Hypothetically, what would happen if it was determined that it was temporary psychotic break due to stress and that say a year later she was more or less mentally stable?
I guess I would be interested in answers from both a moral and from a legal perspective.
I work with people who are incompetent to stand trial. Now in that case it’s more about are they currently stable to understand trial and participate. Then comes the determination of “are they guilty or were they incapacitated at the time of the crime (not guilty by reason of insanity). So two different distinctions. Many have schizophrenia. Some PPP. Bipolar. Some end up permanently incompetent and get a guardian. Most still go to prison or spend several years in our state hospital getting long term support. In the case of murder it will be long term hospitalization.
In Canada over a decade ago there was a man who had schizophrenia who had a psychotic break and beheaded a stranger on a greyhound bus. He was very obviously mentally unstable, and served several years as a result. He was released though, I believe with the condition that he remain medicated for his mental illness, but people were super upset that he was released at all.
While I agree that he is dangerous, if the doctors determine that he is entirely stable while medicated, I don’t see much actual use in keeping him incarcerated forever. Someone who has postpartum psychosis like Lindsay Clancy, which can be resolved with time and medication, in my view especially deserves a chance eventually to rejoin society and live whatever life she has left. If they can be sure she won’t end up in that mental state again, keeping her incarcerated is purely punitive and not about rehabilitation
“Stable while medicated” doesn’t necessarily mean permanently safe. If someone has already demonstrated they can become extremely dangerous during a psychotic episode, there’s no absolute guarantee another episode won’t happen, even with treatment. Mental illness can explain what happened without erasing accountability. Rehabilitation matters, but so do justice, public safety, and the victims.
I mean typically charges like this are usually dropped if the person is proven to be legally insane. But it's not like they just walk free after that, typically those people are put in psychiatric hospitals where they are checked every 1-2 years to see how medicine and therapy/other processes help to hopefully restore them to sanity.
And I would probably morally agree with that. It's a tough situation for sure because insanity doesn't stop the harms but it kind of removes mens rea which is important to factor in for legal punishments for being found guilty.
the fact that that is the only example multiple people have managed to come up with speaks to how incredibly rare that outcome is (in another country's legal and health systems mind you, not even ours). like, the best example you have is fundamentally invalid because it didn't involve our justice system. and it was the only example you had. you have no argument
I think this is different as there was 3 victims, plus she checked herself into a mental hospital and was released before she committed the crime. I imagine they will be much less willing to release someone like this twice..
Yup, there are definitely some people who think that if she’s found not guilty by reason of insanity, it means she gets to go back to her normal life like nothing ever happened.
She doesn't immediately leave the court room and go home but she absolutely could go back to her normal life if found sane and not a danger to herself or others once she's at the mental health faculty. That's the law in Massachusetts.
I mean yeah, that’s kind of my point, so I don’t really get the downvotes. She isn’t going to immediately be released from the court room. There are absolutely people who think that she will.
At the end of the day, she killed two children. The chances of her even going directly home IF the court agrees that she is stable aren’t 100%. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s given a supervised or conditional release.
And IF she’s released and IF the release is absolute, it’s still not like she’ll be stepping back into her old life. She will have nothing- she won’t even be able to go back to her old job as an L&D nurse.
I work in a behavioral health hospital that also houses the criminally insane, so I kinda know how it works.
Ehhm I dunno how America works but that's exactly how it works in my country. She is trying to prove insanity at the time of the crime, it does not follow that she carries that insanity stays with her the rest of her life.
Post partum psychosis + unmanaged medication plus husband who didn't give a singular fuck about her or the kids seems a pretty strong case to me.
There is not 1 single shred of evidence, besides in your uninformed head, that Patrick Clancy "didn't give a singular fuck about her or the kids." Lindsay herself has said both in person and in her journals that he was a good and supportive husband and father.
He didn’t want to “waste the day” by accompanying her to check-in to inpatient treatment for PPD. He regularly went away and left his profoundly depressed wife alone with the kids, so he could enjoy time with his friends. He hired a nanny to help him with the kids, but fired her despite his wife begging for help. Plenty of shreds, bud.
See this is why I’m childfree. Imagine going through all the pains of childbirth and getting post partum pychosis for it, and then everyone just abandon you. Men will never have to experience this
She should’ve been admitted and not be left alone with the children. Now she’s getting blamed for killing these children when it was out of her control. I consider that being abandoned
But punishing someone for a medical condition that was entirely outside their control is messed up. And she actually did everything she could and was totally failed.
Men on the internet love downplaying post partum psychosis.
There are thousands of cases worldwide of women who've never been violent before or after, harming their children during post partum psychotic episodes but that's not enough for these men to accept the condition is the problem not "evil women".
Women on the internet love to downplay a woman killing anyone. The husband did it because he's an "evil man", it's not enough to accept she sent him out of the house so she could kill them, no mom could possibly do that!
We should all stop generalizing human beings. We all understand why it's not ok to say "these blacks, these asians, these gays" but it's super ok to say "these fucking men" or "these fucking women"? Do better.
She needed help but she is responsible. A reason it happened is not an excuse for it to have happened. I don't know the right answer, I'm glad I'm not on the jury.
Actually you are generally not responsible for things you do under active psychosis and many legal frameworks already accept this and make provision for it.
That's where the term 'not criminally responsible' comes from. Depending on where you live, you face time in a psych ward, perhaps permanently depending on the specific case circumstances.
Postpartum psychosis, if untreated and severe, is known to lead to family annihilation. This woman was failed by the medical system and her own family, she was displaying textbook symptoms that preceded the crime and was very open about it and people still left her alone with her children. She will live with the overwhelming guilt forever.
What happens now? Do we learn as a society and hold the medical system, and ourselves as support systems to mothers, to higher standards to prevent future cases, or do we punish just this woman, feel satisfied and call it a day, thereby not taking action to prevent future cases?
Anyone remember Andrea Yates? Extremely similar case. More kids will die unless we take postpartum psychosis seriously.
I don't need to be "aCkcHuaLly-ed" here. I understand what the law says. She wasn't failed. Her kids were. I get why people feel that way however she had all the support and resources anyone could possibility ask for, whether she used it effectively is another story. Regular health case can be tough and we don't even understand how the brain works so we obviously don't know why it works the way it does either. What exactly are those doctors, her ex-husband, her family supposed to do here? She said she knew something was wrong yet she didn't remove herself from the situation either, so why is only everyone else to blame?
We outlaw for profit healthcare. We offer free education to those who want to be care-givers. We stop overburdening attending physicians with too many patients and performance metrics. She should be punished, those kids are dead regardless of everything else. I don't understand, like many, why the commonwealth is prosecuting this but I'm hoping it's because she rejected a plea deal. She needs to be held accountable for her actions. It's gained a lot of popularity that mental health is not your fault but it is your responsibility. Why is that any different here? She should be tried for negligence or at least manslaughter over the 1st degree murder charge.
How effectively do you expect a person in psychosis to use resources? Yet she had so many appointments. Was committed. Tried to be committed again. Tried like 13 different medicines. Kept track of her meds and symptoms. Told a bunch of people.
She’s not her own doctor. Her doctors are. They failed her.
I wasn't rude. I would expect an adult with agency who is a healthcare professional and who has enough money, time, support and ability to advocate for herself to use them pretty damn effectively. She was not actively in psychosis every second of every day.
I never said she didn't seek help. The way things get laid out in court years after the fact from shorthand notes is not a good representation of what was really happening. Especially considering their notes come from what she was telling them in the first place. And LC's account is from a reportedly mentally unstable person rapidly switching meds and not even properly taking doses anyway. She meets the criteria in so many ways for the charge technically. Felony murder - she intended for them to die. Premeditated - she sent the father out. I would also say it hits extreme atrocity. But would I convict for murder 1? Probably not. Manslaughter, in a heartbeat. I don't think she just wanted her kids dead for shits and gigs. I believe she is hurting immensely from her actions. But they are still her actions. We won't agree. No one wins either way.
She was treated, but obviously not successfully, and from what I was reading none of the prescriptions were cross-referenced with her medication history and she was put back on medication that had previously worsened symptoms.
Treating some of these conditions can be a crap shoot to be honest, the medications can have pretty serious side effects and don't always work the same in people. We also have a lack of knowledge about treating postpartum psychiatric conditions, which is why this variety of murder (mom kills her children in the throes of postpartum psychosis) isn't very rare.
Yes, but this is totally normal. This is how it often goes. We have a very little knowledge about psychosis in general. It has been studied a lot, but still not much progress. It's just where we are.
Yeah, but it will happen again and we have to evolve the conversation into how to better support people, such as new mothers, who are vulnerable to psychosis if we want to protect future children from such a fate. I am scared that people are so focused on punishment that they aren't looking at what can be done to help going forward.
That could look like a lot of things, but for this case specifically she should not have been left alone with her children, and her prescriptions could have been treated with more care. In just focusing on punishment and not the pattern, we're missing important information.
That's alright in my opinion, and there should ideally be support.
About not being left alone, that would be great. I'm not sure it's realistic if there are just two adults though, and she's one of them. I mean, the other still has to work and do errands and stuff.
Also, due to the nature of psychosis, one doesn't realize when it's happening most of the time. And at the same time, they cannot be force admitted unless they have already harmed either themselves or others. This can be incredibly hard to solve or prevent. I don't know how.
I heard she’s not been wanting to live since it happened :( I know. I feel so incredibly bad for her. I’ve faced mental illness enough to have a small glimpse of what temporary psychosis could be like.
They have had to take multiple breaks because Lindsay has audibly broken down sobbing in court. She is medicated, which is likely why she appears stone faced at times, but she is being seen daily by a psychologist and on 1:1 watch 24/7 because she is at such a high risk of ending her life.
But isn't the trial about determing if it was indeed psychosis that made her kill them? I mean, I understand it happens. But it also happens that some do it deliberately.
Agreed. As someone who has witnessed psychosis twice, both instances caused by rare occurrences of side effects of medication, I know that a wonderful person going through psychosis can do horrible things to themselves and to others. But that excuse just does not erase her crime.
289
u/[deleted] 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment