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Can someone give me a steelman of the popular pro-Lindsay Clancey argument? I’m not really talking about the defense, whose argument is a complex justification for why she medically and legally qualifies for the insanity defense. I’m more asking about the people online arguing that she is a victim and her being prosecuted/this situation is an example of sexism. My wife told me about the case and is very anti Clancey. ChatGPT also gave what I felt is an unsatisfactory steelman. I don’t have a theory of mind for her supporters, and wish to rectify that.
The strong argument is basically:
Some crimes shouldn't result in a "guilty verdict" because of mental illness.
Lindsay had one of those illnesses at the time of the murder therefore she was not "responsible."*
Which illness she had is a bit vague - post-partum psychosis and bipolar have been passed around as possible explanations.
The weaker argument is basically:
The weaker argument is far more common than is in any way acceptable. It is also very stupid. The strong argument is very strong and is the rule of the land - not guilty by reason of insanity is a thing and should be a thing. If it applies to her case or not is a technical discussion, which is causing problems.
*There are very specific rules for this and this really should be the case. "I have borderline personality disorder, a DSM recognized mental illness, therefore I can get away with murder" ...we have decided that's bullshit, and that seems a reasonable decision. "My grandma got sent to jail because she attacked her nurse because her UTI made her temporarily crazy" is also bullshit and not sending her to prison is a good decision for society.
**A side game here appears to be liberal, privileged white women who cannot imagine a woman would do something bad for any reason. For them it seems easy to imagine a man killing his kids but a woman.
I don't buy the insanity defense. I can't think of a mother I know that wouldn't do suicide attempts till success if she did such thing in a moment of blackout. It is just not something you can live with when the haze over your brain lifts.
Just giving flesh to the meme that the only thing white liberal women really fear is accountability.
This cuts both ways - the murders were probably not cold blooded, if they were she wouldn't have tried to kill herself and she would have done things in a way that she could have had a life afterwards. The cause of the behavior was probably something else - a formal personality disorder (ex: Borderline), issues of general personality structure, or "less serious" mental illness (like postpartum depression, other forms of depression, or anxiety) interacting with stressors and other features of her environment. These things should not impair her "reality testing" and should leave her with an understanding that what she is doing is morally wrong and a shitty idea. That type of explanation is going to function pretty similarly to a psychotic state in terms of feeling miserable about events afterwards. For both she'd end up with some pretty hefty treatment afterwards to try and reduce the impulse to suicide. They'd look the same three years later, at least looking from the outside as we are.
Much as my impulse is to give them zero credit I can't really do that here. Most people are aware of men as the sex of violence and killing, and some people are aware of "family annihilator" crime (as this may have been) and when that happens it almost always men. If you live in a bubble with little crime than you just aren't going to see the existence of cases like this or of women committing violence, which does happen in the real world but not in their milieu.
If indeed it is true "family annihilators" are almost always men, it would only make it even more striking that, to my knowledge, a male defendant has yet to have men show up en masse to his courtroom in color-coordinated outfits to show him their support. To the extent male family annihilators had/have supporters, it coded/codes heavily female, to say the least (e.g., Chris Watts, Scott Peterson, Jeffery MacDonald).
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