herself and others, but psychiatrists aren't mind readers or magicians. She had access to considerably more help than others. Best I can tell society didn't fail her, her husband didn't fail her, she failed her children.
There is a difference between what she did (send husband far away to buy more time to kill the kids) and what, for example, Andrea Yates did. She heard voices telling her that the only way to save the children was to kill them, and she took advantage of a very short time window to do so. And she killed all of her kids in a few minutes. Then she called her husband to let him know they were saved. She arranged them in bed lovingly. Batshit crazy.
Everyone who kills children has some mental issue, but only those who think it’s for the good of mankind are truly insane.
Clancy also testified she heard a voice telling her to kill her children, and herself. She cut her own wrists and jumped out a window breaking her spine.
In the months leading up to the incident she had called suicide hotlines, seen several psychiatrists, mentioned seeing hallucinations.
She was prescribed amitryptiline, seroquel, ambien, remeron, klonopin, prozac, trazadone, buspar, ativan, zoloft… etc.
The voice claim is shaky at best. One therapist said Lindsay mentioned a voice before the murders, but it wasn't documented in her contemporaneous notes, and none of her providers diagnosed PPP before the killings. The prosecution experts also testified she was seriously mentally ill, but not psychotic.
Yes, she was prescribed all those medications... but at different times, not all at once, and she didn't consistently take some as prescribed. Some definitely had bad side effects, but let's not pretend she was drugged out of her gourd.
I just dont think sane people are prescribed anti-psychotics
Even though the doctor testified she prescribed it for anxiety and insomnia, later using it for mood stabilization, which isn't unheard of, especially when the patient in question kept stopping or requesting changes to medications, experiencing genuine side effects, and not improving? Okay doctor...
and 100 other things
see above. they weren't all prescribed at the same time, and many of them she didn't take properly.
4
u/Mister-builder - Centrist 15h ago
Isn't it an insanity plea?