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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   17391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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So here is a macabre tragicomedy that happened in Tuscon, Arizona:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/01/tucson-police-gay-bar-shooting

The suspect, identified by police as 44-year-old Ousman Ceesay, allegedly killed 42-year-old Vincent Anthony Siqueiros and 33-year-old Cameron Davis Capara. “After confronting Mr Siqueiros and Mr Capara, the suspect shot them. There is no known active threat to the community. The suspect was in possession of a note with several LGBTQIA+ associated businesses written on it. Tucson police chief Monica Prieto said in a statement: “We recognize this incident may cause fear and pain within our community. Tucson is, and always has been, a diverse community where people of different backgrounds, identities and experiences call this city home. We are committed to ensuring every member of our community feels safe, valued and welcomed.” “This tragedy serves as yet another painful reminder that homophobia is still rampant in our country. We must implement smarter policies to prevent mass shootings and keep our communities safe. Easy access to firearms and Arizona’s weak gun safety laws continue to put all of us at risk,” Romero added.

What is omitted in the article is that one of the victims was very active in the Pro Palestine movement. The perp is from Gambia which is 90+ percent Muslim.

What is interesting is how an such an event is absolutely not making any news. I know that this is extremely contested match in the oppression Olympics - but it seems to me that the mainstream media has decided to bury such stories, even though they happen way more often.

This tragedy serves as yet another painful reminder that homophobia is still rampant in our country.

Apparently, our country is Gambia. So desperate for the oppression they imagine used to happen in the US, some have resorted to importing their hate from overseas.

When the history books are written, the black muslim Gambian will be a white christian MAGA chud.

This is just immigrants doing jobs Americans won’t.

When the history books are written, the black muslim Gambian will be a white christian MAGA chud.

It won't be in the history books at all. But the miniseries "inspired by true events" will have Ben Foster or some other actor good at playing unhinged creeps as the closeted, internet poisoned killer.

Though I suppose those are the history books now. Is the average person's opinion of Tonya Harding going to be shaped by a biography, or by the Margot Robbie film?

What is interesting is how an such an event is absolutely not making any news. I know that this is extremely contested match in the oppression Olympics - but it seems to me that the mainstream media has decided to bury such stories, even though they happen way more often.

Yeah, from what I understand, hate crime attacks against gay and trans people tend to be perpetrated by blacks and/or Muslims. In fact I am a little surprised that the Guardian provided the name of the alleged shooter and didn't simply refer to him as an "Arizona man."

But anyway, I tend to go with Steve Sailer's idea that there is a "coalition of the fringes" and these types of incidents need to be downplayed (or deflected) in order to keep the coalition together.

In the case of black hate crimes against the alphabet soup, these are mostly not actual hate crimes- they're interpersonal disputes with annoying people used to using their identities as a shield, one of whom has a culture that glorifies low level personal violence.

In the case of black hate crimes against the alphabet soup, these are mostly not actual hate crimes-

FWIW I was referring to actual hate crimes in the sense that the victim genuinely is being targeted due to their being gay, trans etc.

Well I was referring to assaults which wouldn't have happened had the victim been normal. Most black on weirdo crimes are triggered by the weirdo pulling the same shit they always do on someone who expects to be able to use physical violence in response.

Well I was referring to assaults which wouldn't have happened had the victim been normal.

Yes. That is called a hate crime. Such crimes are considered particularly heinous because they, in addition to the harm inflicted on the direct victim, also act as a terroristic threat to other members of the targeted group: "Know your place, or this will happen to you!".

pulling the same shit they always do

And is that something that harms anyone, or rises to the level of harassment? Or is it just 'existing in a way that wasn't part of what I learned when I was little'?

As far as I can tell, these things are mostly either a) high risk activities(like streetwalker whoring etc) or b) serious social norm violations that are cast as the fault of the noticer(using the women's locker room while having a penis etc). Blacks are more willing to escalate to interpersonal violence in disputes, and circus freak genders definitely have a contingent which just gets up in arms at requests to be normal.

Yes. That is called a hate crime. Such crimes are considered particularly heinous because they, in addition to the harm inflicted on the direct victim, also act as a terroristic threat to other members of the targeted group: "Know your place, or this will happen to you!

Hate crimes are prosecuted separately as part of normal imperial peace keeping policies. They are not particularly heinous for intimidation reasons, because many of these groups are entirely capable of defending themselves(blacks certainly are)- but just letting them defend themselves is not keeping the peace. The Romans and the Ottoman empire had separate courts for intergroup conflict. The US is not an exception.

The difference is in the U.S. the (erstwhile?) dominant view was a Pauline view that there is no Jew or Greek; only an American. Thus the idea of inter group conflict is irrational as it is all intragroup violence which is the same.

The USA is late in the transition from republic to empire; the prince who was promised will reconcile MAGA and BLM theories to create a more peacekeeping, intergroup governance in the core predicated upon Latin American tribute(in the form of commodities and labor) and international dominance keeping finance onshore to provide the revenue to occasionally bail out the economy from fiscal irresponsibility bombs. This will coincide with transactional, devolved government at the price of reduced public input on the government. You know, pluralism doesn't mean democracy.

Well I was referring to assaults which wouldn't have happened had the victim been normal.

Yes. That is called a hate crime.

This argument proves too much. Crazy people fighting on the street are assaults which wouldn't have happened had the victim been normal (to the extent you can identify one).

To the extent that sexuality and "gender identity" are malleable within individuals (and despite "born this way" rhetoric used to justify gay marriage, there seems to be at least some amount of this, particularly in women), queer advocacy can be considered as harming the people who would otherwise have had functional lives. For a concrete example, you could consider the promiscuity of gay culture, which allowed AIDS to devastate gay communities so badly that it was designated GRIDS, for gay-related immunodeficiency syndrome, when it was first detected. A more recent example might be the amount of unnecessary suffering Monkeypox caused. For trans, the social contagions seem even stronger and the harms more stark (due to hormonal/surgical intervention and the reduction of one's dating pool to epsilon). People on Discord posting under queer identities have me aware of what they called a "queer gap", where all the time spent "figuring yourself out" means that queer people hit social/romantic/life milestones later than straight people. This, too, is a harm. Are the benefits of the promised self-understanding and self-actualization worth it?

I saw a tweet once about the Millennial experience being something like "get told none of the rules apply, and that you get to reimagine new ones, only to reconstruct all of Grandma's wisdom from first principles in your 30's and scramble to apply them before it's too late". Defaults matter and are mostly good for most people. It seems to me that a lot of advocacy speaks as if the defaults work for maybe 5% of the population when it's rhetorically something more like 95%.

In opposition with the crimes of love. When you love your children so much you gotta spare them from climate change, racism, ICE...

Or is it just 'existing in a way that wasn't part of what I learned when I was little'?

FWIW, that does constitute a (minor) harm. Social friction isn't cost-free. Shared norms and expectations lubricate every interaction you have with other people. What hydroacetylene is talking about here is just the most stark gap in American culture.

In 2019 there was a list of "murdered trans people this year" going around. I was skeptical, because there was a similar list of purportedly murdered gay people from a few years earlier that was entirely made up names, so I started searching. The trans list was real. Most of the names had local news reports about the murder. And as nearly as I could tell, every single one where the offender data was known was a case of a trans sex worker murdered by a black john. Because in that specific American sub-subculture, finding out that your whore has a dick is an insult and status-loss that is worth killing to redeem.

Some German lady on twitter was claiming that the smartest parts of the LGBTQI+ aka the G were secretly voting for AfD in droves.

That seems to be happening in a few European countries.

It makes sense. The biggest threat to the gay way of life is Islamic fundamentalism, so rational gays should vote for the parties most likely to reduce muslim immigration.

There has been a certain disquiet between cis white gays and the rest of the Rainbow Mafia.

Which honestly makes sense, if you assume that Cis White Gays tend to be educated, reasonably-affluent DINKs who have already won all of the battles they care about regarding their own particular freedoms and status then you're left with male brains who likely don't really want much more social spending (beyond healthcare but PREP's already subsidized in and out the ass) and likely have a sense that they're the outer fringe of the Fringe conglomerate.

I'd also be interested to see what percentage of funding for LGBT issues from inside the tent comes from cis gay men. I'd be shocked if it wasn't an overwhelming majority

I kinda tried to explain something to a friend of mine along the lines of - you vote far now and you may lose some rights (doubtful) or you don't vote and then in 50 years you and your granddaughter lose all of them. i was greeted with a blank stare and how that was impossible.

I realize this isn’t a top quality post, so I accept the judgement of the mods, but a mistrial has been declared in the case of Lindsay Clancy. Shes the woman in Massachusetts who admitted to killing her kids, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

The jury deliberated for seven days. Apparently, it came down to one male juror holding out against the other (nine female, two male) jurors. The belief is that he wanted to vote guilty. The jury reported to the judge that the holdout refused to follow the law regarding reasonable doubt, and the defense tried to have him removed. The judge refused. This morning, the judge declared a mistrial but gave defense one hour to get a stay from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Predictably, the online discourse is off the walls. X lifts the holdout up as a hero, while Reddit believes he (we know it’s a male because the defense said so) is an MRA/red piller and needs to have his phone searched.

Personally, I think she’s guilty of premeditated, cold blooded murder. That said, I get the postpartum argument, but am horrified by the defense of her and holding her up as some kind of hero.

I saw a note on Substack claiming that Shiloh Hendrix was suffering from postpartum depression at the time of the altercation which landed her in hot water. I have no idea if this is true or not, but assuming it is, I imagine there's extremely minimal overlap between the people offering public (and, in some cases, financial) support for Clancy, and the people who think Hendrix should not have faced criminal charges for saying the gamer word.

An even more potent hypothetical, I think, is the observation that none of the women supporting Clancy would have done so if, in the throes of postpartum psychosis, she'd killed three dogs rather than three human children.

The slippery slope, my moral betters would have me believe, is a fallacy: legalising X does not inevitably lead to Y, which is like X but more extreme.

It's all well and good to think that we can draw a bright line in the sand and say that killing a fetus (up to and including a full-term viable fetus) is fine and dandy, but killing a baby outside the womb is not. I know that some high-decouplers can separate these into two completely distinct mental categories. But most people (as I'm sure you're aware, or you wouldn't be reading this) are not high-decouplers. Increased support for contraception inevitably leads to increased support for the morning-after pill inevitably leads to increased support for first-trimester abortion inevitably leads to increased support for full-term abortion – and, as the Clancy supporters demonstrate, for post-term abortion.

The Hendrix comparison is illustrative. One of the strongest surviving taboos in the Anglosphere is that white people should not say the gamer word. No excuses: not if they're singing along with a song by a black musician, not if they're a politician quoting a black person said, not if they're an academic discussing a piece of classical music by a black composer whose title features that word, not even if they're a professor of linguistics using a word from a completely different language which sounds a bit like the gamer word. Woke people obviously feel that relaxing this taboo even a smidge would lead to an opening of the floodgates (almost like it's a... slope that is... slippery, or something). It follows that we cannot extend grace to any person who uses it, no matter how sympathetic they might be: not even a woman who may have been suffering from postpartum depression who got into a public altercation with a nonce. This taboo is so rigidly enforced that not even the "be kind" brigade wants to extend any forbearance or forgiveness to Hendrix.

But compare with abortion. It started off with the morning-after pill, then first-trimester abortion, and before you know it, low-decouplers are correctly intuiting that, if a mother killing a fetus at nine months shouldn't be a hanging crime, why should killing a child at five years be? On what grounds can we possibly justify throwing someone in jail for doing the latter, but doing nothing (perhaps even subsidising) to someone who wants to do the former?

Louise Perry's "We Are Repaganising" continues to trouble me deeply.

You are assuming that society is only okay with abortions because contraception is widespread, and that these women are becoming okay with killing babies because they see abortion as good and necessary. I don't think these things are actually connected. They merely look similar, allowing for post-hoc rationalizing into a slippery slope that never existed.

In reality, mothers were killing their babies long before medical abortions were a thing, and in societies where such were not available. In fact, this is one of the arguments in favor of making abortions legal. Desperate women are doing it anyway, at great risk to themselves. Standardization can only happen when it is legal, and makes it much safer while also allowing for better informed decision making, as the doctor in charge can explain the likely ramifications of the procedure.

So there isn't really a causal line from abortions to baby killings. Neither is there a real connection between contraception and abortions. Women have been aborting their kids long before modern condoms became available, and obviously way before more modern methods like the pill.

The main argument for abortion is my body my choice. While that has the obvious problem that there is another body upon whom the mother is exercising her will upon, it still has some purchase.

But it has no purchase when the kids are outside the uterus.

Of course, the stated reasons for why abortions might be chosen still have purchase. Maybe your point is that my body my choice doesn’t really reflect the core reason behind the abortion supporters. But my guess is without the my body my choice argument few are willing to bite the bullet.

Apparently, it came down to one male juror holding out against the other (nine female, two male) jurors.

I find it very strange how juries require unanimity in both directions. The unanimity requirement for guilty verdicts is less of an issue since society wants punishments like jail time to have a high threshold. But unanimity is required for not-guilty verdicts too?

The default way humans make judgements is to vibe-it-out, reach a conclusion, and then be highly resistant to changing their mind despite evidence that might crop up. This happens for political opinions, voting choices, and many other aspects of life. The only way to really "convince" a split jury at that point would be through peer pressure, which I presume works pretty well most of the time since most juries don't particularly care what happens to the defendant that much. But that still means any single juror can throw a massive wrench into the judicial system if their political beliefs outweigh how much they care about peer pressure from some strangers.

This whole system seems extremely fragile.

This whole system seems extremely fragile.

It's worth noting that only some common law jurisdictions require unanimous juries. Some allow majorities or supermajorities, or they aspire to unanimous decisions but will allow majorities or supermajorities if that isn't possible.

But unanimity is required for not-guilty verdicts too?

In a modern free society the default status for anyone is freedom until lawbreaking has been proven otherwise. A hung jury results in that default status being maintained, so the only difference is that prosecutors can try again if not guilty isn't unanimous. Which often unless the result was really close to being guilty or there's pressure on them for some other reason, they won't bother with it anymore and will just move onto the next case with higher chances.

The short of it is that a sizeable portion of the population can't formulate a coherent idea of 'law' or anything similar that isn't just a system existing to personally benefit them. Having such people make decisions is untenable. And the weight of living under that system, knowing what it's made up of, makes everything more precarious.

Those folks are in one camp. Another camp tries to reason themselves away from this reality by pretending that what's going on isn't that, but some other factor: 'The law is actually complex, you see. 'Mental health is a serious issue!' None of these are real, none of these are relevant. It's just cope because there is no worldview that can both accurately fit in the Lindsay Clancy fans and not be incredibly sexist at the same time.

The feminist mantra of 'What's best for mom is what's best for baby' when talking about abortion isn't some one-off, it's a declaration of what reality is to them and how you're supposed to see it. The women supporting this aren't insane themselves, they just found a resonator in Lindsay who they can dump all their emotions into. And that's the thing, it's emotions they have. If they had at any point decided to kill their own babies, they believe they should not be punished for it. Their emotions aren't just valid, they're reality. And that's the system you live under today.

There is no delicate offramp here for the civil and socialized, who would sooner die than blemish their own ego by earnestly engaging in a low brow culture war, so they just close their eyes and keep driving straight, with no concern to where that leads. Which is how we got to where we are now.

who would sooner die than blemish their own ego

Hence the ultimate problem with the concept of the "middle class".

If they refuse the duty to lead, perhaps because they're too busy making money (or because they just aren't fit to lead in the "eww, that's icky" way), then the status and productivity that makes them middle class will eventually be redistributed away from them. Fools and their money, etc.

And that's the thing, it's emotions they have. If they had at any point decided to kill their own babies, they believe they should not be punished for it. Their emotions aren't just valid, they're reality.

Funny, I was kind of having this same argument with another guy yesterday.

Failure, intentional [as "I don't want to get dirty"] or unintentional, to understand why the bad human thinks he is justified won't bring you towards your goal at all. (It's also the problem when men complain about [progressive] morals without taking the time to first understand women, for that matter; that's precisely why all the reactionary criticisms fall flat.)

I think I lay a lot of that mindset on the overemphasis on feelings, impulses, and desires. They certainly have a place, but it’s almost impossible to be a happy well adjusted person who lives an active social life and have feelings as the main focus on how a person lives. Feelings are not facts, they never were and cannot function as the driver of decisions. If you try, you’ll not only be living irrationally, but you’ll make yourself miserable in the process.

The short of it is that a sizeable portion of the population can't formulate a coherent idea of 'law' or anything similar that isn't just a system existing to personally benefit them. Having such people make decisions is untenable. And the weight of living under that system, knowing what it's made up of, makes everything more precarious.

Do you volunteer to be excluded from decision making, or are you imagining this purely with yourself and others like you as those in charge and not someone like Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, or the other leaders of actual real world examples of powerful authoritarian societies?

I can't speak for the grandparent, but there are political arrangements in between 21st-century egalitarian democracies and 21st-century totalitarian states. I don't know how many of them suit modern America very well, but they certainly exist.

but they certainly exist.

I can't think of many countries I'd like living in besides the US, and pretty much all of those are western style democracies with universal suffrage. If they "certainly exist", where are they and why should I want to copy their model if they suck?

I'm imagining that free white men of good character don't need to be weighed down by the obvious excesses of the luxurious societies they build. Part of maintaining that luxury for everyone is recognizing that it's just that, a luxury.

This case seems to have brought to the public discourse (at least online) the idea of repealing the 19th amendment more so than any other gender culture war story of this century. I know some here have floated around ideas of alternate voting systems e.g. only net taxpayers should have voting power. In the early days of the United States, only those who owned a certain amount of property were allowed to vote. This usually meant adult white men who had a tangible stake in society (some states had some exceptions). Perhaps our founding fathers had some wisdom in restricting who can vote. It's not clear to me that despite all our advancements in public education and technology that the modern average person is more educated and intelligent than the average person eligible of voting in the late 18th early 19th century.

Don't know if this discussion has already been hammered out already but I haven't given it enough thought/research to make this a top level post.

Justified vent against selfish women aside, I don't think "repeal the 19th" is likely to be a helpful think to do- merely retvrning to 1900's solutions is not going to be the answer because it's not 1900 any more, so the solutions of 1900 are simply not appropriate (and the changes that were made from 1900-1940 in particular are what we're forced to deal with right now- all the money that kept us from having to face them directly is gone).

In the early days of the United States, only those who owned a certain amount of property were allowed to vote

The obvious problem being that said landowners will just block all development, and in so doing block all reform. They already do this in coastal states and (ab)use the "muh environment" veto; landowners don't need any more political power. (Some ancient societies had this problem too.)

The problem you're trying to solve for is moral hazard.

I think a sufficiently-expansive definition of "taxpayer" might work, and gives the government a certain other kind of power to do big things in return for a populace that quite literally loses the right to complain. So, you could create a government initiative to bail out students under crushing loan debt at the cost of their vote for the next X years (since this would drop anyone with a net-negative job under this threshold). You'd need a lot more accounting for each citizen, though, but State capacity is large enough to do that now. You could offer public-funded healthcare with the same condition attached.

You'd also have to compensate for women with children somehow, since being a full-time SAHM naturally limits the amount of tax you can pay, and revoking the right from women who both obviously have a stake in the future/doing what they are supposed to be doing is not likely to be productive.

I also think that should include public sector workers; if your employer is the [X level of] government, you don't get a vote in [X level's] elections, simple as. They have already received their allotment of power through being employed by a highly stable government position, getting to set their own salaries and policies too is double-dipping. It might also include farmers and other workers in bailed-out industries for the same reason.

If you are convicted of a crime and sent to prison, you are charged in this way for your stay. (This doesn't change much in terms of felon voting rights, but it's an easy justification for why they should disappear, and also provides an automatic mechanism for restoration rather than begging for pardons.)

(You could solve the illegal immigrant problem in a similar way too: if use of taxpayer-funded services are being offered to non-citizens, then each member of a polity suffers a penalty to its political power. Polities [and voters] clearly need to be incentivized to follow the immigration laws.)

You'd also have to compensate for women with children somehow, since being a full-time SAHM naturally limits the amount of tax you can pay, and revoking the right from women who both obviously have a stake in the future/doing what they are supposed to be doing is not likely to be productive.

'Joint filing'

Seriously the GOP gives helicopter money to families embracing traditional gender roles every time it has a trifecta and democrats don't repeal it, they'll get taken care of as well as retirees.

the idea of repealing the 19th amendment more

You will need to ban them from juries also.

This line of reasoning is premised on taking the Whig history understanding of democracy way too uncritically, though. If democracy were actually about letting the voters decide the course of political action, there would not be so many hurdles thrown up to restrict the choices that are available, and restrict the choices available when the menu of available choices is compiled, and so on. You (and the net welfare recipient low IQ coloured people) are not voting on whether to declare war on Iran, or on whether to send the Massachusetts woman to the electric chair, or anything; instead you are voting on the choice between approximately two menus that have been written for you by, indeed, rich, mostly white, intelligent and educated net tax payers, whether they are actual elected politicians, think-tank employees, lobbyists or lawyers who do verbal gymnastics to conjure up some argument to say that menu entries they don't like are not "constitutional" or whatever.

The real point of democracy has always been to establish common knowledge that disrupts rebellious ambitions. The weakness of monarchies and oligarchies is that at any time, some small subset of subjects can claim that they have a critical mass of support to overthrow the government, and are only hampered by coordination problems; and then if their propaganda is sufficiently good, they can actually do it (as even if the forces aligned against them are overwhelmingly more powerful, the latter might not know this - if communists are persecuted, how do you know that you are not the only real anti-communist and everyone around you is secretly on their side?) or at least cause severe disruption in a futile attempt. On the other hand, democracy, by making credible-ish declarations of support public, makes such a failure of the majority to coordinate impossible: if the communist party is on the voting roll, but gets 1%, you can be pretty confident that you will not be lined up against a wall by your secretly communist colleagues if you refuse to cooperate with the revolution.

Are you so confident that it is for the better to exempt women/the poor/minorities from this consensus-signalling mechanism, with the predictable immediate effect that "all women/poor/minorities would side with X" becomes easier to claim?

It's not clear to me that despite all our advancements in public education and technology that the modern average person is more educated and intelligent than the average person eligible of voting in the late 18th early 19th century.

Probably not, education is overrated today I think. The idea that you're going to bring everyone up to the level of a highly selective slice of the population is akin to believing you just need to put books in the houses of poor or dumb people and they'll be on their way to performing like the children of university professors.

It would help if people weren't purposefully being educated wrong, as a joke, but there are diminishing returns.

Massachusetts specifically having the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove that the defendant is sane, rather than the defense having to prove the defendant is insane, seems backwards to me. The downstream implications of this seems disastrous to me? Nevermind the fact that proving a negative is often much more difficult, sometimes even impossible.

So anyone can go to Massachusetts, act insane and get diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, then go out and commit a crime, and has the excuse that they were not mentally sane and get away with the highest charges in their court? 25% of women and 13% of men already take some kind of psychiatric drug, and that number only seems to be going up decade by decade. All the defense has to do is show some possibility someone is not sane, then the prosecution has to do the much harder task of proving someone is not insane?

In my non lawyer/medical opinion, someone who commits a crime is already someone that is abnormal, someone that murders other people with no cause (e.g. self defense) I would consider mentally ill already, because regular sane people do not typically murder people.

If "insane" people cannot be criminally responsible for crime they commit, then it stands to reason that they lack the mental capacity for entire other categories of living, like voting, holding a job, access to social media, just being part of society in general. For most of the world this is not an issue because the default assumption is that you are sane and that your insanity must be proven. But in Massachusetts it seems there is an inconsistency is not choosing to apply same standards outside the court of law.

Honestly seems to me the real issue is Massachusetts' backward stance on the burden of proof having to prove sanity.

Massachusetts specifically having the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove that the defendant is sane, rather than the defense having to prove the defendant is insane, seems backwards to me. The downstream implications of this seems disastrous to me?

I would guess that in practice, this principle of law is simply ignored most of the time. So for example, suppose some drug addict with a long history of psychiatric treatment robs a convenience store while high on 3 different drugs, shoots and kills the cashier, and gets charged with murder. If you were the defense attorney, you might have the clever idea of asking for jury charges on the sanity issue. But one way or another, I doubt you would accomplish anything. Because at the end of the day, the only question that really matters to the judge and jury is what would be a just result in this case. And absent any culture war issues or extenuating circumstances, they will all agree that justice requires your client to go to prison.

I think that at the heart of the Clancy case lies a similar question: What's a just result? People start with the answer to that question and then work backwards to justify it. And that's where the culture war comes in to play.

There are countless cases of walking garbage getting acquitted for the worst crimes possible. This one I remember was notable but there are tons more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eina_Kwon

There are countless cases of walking garbage getting acquitted for the worst crimes possible.

In your view, roughly what percentage of the total is represented by such cases?

while Reddit believes he (we know it’s a male because the defense said so) is an MRA/red piller and needs to have his phone searched.

The party line on reddit seems pretty split between she needs to go to jail and she needs to be institutionalized. The commentators seem divided into thirds with the above two opinions and Lindsay truthers. Plenty of threads asking how anyone could defend here ect. There doesn't really seem to be a dominate narrative and actually quite a bit of backlash to the tiktok girlies.

A take I hear a lot whenever insanity pleas come up in the news is that being found not guilty by reason of insanity isn't all that different from being found guilty. Sure, you don't go to prison, but you usually go to a mental institution that's about as bad as prison. This seems to be Shoe0nhead's position in her recent discussion of the trial (where she argues against TikTok comments that instead claim Clancy's husband is some kind of Zoe Quinn-esque master manipulator who has gotten the entire mainstream media and several government authorities to cover up the fact that he's responsible for the murder). It's either prison or the loony bin.

But given that Clancy's narrative is that she suffered from postpartum psychosis specifically, would a not-guilty verdict actually mean she walks free? She's not postpartum anymore, so she's not psychotic, QED she doesn't need to be institutionalized and can just go home?

If at least some people believe that it might explain how strident they are about getting one verdict or the other.

Not immediately but Massachusetts has yearly reviews and it's hard to see what medical justification they'd have to hold her after she's been stable a few years. So yeah it seems possible she'd get out in under five.

I didn't personally watch the trial but Binion's coverage on the topic makes it clear this is way more complex than people on the internet make it seem (shocker, I know). https://reason.com/2026/09/04/the-lindsay-clancy-jury-was-tasked-with-an-impossible-question/

Going off what the law and burden of proof for Massachusetts prosecutors apparently is, personally I'd be inclined to vote not guilty due to insanity if I was on the jury. She displayed tons of warning signs for mental instability before it happened, including trying to get into a mental health facility, getting prescribed a bunch of medicine, and asking to not be left alone. The suicide attempt after suggests a poor state of mind and the defense had some strong experts including one of the forensic psychologists who analyzed her afterwards. If the burden of proof is on the prosecutors in Massachusetts, then they have a tough wall to crack and everything I've heard about this suggests they fucked up hard even before considering this part.

And like many topics, there's plenty of bad arguments to go around from both sides. "Mental illness doesn't do that" yes it does. "Her husband did it", stop listening to true crime podcasts. "She has some planning elements to it" insanity doesn't have to mean complete irrationality. I have an extended family member who had a psychotic break (I've talked about her before on here I think even), an altered state of mind still often contains some logical flow to it, they're just error ridden. For example her crazy accusation of my father of faking grandpa's death was accompanied with claims like "I saw him far away watching me!" and shit like that, it wasn't complete gibberish. It is quite possible that Clancy in psychosis imagined a voice telling her to kill her kids and then herself and acted on it while also still aware enough that her husband would intervene and try to prevent it. Our brains are really complex like that, they can break down in some areas but maintain others.

It seems like the law, at least in the state of Massachusetts, is just riddled with contradictions when it comes to this. What is "reasonable doubt?" What is "Burden of proof?" What is "insane?" These are tough questions for even the wisest of philosophers to determine, let alone regular people in a criminal case. But that's OK, let's just throw it to 12 random people in a jury... surely they'll figure it out, right? We won't need to see the horrendous flaws in their logical because the jury deliberations are all secret.

To some extent I think this is desirable, it is up to the defense and prosecution to lay out these concepts and explain them to the jury. If they are convincing the jury acts accordingly.

What is "reasonable doubt?"

Massachusetts has a standard answer to this question that judges are required to tell jurors, verbatim: https://www.mass.gov/doc/2180-proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt/download

(The New York Times did a small piece pointing this out.)

You can see all of them at https://www.mass.gov/lists/criminal-model-jury-instructions-for-use-in-the-district-court

but how do you force jurors to listen, understand, and actually follow those instructions? Once they're behind closed doors in jury deliberation, the judge has no power anymore.

"She has some planning elements to it" insanity doesn't have to mean complete irrationality.

Like I said in another comment, even if this is true (and I'm not sure this is actually established), I'm having trouble seeing the "not guilty" part of "not guilty by reason of insanity".

Yeah I get why there's a need for a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict as a general social phenomenon, but it feels like as the modern mental health military-industrial complex has grown and grown and grown that it's far more likely to produce socially deleterious outcomes where people who are unfit to be members of polite society are given soft sentences as opposed to ensuring leniency for what I'd consider legitimate cases. Social programs that were originally predicated on 'Bob is injured down at the mines and lost his leg, give him a pension' are struggling to catch up with a world where you can just obtain diagnoses which, whilst I'm sure are serious and there are legitimate cases, are a lot harder to disprove as a third party.

One of our resident lawyers has an effort post somewhere talking about the phenomenon of mental health diagnoses as disability- TLDR, even in the rust belt it usually doesn't work, and the cases where it does are overwhelmingly older workers who will only be drawing disability for a few years before it becomes social security anyways.

The Australian NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) system has gotten absolutely shellacked by mental health claims in recent years, even if the government is attempting to fight back presently. Maybe the USA is less vulnerable to these claims, but I'm also aware that Veteran Health Claims frequently hinge on Psychological issues or physical issues that are similar to diagnose/attribute a clear causatory chain to like Tinnitus.

Yeah I get why there's a need for a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict as a general social phenomenon, but it feels like as the modern mental health military-industrial complex has grown and grown and grown that it's far more likely to produce socially deleterious outcomes where people who are unfit to be members of polite society are given soft sentences as opposed to ensuring leniency for what I'd consider legitimate cases. Social programs that were originally predicated on 'Bob is injured down at the mines and lost his leg, give him a pension' are struggling to catch up with a world where you can just obtain diagnoses which, whilst I'm sure are serious and there are legitimate cases, are a lot harder to disprove as a third party.

Yes, in general there is a societal issue with handing out privileges based on conditions which are difficult or impossible to verify. Resulting in what seems like abuse. Evidently, this can run the gamut from bringing one's pet dog into a grocery store all the way up to (arguably) getting away with murder. I am pretty sure this is a central part of conservatives' objections to trans rights. To a conservative, it's pretty obviously a problem if any man can unilaterally decide that he's a woman and enjoy various privileges as a result of having done so.

And what about the progressive view on the subject? In general, it seems like progressives favor handing out privileges liberally based on self-identification. But I strongly suspect that this liberalism is limited to progressives and their perceived allies.

Social programs that were originally predicated on 'Bob is injured down at the mines and lost his leg, give him a pension' are struggling to catch up with a world where you can just obtain diagnoses which, whilst I'm sure are serious and there are legitimate cases, are a lot harder to disprove as a third party.

See also: "disabled" military veterans.

Exactly. No reasonable person would be hardline 'No military pensions ever' due to the nature of the job but there's also clearly been massive erosion of the issues assigned.

That said, I get the postpartum argument

Wasn't her youngest eight months old? That is not 'postpartum' by any commonly used definition of the term.

This seems like straightforward familicide to me. She wanted to kill herself, and didn't think that her kids could live without her. Intensive parenting taken to a destructive conclusion.

If this goes to a retrial, I wonder if the defense will have difficulty finding women in MA who aren't on TikTok.

She’s an MKULTRA victim, like most mass shooters. Notice how like most mass shootings this is perfectly engineered to push some malevolent political or social angle.

You're either trolling in a very unfunny manner, or you're proposing something improbable and inflammatory enough to require something in the way of evidence.

I’m not trolling, I don’t joke about dead children. As for improbable and inflammatory, I don’t see how it’s worse than anything else MSNBC has decided is heresy.

Sure but msnbc sucks. Where is there evidence this was MK ultra?

That conclusion does not follow from that evidence.

Yes it does.

Are you drinking? Go to sleep.

No. My drunk posts are always pretty easy to tell by the AAQCR listing.

In that case you need to drink more.

Big if true. Any way to consult the Numogram to confirm this?

I want to correct a misconception that a lot of people seem to have. The conditions for an insanity defense in Massachusetts are not “bitch be crazy.” Clearly she was a little bit insane. That doesn’t make it legal for her to commit murder. Even hearing a “command” is not even remotely enough. The standard is stricter:

A defendant is not criminally responsible if, at the time of the offense:

  1. the defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect, and
  2. because of that mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked the substantial capacity either:
    • to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct, or
    • to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law.

1 is not enough. In my opinion she failed both tests in 2. By planning for her husband to be out of the house, she clearly showed that she appreciated that the act was forbidden and needed to be hidden. By waiting for him to leave, and by answering the phone calmly and continuing to deceive him and pausing the murder attempt, she demonstrated that she was capable of controlling her conduct.

She was certainly not well, but it seems to me that the evidence does not support reasonable doubt for the above.

It is a little beside the point though. Arguing the case is pointless. Actually the best thing you can do if you are anti-Lindsey is to ridicule her. Chase your kids around the house saying that you’re Lindsey Clancy with them laughing hysterically. Tell your wife that her friend is creepy and “giving Lindsey Clancey.” Etc. Don’t engage directly.

I guess if all I've read about the juror admitting that there is a reasonable doubt but still refusing to acquit is true then this is in a way jury nullification.

Of course, mainstream leftists love jury nullification when they imagine using it to save black or brown bodies from unjust laws, but if a man has a problem with the law in his state allowing anyone to kill as long as it's not completely unreasonable to think they're insane, then jury nullification is going to be enemy #1.

I guess as a point of clarification this is like a reverse jury nullification. Ordinarily in jury nullification cases the juror acknowledges there is not reasonable doubt but votes to acquit anyway. If the juror is acknowledging there is reasonable doubt but voting to convict that's pretty different. "Yes they're innocent, legally, but they should go to jail anyway."

If the juror is acknowledging there is reasonable doubt but voting to convict that's pretty different.

Perhaps it was "Yes, there is reasonable doubt by MA statutory law, but that law is insane". That would be pretty standard nullification.

I realize this isn’t a top quality post, so I accept the judgement of the mods

Just for the record, this was fine, and I wish people would stop thinking we impose some unreasonable standard for top-level posts. You described the context, why it's interesting, and what your take on it is, and you provided enough substance to kick off a conversation without it just being a "First!" with a copy-paste of a news blurb.

We don't discourage people from starting threads saying "Let's talk about the latest big news item." We discourage people from rushing to be the first to post it with low-effort bids to capture the top-level thread.

While I don't think "unreasonable" is the right word for the existing standard, the resulting dynamic does seem kind of perverse, in that when someone starts one of these threads for a major news item, the responses are blatantly not actually responding to the OP, they're using it as a generic jumping-off point for discussion of the news item. Nor would it be particularly reasonable to expect them to respond to the OP; indeed, the design of these sorts of OPs is clearly optimized to meet some minimum standard for not setting off moderator action while functioning as a generic jumping-off point for discussion of the news item. It feels like a standard intended to discourage (but not prohibit) people from starting threads saying "let's talk about the latest big news item", rendered absurd by the overwhelming demand for such threads.

Eh, if you want to talk about a news story but can't summon up two paragraphs of things to say about it, just wait for someone else to do it.

She's not guilty of premeditated murder; the lady was clearly too crazy to premeditate anything. That does not mean she should go free, or even just go to a mental hospital until she's free and clear. She should probably be convicted of some manslaughter offense. And the jury should have been sequestered.

The idea that she's a hero is a social media brainrot. This is an unfortunate woman who appears to have been suffering from postpartum psychosis in addition to previous mental illnesses, plus a cocktail of drugs with unpredictable side effects. Not a hero.

I don't often find myself agreeing with @SecureSignals, but he's right in this case. Researching how long it takes to drive to a particular location, then sending your husband to that location to get him out of the house, is rather damning evidence of planning and forethought.

Psychotic criminals can somewhat premeditate their crime in simple ways, a psychotic can have "logic to it's madness". I don't think this particular element is too damning. What is very damning in my opinion is the fact, and this is coming from the defense, that she only heard the "male voice" on the day of the murder. never before, never after. That's very convienient. Post-partum psychosis typically happens within a month of the birth (and it's nasty business, my grandmother on my mother side suffered from this...), lindsay had given birth 8 months prior. So to believe the post-partum psychosis theory, you would need to believe that her case was Atypical in two ways : Late onset + Cures by itself.

Another hypothesis would be that she developped schizophrenia. But as far as I know, schizophrenia does not develop within a day, it creeps up for months before somebody is heavily affected, so it's not compatible with her not reporting hearing voices prior to the murders. I don't buy the argument that she would have been worried about losing the kids if she reported hearing voices. My understanding was that her couple was doing OK, and she had plenty of support.

Psychosis due to her medication ? That's the more credible option in my opinion, but then you would need to believe that somehow she was psychotic on that day and never after... I think the medication psychosis for only one day hypothesis is way too unlikely to be a reasonable doubt.

She sent her husband on an errand across town, that's not psychosis it's premeditation.

It's definitely premeditation, but psychotic people can premeditate in service of insane goals.

Clearly she wasn’t mental well. But the question isn’t whether she was mentally well. The question was did she have the capacity to know what she was doing was a crime or did she have the capacity to resist the impulse.

The premeditation strongly supports believing she could resist and knew it was wrong.

Yeah, I wonder why the judge didn't allow the jury to consider convicting her of voluntary manslaughter, which would have made the most sense in my opinion.

They always vould convict her of manslaughter. There are 5 verdict options:

  1. Not guilty
  2. Not guilty by reason of inanity
  3. Murder
  4. Second degree murder
  5. Manslaughter

Hmm, I read they could only consider involuntary manslaughter, not voluntary, though that was in a Free Press article, not from the video of the trial itself.

I haven't seen a copy/quotation of the jury instructions, its just unqualified manslaughter in the press accounts I've found. Im not a lawyer nor familiar with Massachusetts homicide codes. It seems like every state's terms are designed to be incompatible with the others.

If LC was actually insane and has now recovered, how can she live with herself for killing her three kids? The fact that she hasnt committed suicide or at minimum plead guilty to accept state punishment strongly suggests to me a depraved evil mind.

Christina Marie Riggs, planned murder suicide. Only successful with the murder. Pled not guilty by reason of insanity, found guilty. Withdrew / refused appeals, executed.

To be fair to Clancy in this, she is paralyzed from the waist down and in a mental facility with 24/7 supervision, I'm not sure she can commit suicide.

Epstein would have found a way.

I guess she could loudly claim to have dirt on the Clintons and announce 'if I kill myself they whacked me' a la John MacAfee.

Second funniest comparison between Epstein and Clancy I have seen.

>tfw you can't commit suicide because you're still paralyzed from your previous suicide attempt.

That's very abelist.

Buddy, the case is about filicide, not fratricide (or commutative groups)

Maybe we should just cane her.

No, I think that'd leave a lasting mark.

Nod of agreement

Plead guilty for one (that would at least result in punishment). Not eat for another.

I assume the mental institution has IVs to combat malnutrition.

With suicide off the table I'm actually not surprised she's mounting a legal defense. A not guilty by reason of insanity would mean the death of her children was "not her fault". A guilty verdict would mean she killed them, plain and simple. I'm not surprised she finds the first option easier to live with, especially since her ex-husband and her parents seem to believe it too.

This case has done two things for me.

First it’s convinced me that insanity as a defense has become more about excuse making and dodging of responsibility than about getting people help. There’s a lot of her behavior that points to her trying to build a case for the defense more so than suffering an actual psychotic break. And for juries intent on not punishing a person who they like are often going along with the insanity defense even when the person doesn’t seem to be suffering from any real disorder.

To make my case rather briefly, she doesn’t really seem to have symptoms at any inconvenient or embarrassing situations. There weren’t any reported weird ass unhinged social media posts. She doesn’t seem to act weird in front of friends or family. Her five year old doesn’t seem to be reporting her telling him anything weird. Her husband thought she was okay — if he hadn’t believed that he would have either not run the errands or called a friend or family member to watch her while he was out. Even the doctors, while they’re definitely trying to treat her don’t seem to think she’s suffering a break. They don’t force her into a mental hospital, (she committed herself), and they didn’t seem to report it to any state agency. AFAICT she had her labor and delivery nurse liscence and job the entire time and CPS never visited the home. Moving on to the journal, the reports I’ve read about it sound like this is a cohesive clinical report of her trying to get a diagnosis. This seems pretty weird that a person supposedly suffering a psychosis can somehow interrogate their own thought process, the effects of various medications, and so on. There are no weird things in there, no voices or demons, no mental confusion, and no actual psychosis.

Making the insanity defense about sentencing and not guilt makes such things less likely. If you’re not guilty by reason of insanity, you can “recover” the day after the verdict and the court cannot touch you. You go home after a few rough weeks in a mental hospital. If you’re guilty but insane, then either you serve the whole sentence on recovery or if the sentence is that the mental hospital treatment runs concurrent to prison serve the remaining time in prison, it removes the incentive to use insanity as an attempt to allow people to essentially get away with it.

The more disturbing thing is the number of ordinary people who seem to be taking her side on this. They see her as the victim, and the justice system being broken because it’s attempting to prosecute a woman who’s claiming to be insane for killing a couple of kids. There’s no sympathy for the children who were strangled with exercise bands and more than likely watched at least one sibling killed before it was their turn. No sympathy for the father who was tricked into leaving her alone with the kids so she could slowly kill them. Nope, the killer was the victim. She was insane. And anyone who blames her for a killing she admits to doing is Red Pilled and wrong. I just can’t believe that this is the consensus opinion.

I really want to ignore all the defenders as idiots amplified by Tik-Tok. But the astrology stuff brings out my inner fedora.

Have you ever interacted with a five year old? They don't really notice when adults are weird.

They don’t think the adults are weird, but they also have very little filter because of that and a prone to repeating things that adults would find weird and disturbing or inappropriate. If she’d said something like “you’re going home to Jesus on Tuesday” maybe the initial reaction would be an assumption about church, but after the kid dies on a Tuesday, the person would absolutely remember that kind of conversation.

I can understand why western justice systems consider insanity as a defense against a finding of guilt, but the incentives seem to align better if it's considered an aggravating factor in sentencing.

I felt that way after Hinkley was released a few years ago. Taking a shot at a President should either mean never seeing the outside of an institution or execution.

Hinckley was the first person I thought of when Freddie deBoer said that an NGRI verdict means Clancy will never leave a mental institution.

I saw Matt Walsh compare this to the Karen Read case, which is an interesting angle, but it really doesn't make the point Matt thinks it does. I didn't watch the Clancy trial, but I did watch most of the Read trials. (For context, Karen Read was accused of hitting her boyfriend with her car after an argument while drunk) On a superficial culture-war angle, the cases are similar:

  • They were both in Massachussets.
  • Both Karen Read and Lindsay Clancy are middle-aged reasonably-photogenic white women.
  • The first proceeding in both cases ended in a hung-jury mistrial.
  • I would not be surprised if the people outside the Plymouth County Courthouse are the exact same people who were outside the Norfolk County Courthouse last year.

The reason this doesn't make Matt's point is that the Karen Read prosecution was a shitshow. The injuries to the victim's body didn't look like a car impact, all of the people who were at the location the body was found on the night of the incident were caught in a bunch of incredibly suspicious lies and omissions, and the investigators assigned to the case were incredibly unprofessional, biased, and plausibly planted evidence. The reputation of Massachussets law enfocement still hasn't recovered.

Here is another example of what happens with troubled postpartum mothers.

Context: this woman was posting on a facebook group for mothers of babies born on a certain month, meant to connect over pregnancy and early childhood issues day-after-day
Her partner was murdered by their roommate while attempting to evict him, shortly after birth.
From their living situation, it doesn't seem that they had much family help.

From these horrible circumstances, she felt unwell, and she did what she thought she was supposed to do in these circumstances, and went to a hospital.
Upon learning of the mental condition of that woman, the healthcare workers decided that she was to be kept in a room for 24h under the watch of a minder. To prevent any harm to herself and to the hospital's insurance policy.
Meanwhile, the struggling infant was taken care of by other healthcare workers, fed formula instead of breastmilk, as best as they could do probably.

In my opinion, that whole hospital experience did not really help her mental state or actual circumstances. It probably deterred her from seeking further help through that venue.

I don't know if there is any reasonable way for government workers to help parents in such circumstances. The problem is that our entire society is structured around 'trusting' only credentialed people with certain basic care tasks, and having enormous liability like the sword of Damocles hanging over their head.

I mean if they'd let her have her baby during the observation period it might have been better, no? Like at least she wouldn't be worrying about the nurses being incapable.

If the hospital deemed her at risk of hurting herself or others, the logic was to also prevent her from hurting the baby. If there is a genuine belief that a person could get a sudden bout of insanity that drives them to random violence, it'd be negligent to let them in the same room as an infant, as they would necessarily want to hold/feed them.
It's a complicated situation, best solved by having trusted, caring and competent family members around that allow the mother to rest if needed.
The protocols that healthcare professionals have to follow to limit risk/liability are at odds with what postpartum mothers need, and there really is no way around that.
Especially when criminal mothers are prone to drag said professionals to court for failing to rescue their children from them. The outcome of this show trial is definitely not for healthcare systems to relax their policies around postpartum care.
I would wager that there is a connection between the learned callousness of healthcare workers and female murderers. Lindsay was one, and there is a number of other famous example of killing nurses. Perhaps because in the course of their training they learn how fragile human life actually is, and perhaps because routinely encountering death desensitizes them to its solemnity.

It helps if the parent in question has reliable connections. A father who can take a day off work, or grandparents who can take care of the baby while she recovers.

This is the kind of problem that disproportionately affects marginalized people who are barely scraping by as is. People who simply don't have the resources to withstand catastrophe.

The reasonable thing to do would be to hand off the kid to some other responsible guardian, but when no such is available then all you have left are overworked nurses.

That's a simplistic answer. This is a difficult problem.

Many people surviving in the lower-classes are barely hanging on. They have their little property or rented housing, and they are some bad events away from some catastrophe.
These people have very little bandwidth for helping other family members, and yet they still do.

Responsible guardians themselves probably want to stay away from the riff-raff.
Temporarily adopting a child as a foster parent is exceedingly difficult, aside from the bad behavior they bring into your household, simply because the parents are still in the picture.
The parents don't give up their parental rights, which means that they will swing by between a stint in jail, rehab or a bender to demand their child come with them, in some cases for the purpose of some kind of government benefits.

Solutions from progressives include throwing money or government workers at them.

Solutions from progressives include throwing money or government workers at them.

Seeing as how this site leans conservative, I wonder if anyone here has a better solution? Personally, I lean pretty left on this one. You don't have connections that don't exist. I lean more towards government workers as what you need to solve this problem is people rather than cash. If current social workers are ineffective, then they either need better training, more manpower, or more competent people who would be attracted by improved working conditions and wages.

An institution that would care for children when the mother was unable or unwilling to care for them, perhaps even finding the children permanent homes and families when necessary. They could also provided housing and work for the mother, perhaps in some sort of laundry.

Not on short timescales. This is the sort of thing you need thick community bonds to make work. If one were interested in conserving society, I'd first look at getting people out of rentals and into real homes so they put down roots. That means stabilizing house prices, ensuring proper order, addressing illegal immigration so the demand side brings houses back into affordability, etc.

Solutions from progressives include throwing money or government workers at them.

If current social workers are ineffective, then they either need better training, more manpower, or more competent people who would be attracted by improved working conditions and wages.

This, to me, seems to be the proper tactic too. However, it's hard not to notice that "throwing money or government workers at them," as proposed by "progressives," doesn't look anything like this, but rather, involves just doing what we were doing already, but MORE. At a minimum, to get better training for social workers would require something like starting psychology, sociology, criminology, over from scratch or close to it, scrapping most current methods, due to being non-credible due to the process by which they were developed (i.e. non-scientifically). This would have to be, likely, a multi-decade project that really should've started 10 years ago, but now would be the 2nd best time to start, and the longer that gets delayed, the more innocent mothers and other people in need of these government services will suffer.

I don't really have a better solution at this time aside from some kind of charity that would take in kids and vulnerable women and protect them from the worst of the lower-classes. But I'm pretty sure that runs into some heavy regulation. Just like there would be 100x more daycares if you didn't need a crazy certification process with a background check for every worker, site reviews to make sure you have enough space and enough 'safe' play equipment and what not.

The problem when you let the 'Government' handle it is that the Government is already trying to turn kids gay in public schools, telling girls that abortion, childlessness or single-motherhood is great, men in general are bad, especially ones that don't like tax increases and gay shit...

If there was some kind of Hitler Youth you could sign up kids to for part-time or full-time, that'd be great, to an extent, probably suboptimal compared to good Christian parents, but we are very far off from that.

Women's shelters exist. You have to put up with a hefty dose of radical feminist ideology, but they're there. Likewise there was probably a local church which would have had members who would take the baby for a few days while she got checked out- although she'd almost certainly need to call more than one.

That might be one temporary emergency solution, but while I imagine the woman in question could have hypothetically found help, it's kind of a gamble.
There aren't that many women that suffer a mental episode around/after pregnancy, and I imagine the default population for women shelter are women inbetween housing, with complicated domestic violence situation, perhaps some kind of LGBTQ or other identity-related family crisis.

A lot of places that are helpful for people in difficult circumstances are not really designed to accommodate the very young children who are their dependents.
Making it easier for the average Joe to offer (cheap) childcare around the clock as a service would probably do wonders for plenty of families or single moms who have to make complicated choices between a job, certain type of housing, whether or not to stay with an abusive partner or relative...

Women's shelters will generally allow small children to be brought as dependents, although there's been some controversy in the past over hypothetical battered women unwilling to leave their teenaged sons behind.

Did anyone watch the case? Was this a reasonable outcome?

Massachusetts places the burden on the state to prove a person claiming insanity as a defense was actually of sound mind during the crime. If I assume a jury makes an honest attempt to abide by these standards it seems like a really high bar to prosecute. Anti-depressants come with disclaimers of side effects, several include chance of psychosis, and that alone sounds like a reasonable enough reason to doubt a person is guilty of a crime according to the law. It's on the label. There's documented cases. Why is the state so sure someone didn't experience a side effect when the state wasn't there? Postpartum conditions, as I understand they argued, also have a chance of degrading into psychosis something witnesses testified(?) she had. Given that, were I in the position of a jury honestly attempting to apply the law, the state would have to demonstrate a lot for me to no longer consider these as plausible alternatives to the explanation that, no, her actions can only be considered as guilty of murder or manslaughter. Clancy had a lot more than a single prescription to rely upon for her defense. The state might need something that nears a confession to get a jury following the rules to convict her given all these reasonable reasons to doubt her sanity at the time.

Also, is there a good reason to allow cameras in the courtroom to live broadcast criminal trials? I think you should be able show up, bring a pen and paper, and confer with any associated press outside the courthouse to cover live proceedings, but no live feed from inside the courtroom. All I can think of is that the exposure to the attention economy could raise public accountability to proceedings-- since nobody wants to read to follow a story anymore perhaps we should broadcast all proceedings in that case. I think a judge should choose whether to sequester a jury and have cameras inside the courtroom, or choose not to not sequester a jury and disallow any live film coverage.

If we believe SSRI and other anti depressants are powerful enough that they can cause you to plan out and murder your three kids but lack mental capacity, then it seems to me anyone taking them should be considered outside their right mind.

Accordingly, they should lose all general rights of adults (eg voting).

It can just be a rare side effect. Alcohol can also induce psychosis, as can weed and many other drugs. But the effect is rare enough that we assume even frequent drinkers to have a consistent grasp on reality.

Right but if a drunk driver kills someone, they can't claim the alcohol was the cause either.

Wouldn't it be considered manslaughter rather than murder, with drunk driving as an extra charge? I doubt that Clancy being convicted for manslaughter would be considered a good result here.

No, thanks to the MADD mothers, drinking while driving is considered premeditation in itself in many states.

Probably the least onerous alcohol-related law change forced through by female activists, though that's a low bar.

A rare but important side effect of SSRIs is that they can take someone who has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and make them manic (this makes intuitive sense, if a person has two poles and you block one of them you may end up with the other). For this reason before starting SSRIs doctors should carefully assess for a history of mania, hypomania, and bipolar. This is actually quite hard to do with a 100% certainty but 90-99 percent can easily be done so artfully that the patient won't even notice.

A subset of manic people become so manic they become untethered from reality (that is to say psychotic). A small subset of psychotic people are violent. An even smaller subset of those are homicidally violent.

I don't believe that this person was driven to kill her children by her SSRI (we have another, better explanation), I'm not sure that has ever happened. It is a theoretically possible and if you give SSRIs to hundreds of millions of people it could happen eventually.

I don’t think this was some kind of psychosis and think under existing laws, she should probably go to jail for a very long time and is likely guilty of murder

That said, I think in general that filicide (of young children) is probably a form of murder we should have more nuanced opinions about as a society, though that doesn’t mean it’s not murder and doesn’t mean perpetrators should go free. Perhaps that appears at first too radical. Here’s what I mean:

A century ago, something like this might have been swept under the carpet by the local police and prosecutor, the mother quietly confined to an asylum with her husband’s approval, provided he didn’t want to subject himself and the family to the humiliation of a trial and press frenzy.

There are two purposes of the justice system, vengeance / recourse for victims and protection for wider society.

Clancy’s ex husband clearly forgives her for the murder and has supported her innocence in this trial. He is the only surviving injured party, other than the grandparents of the child, who also seemingly support her. This leaves the second purpose, and the main reason why we lock murderers up. If Clancy is confined to a psychiatric institution she will be no great threat to the outside world, so this does not appear in question.

So why the farce and drama of a trial? To distinguish between two slightly different kinds of prison? For men, psychiatric institutions may be much nicer than high security prisons, but I’m not even sure this is the case for women.

There are two purposes of the justice system, vengeance / recourse for victims and protection for wider society. Clancy’s ex husband clearly forgives her for the murder and has supported her innocence in this trial. He is the only surviving injured party, other than the grandparents of the child, who also seemingly support her.

You've conveniently swept the primary victims under the rug. The state prosecutor exists partly to pursue justice on behalf of those that can't seek it for themselves. By your logic if their parents had been dead and she and her husband had both decided to kill their kids, there would be no reason to pursue justice at all.

The justice system also sentences criminals in order to dissuade others from commiting the same crime in the future.

Widespread reporting on school shootings have spawned copycat shootings over the years, and coverage on suicides can persuade other people that are contemplating suicide to act on it. What kind of message would a not guilty verdict in the Clancy case send to other women who are struggling with post-partum depression and intrusive thoughts? It's not really your fault if you listen to the voices in your head and harm your kids?

There's already been a Clancy superfan copycat.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/mother-charged-murder-2-old-152006310.html

Witnesses also told investigators that Walsh had been heavily invested in and texting with others about the Lindsay Clancy trial as the jury was in deliberations, roughly three hours before she allegedly killed her son.

Clancy would not have gone to a normal high security prison- she would have gone to a women's medical prison, which may well have been the same institution as the state mental hospital, and probably if it was any worse would mostly just be rather less nice looking/with security being more visible rather than actually having harsher conditions. She was, after all, paralyzed from the waist down and requiring 24/7 care.

That said, I think in general that filicide (of young children) is probably a form of murder we should have more nuanced opinions about as a society

Clancy, insanity, or mitigating circumstances notwithstanding, why not hang women who kill their young children? At least the egregious cases. There can't be too many egregious cases and distinguishing them from whatever mitigating circumstances bar Clancy clears might be a good distinction. If these women are going to rot in a mental institution or prison forever, then no great loss to hang them. As a punishment for a crime it seems fair. Taking a child's life away from them is pretty high up on the unforgivable crime pole.

He is the only surviving injured party

In Clancy's case, if you want to weight the ex-husband and family to punish her that seems fine, but as a principle this is perverse. So long as he had the consent of the injured parties, or silenced them, Chris Benoit could have saved himself the trouble, stopped early in his familicide-suicide, and been well underway enjoying a born again journey by now.

psychiatric institutions may be much nicer than high security prisons, but I’m not even sure this is the case for women.

In America, for someone only mildly crazy or formerly crazy, I suspect mental institutions are preferable in both cases.

Chris Benoit could have saved himself the trouble, stopped early in his familicide-suicide, and been well underway enjoying a born again journey by now.

How? The second principle of justice, that of a guarantee against recurrence, of the segregation of an antisocial individual from society, would not be satisfied. If he was locked away in an asylum forever with the consent of his victims’ relatives because they believed earnestly that he was psychotic, that would be fine with me.

As for the death penalty, I am no opponent of it. I would prefer death to life in prison myself.

How?

If we defer or heavily account for punishment by polling the will of living relatives, then all he needs is people who love him to back his insanity plea -- or kill them if not -- regardless of whether he was in a state of psychosis or not.

Punishment taking into account familial sensibilities is a sensitive consideration in a homicide. The state is willing to listen to the will of living family of a victim while some overworked prosecutor (also the state) attempts to represent the harms imposed on those in the ground. I don't think it's wrong to consider the will of living family to a victim, although in the case of filicide or familicide this is complicated. Decent people can and mostly do continue to love indecent family members -- to say nothing of decent family who have done an indecent thing -- and tend to defend their well being.

The will of living (injured as you say) family is a more meaningful consideration when the victim is not related to the accused. Deferral like this is, frankly, unfair otherwise. Yes, the ex-husband thinks his ex-wife isn't a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe that's fine, true, or just in this case, but this feels (admittedly a feeling) like an incomplete or biased representation of the injured. We can't ask a dead child whether or to what degree they might want their parent-murderer punished, but if we could and they could answer, would we consider that too?

Lock'em up and toss away the key! But, in the US we don't even do that for murderers who juries consider guilty. Our courts don't lock away people forever in an asylum; they place people in treatment until they no longer require it.

I predict that the story’s popularity will lead to a measurable increase in filicide incidents. I don’t actually know enough about MA’s law to opine beyond that. The only novel thought I will add to the discussion is that IMO we should do more to make motherhood easy / comfortable / valued. There are evidently a lot of Clancyites in America who identify with her stresses and tribulations, signifying that there are many women who find motherhood too stressful, and the stress of motherhood is a simple equation: Skill + Purpose + Support.

Allegedly she was really into the trial. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/09/04/mother-charged-murder-death-frankfort-boy/

Women want more status as mothers (which I’m all for) but are trying to get it by climbing on the graves of dead kids (which is despicable).

Women want more status as mothers

No, they want more privilege. "Status as mothers" is a strange excuse considering most of them aren't, but it fools people who think women are acting in good faith here (or "conservatives" for short).

In this case, we see they want the privilege to back out of being a mother at any time, not just before birth.

It's literally just the abortion debate, but post-partum this time. The male analog here is "I could never be a deadbeat dad, so I'll just kill everyone here because [insert Clancy's defenses here]".

Despite both parents now working parents (including mothers) spend far more time with their children than they did a century ago. The countries with lowest TFR like Korea and Singapore have these crazy striver cultures where parents have to devote every second for 25 years to maximizing their child’s performance, which makes parents miserable even as they feel they have no choice but to do it so their kid doesn’t fall behind the next guy’s kid.

I don’t know what the easy solution is. Maybe mass automation means your kid’s prospects don’t really matter. Maybe we just offer free, unlimited 24/7 daycare vouchers. Maybe the Chinese figure out domestic robot nannies and parents of young children can finally sleep through the night.

Overloaded hospitals + atomized society + rat race economy -> overloaded mother's. Taking care of newborns really should involve extended family and not just the parents.

Alternatively, I guess you can solve this problem by just throwing money at midwifes and expanding the maternity wards so that new mothers can stay there for a few days and recover (and maybe receive instructions on how to take care of the baby) after giving birth. That might prove challenging in the privatized healthcare system of the US, but could at least work in other countries.

Au Pair became more expensive in Massachusetts ~7 years ago through minimum wage legislation.

Perhaps we can assign and pay female high school and college students to help out new mothers, killing two birds with one stone by (1) easing the stresses of mothers & (2) increasing skill and familiarity for future mothers. Additionally, “retired mothers” with kids out of the home can be paid by the state to help out. I don’t see a de-atomized future as a possibility.

People don't want random state assigned teenagers watching their kids(au pairs are a bit more selected than what you describe because they're specifically serving the wealthy). Churches might(and often do) do this, but broader society does not have the social trust.

That also would provide work experience to put on their CV and a small source of income. "Worked for the State of Massachusetts to help marginalized families take care of their children" would not sound half bad on a college or job application.

It's the kind of initiative where you can't easily track the benefits on a spreadsheet though, since the improved outcomes only show up in the future and it is hard to prove that anything good that happens is actually caused by this. So usually getting the requisite funding for these types of social programs is very hard.

I've read too many comments on this, and I have not read one woman saying "Yes this is horrible that this is happening, this is why I have been volunteering to help my niece/cousin/friend/neighbor with watching their kids/cleaning their house...".
The solution is always for somebody else to come and do the work, like the Government or what not, as if the current situation of relative isolation of mothers is not a direct result of Western women voluntarily turning their back on communal care.

Because people just do instead of talk. My high school daughter watches her young cousins all the time so my sister and brother-in-law can have some time off.

There are not so many women on the motte, after all, and I think most of them would be the beneficiaries of that scenario.

I was referring to social media comments, the kind that blamed the patriarchy on mothers not getting enough help.

Ironically it is feminism and the destruction of the SAHM that is to blame for moms not getting enough help. If 1/10 moms in a neighborhood is a SAHM, she is pretty lonely. If it’s 8/10 there is a large built in support network.

Some thoughts as I've been forced to learn much more about this case than I've wanted to know:

-A common response to the media conversation around this case is to criticize women for brainless takes that do not engage with the information about the case or expert commentary. This includes me, I've been frustrated.

-It seems like actual experts in this field are landing on a psychotic process (most likely postpartum psychosis) as the explanation of events. That is to say she is legitimately not guilty by reason of insanity. This moved the needle for me. How can I criticize women for being retarded and not listening to actual information if I don't listen to experts and people with specific knowledge of the case.

-As a legal matter, it sounds like the expectation from knowledgable parties has been a hung jury or not guilty by reason of insanity because of structural, jurisdiction specific aspects of this type of defense in MA.

-I don't know how easy it will be to parse this without a medical background, but for a relevant podcast by a forensic psychiatrist you can search on YouTube " Lindsay Clancy Trial: Forensic Psychiatrist Explains Psychosis, Malingering, & Insanity Defense."

-Incidentally I strongly suspect one or both of the hosts of that podcast are Rationalist/Scott diaspora types, so if you are reading this: loved the metal gear reference.

Just to add to this: there are not an insignificant number of people in psychiatry who seem to believe that crime is per se evidence of mental issues (ie normal people don’t murder their kids). That is, they are predisposed to thinking there must be a mental issue here.

But i think the gods of the copybook heading win against the “crime is mental issue” argument.

Anti-social personality disorder is a common cause of crime and presents no protection from consequences of that crime.

The majority of crime is driven by mental illness but that does not mean it is accused. Just because you robbed the store to buy drugs doesn't mean you should get away with it.

But i think the gods of the copybook heading win against the “crime is mental issue” argument.

Why? If anything letting women like her kill their kids will eliminate such women from the gene pool.

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Given what we know about the state of psychology (ie a lot of bunk science) I don’t really give two shits what it’s “experts” think.

This a psychiatric (medical) matter not a psychological one.

Even if it was just psychology.....plenty of parts of the field have evidence base and predict the world. Some parts don't.

Do you feel qualified to assess if this specific thing is something that has well validated data or not?

One can look at the sweep of psychiatric theories over the last 100 years and find the field wanting. And bad science. Tons of bad science.

Can you point to something in the last 40 years that is clear and obvious bad science or a bad psychiatric theory?

Bettelheim's "refrigerator mother" theory of the cause of autism/Aspergers?

  • recovered/repressed-memory therapy movement and its satanic-ritual-abuse offshoot of the late 1980s and 1990s
  • Study 329 (paroxetine in teens) and Turner et al. (2008)

These are probably more mixed examples than you'd think. To my understanding repressed memory theory was a longstanding vestigium from the old days of psychiatry, once the field became more scientific, medicine got more tools, and we learned how memory worked it did get deprecated. This is science working as we'd hope with people making adjustment when more data is available. As you note it did take awhile.

This specific issue (especially on the satantic panic end) and the transgenderism issue that someone else posted are also examples of medical authority being coopted for politics, which is a problem, a known fail state, probably most famously known in COVID but also famously a problem in authoritarian states (ex: Sluggish Schizophrenia). This is absolutely a fair criticism but isn't a reason to toss out the whole thing.

The SSRI studies are part of a wider conversation which is complicated and confusing and hard to summarize here.

There are fads despite whatever the current 'evidence-based' approach is. The Trans thing is a recent one to have gone political.

The homosexuals protested until they were removed from the DSM, but that was outside the 40 year window you set.

How secure are all the diagnosis of ADD / ADHD in active boys?

Michelle Remembers by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder was published in 1980. How far back are the longstanding vestigium from the old days of psychiatry?

Do you remember all the dissociative identity disorder diagnoses, DID in the '90's? Previously rare suddenly tens of thousands.

Throw out the whole thing, maybe not. It's not like we've better solutions. But increased circumspection and less deference. Especially in medico-legal areas. This is how Constance Fisher murdered 3 children in 1954 and then 3 more in 1967.

More comments

Transgenderism. See the cass report on the outcomes.

I would normally (heh normal) pay attention to the psychosis, but there is a lot of hard evidence from the phone around the kiddy stangling time and the husband phone call. Psychosis doesn't let you conveniently rationality yourself in a 'just so' way that works in your interest.

Psychosis doesn't let you conveniently rationality yourself in a 'just so' way that works in your interest.

Why not? How many psychotic people have you interacted with deeply? Disorganization is a common symptom but not required, and people's brains are excellent at post-hoc rationalization and justification, especially when oscillating in and out of psychosis as appears to be case here.

Because that’s not what psychosis is. It’s a break with reality. It’s believing untrue things, it’s not being in control of your actions and reactions. That’s how most mental illness works. You cannot turn it on and off. You can’t be rational on demand.

One of the things that changed my view on this is that I learned that a known (and incredibly dangerous) presentation of PPP in the literature is the waxing and waning presentation that would have explained LC's action.

To some extent it makes sense given our suspicion of the mechanism (and in contrast with normal schizophrenia etc).

Waxing and waiting is one thing. But she was capable of appearing perfectly fine in most situations and especially when waxing presentation would embarrass her, interfere in her plans, or cost her professional career. That seems a bigger ask. If she has a very obvious episode in the pick up line at kindergarten, then is fine an hour later, maybe. If she says something crazy in public or acts out in public at night and is okay the next morning, maybe. But AFAICT, she doesn’t have public episodes, outbursts, or odd behaviors. She is fine in public. She is fine on social media. She isn’t texting her contacts about the demon in the basement or something. She doesn’t even have episodes in the doctors offices. A person might be able to hold themselves together for a time, but it would be impossible to be consistent in hiding the illness that well from all of her social connections. Like she doesn’t even act out in the grocery store that im aware of. She’s either not ill, or she has the best control of her mental state of anyone out there.

I hear you that it looks weird, this is why initially I was team "she did it for some other reason" but when people I know and trust who have more expertise than me stake their reputations professionally (Resnick) and didactically (the podcast I linked) then you gotta have a think.

Can you point to an example in the last decade or two of someone's professional reputation actually being damaged by being wrong in a call like this one?

What does "stake his reputation professionally" mean in this context. What future event could possibly compromise his reputation, in your view?

But how can she be both rational and irrational at the same time? You talk about waxing and waning which seems like one can get into fits and then get out of fits; how can one be in both at the same time?

Do you think that psychosis will eventuate and dissipate around a lucid moment? Around the body of the facts presented in this case from the career subject matter expert psychiatrists?

If it does would you accord this to a man that murder suicides his wife and children? The car cliff divers for instance?

Do you believe women have agency in the most extreme emotional situations under the influence of prescribed medication, and would you accord a similar agency to men in the same circumstance?

Do you believe women have agency in the most extreme emotional situations under the influence of prescribed medication, and would you accord a similar agency to men in the same circumstance?

This is the kind of question that reveals fundamental misunderstanding in how the law functions, emotional extremis is completely unrelated to postpartum psychosis and is unrelated to NGRI findings.

However, the fact remains that this was, fundamentally, the question asked of the jurors.

I think the question they were asked was "did the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was not mentally impaired* during the killings."

The state was never going to be able to do that the law in MA is ridiculous.

Why did the state of MA write such a ridiculous law? Why didn't they consult psychiatrists for the needed expertise to avoid writing such a ridiculous law? Have MA psychiatrists previously complained that this law is ridiculous?

Or is this a runaround, where the actual problem is always some other place than the place it genuinely appears to be?

Insofar as this is true, it's another compelling argument against the existence of the insanity defense.

i guess from the economics perspective of law if you are prone to committing acts that have huge negative utility to others due to lapses of sanity then there is a good chance that the state strongly punishing such acts could be efficient. for example if you were aware of such punishments then the insane while they are rational could carry out actions that reduce the risk of them committing bad acts while they are insane. kind of like how Odysseus ties himself to the mast. i believe the law already punishes people who are in a non-pure state due to drugs or alcohol this is not so much different.

The insanity defense should be trivially deemed appropriate - do you want to send your grandmother to jail because she has a UTI and attacks her nurse while in the ICU? No, she doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know what she is doing, and doesn't know if it's right or wrong.

The insanity defense is a very specific thing with a specific definition that doesn't do what people think it does.

The insanity defense should be trivially deemed appropriate - do you want to send your grandmother to jail because she has a UTI and attacks her nurse while in the ICU?

Jail? No, but the normal punishment for this act, for otherwise law-abiding people, would probably be a fine and probation, which seems completely reasonable. If my grandmother murdered an ICU nurse, even while completely loopy, I would still think that justice would demand punishment. I'm pretty sure that if I murdered someone during a psychotic break, I would not contest the charge and leave it to the judge to determine what punishment is appropriate for those circumstances.

I agree with the other poster that I strongly dislike the insanity defense in any form, and would much rather rely on the discretion of prosecution, the conscience of juries, and the reasoning of the sentencing judges to administer justice.

Bring back exile as form of punishment. This is to a point what Scandinavian prisons are. Importantly, you don't need to refrain from calling mass murderers or gang members (those who intended to wage civil war on their community) "evil"- you can still have PMITA prisons for them.

What trials are meant to do is therefore to determine "evil" (in the Before Times this was prosecuted with death; now it's life in prison, which is a death that you can be partially revived from if we determine later we fucked up- even El Salvador treats people who outright wage war on the community that mercifully). This is why you separate first and second degree murder (and manslaughter), too- so we see that "evil" is not even that they killed, but because they lay in wait to do it.

You don't need to be penned in like cattle in these [cities of] asylum. But the trust was broken, so you can't live around everyone else, and now you have to go to that reserve (and if you leave you will be killed, obviously).

I would still think that justice would demand punishment.

Why? Just put her somewhere secure and admit it's because you're scared, not because it's justice when you degrade her life but it's immoral when she does it to you.

Would it reassure you to know that you can have schizophrenia, murder people because the moon goblins told you to, and still be found guilty (and therefore the insanity defense isn't applicable)?

Why would it? Would it reassure you to know that you can play Russian Roulette and survive without any injury at all?

Because most people's model of what the insanity defense means don't accurately reflect the case law.

It applies only to a very small subset of crimes complicated by mental illness, and generally does not lead to any increased freedom in the community or getting away with it.

Sure, because you're supposed to not listen to the moon goblins. If the disease makes you believe the moon goblins are the source of moral truth, however, the defense does apply.

Right, I've personally interacted with convicts who said something like "yes I knew it was wrong but the moon goblins told me to" and it's like nope you knew it was wrong, to prison with you.

It seems to me part of the moral justification of the insanity defense in the granny case is that she is an otherwise decent person who is temporarily not herself (using colloquial terminology). In this case, fixing the UTI makes her herself and punishing her for her actions under its influence seems unjust to me.

When I look at cases where it’s not curable is when I think the morality shifts for me. If the grandmother has incurable dementia, I still think she deserves mercy albeit under confinement/treatment. If it’s some homeless dude who is permanently loopy, I’m happy throwing the book at him and just punishing him.

My own morally intuitions collapse to the questions of: is it curable and who/whom. I suspect it’s similar for many folks.

So this is starting to pick at things a bit (in a good way!).

In the case of LC the defense would argue that she is an otherwise decent person who is temporarily not herself, fixing the psychosis brings her back to her healthy baseline and returns her to a safe and productive member of the community, furthermore they would argue that it's not her fault for a variety of reasons (this isn't a chronic person who really needs to understand that they should take their medicines, this is someone new to the experience, also her doctors should have caught stuff).

A separate part of this is restoration and what to do when NGRI is determined. Quite often the outcome is that someone gets dumped into a psych hospital for 30+ years or even an entire lifetime. That's not much different or better than prison.

NO this is an argument for prosecutorial discretion or 'not pressing charges', insanity defense is a concept that exists inside of a jury trial or at least a plea deal.

you're conflating a solution to a different problem.

If charged granny would justifiably be able to say she was not in her usual state of health (medical or psychiatric), did not know what was real or was not real (psychosis), did not have capacity, and did not know what was right or wrong.

We choose not to press charges because yes that's a waste of resources, but the same fundamentals apply. She's not guilty by reason of mental health. The restoration of capacity is straightforward in that case but it can be in others also.

No it’s not the same fundamentals -

The argument was that insanity should not be a defense and your example was of a scenario where charges shouldn’t be pressed.

You can remove insanity ad a defense and not have to charge every person having a small episode

The reason charges shouldn't be pressed (against granny) is because the person doesn't understand what was happening and why it was wrong.

That's the same reason charges shouldn't be pressed in patient's who have a valid insanity defense. They don't understand what is happening and why it was wrong.

-It seems like actual experts in this field are landing on a psychotic process (most likely postpartum psychosis) as the explanation of events. That is to say she is legitimately not guilty by reason of insanity. This moved the needle for me. How can I criticize women for being retarded and not listening to actual information if I don't listen to experts and people with specific knowledge of the case.

What's the expert explanation for her preparing for the act by sending the husband away for chores, and even biding her time by calmly picking up the phone whem he called?

While it is common for people with mental illness this severe to be grossly disorganized (think homeless guy wandering around mumbling to himself) it is not required. People who don't understand what is real, what is happening, and what is right/wrong can engaged in organized behavior to accomplish psychotic goals.

That's what makes this shit scary.

See: Charles Whitman

I thought that the idea behind "not guilty by reason of insanity" is that the culprit was in a state where they had either no control of their own actions, or were unable to tell their actions were wrong, and so can't be held liable. Having a mind organized enough that you're capable of planning, and being aware of the necessity to hide them, seem to strike at both of these assumptions. Even if there is a form of psychosis that works like this, I'm having trouble seeing the justification for a "not guilty" verdict.

To some extent this gets into the territory of highly jurisdictional stuff (and individual physician interpretation - the law is fuzzier than you might imagine), but as an example:

The voices told me to kill my family and I did it but I knew that wasn't the right thing and couldn't help myself = guilty.

The voices told me to kill my family and I did it because if the voices told me to do it must be the right thing to do = NGRI.

The latter is less common than you'd think. For instance a lot of violent voice are labeled as demons, bullies, and other such things and when assessed patients will say "yeah I knew I shouldn't have listened to Satan because he's Satan."

I'm not really sure if this is a sensible line to draw but it seems to be where it is drawn a lot of the time.

A case like Charles Whitman is probably optimal to think about because his thinking is otherwise totally clear but his violence button was stuck on because of the brain tumor.

Organized and able to plan AND also untethered from reality is thankfully extremely rare, but it does happen, the intuition that it doesn't make sense is more from lack of being common than actual possibility.

I'd say most people this sick are totally disorganized, uselessly impulsive, or both. But not all.

The voices told me to kill my family and I did it but I knew that wasn't the right thing and couldn't help myself = guilty.

The voices told me to kill my family and I did it because if the voices told me to do it must be the right thing to do = NGRI.

That's what I assumed, and my argument is that we are in the former scenario, implied by Clancy attempting to hide her actions. Of course, if the state operates under a different framework than the argument does not apply.

In other words, the only thing that makes this psychosis is that she wanted to kill her kids? Then what distinguishes her 'psychosis' from any other criminal's desire to do evil? If I killed someone in a crime of passion, what stops me from claiming it was a temporary 'psychosis'? I really can't see the distinction here.

It's a complicated construct but if you pick at it makes more sense. There isn't a rational reason to do this in the way she did. Most people just leave their kids or abandon them. Maybe you frame the husband. She slowly and intimately slaughtered her children making no effort to protect herself from the ramifications of her actions and with no clear gain (see: serial killers and sexual gratification, sicarios and money and fame).

This strongly points to something like altruistic filicide. She thought they were better off dead and that it was the right thing to do. That's pure madness.

In the case of a crime of passion you know what you were doing is wrong, if you try and pretend you were briefly randomly psychotic you'll get "by what mechanism" "oh so you chose to do drugs knowing that drugs are illegal and bad."

The crime to some extent does point to madness being an explainer.

In the case of a crime of passion you know what you were doing is wrong, if you try and pretend you were briefly randomly psychotic you'll get "by what mechanism" "oh so you chose to do drugs knowing that drugs are illegal and bad."

Except these days it's trivial to get prescribed drugs from a doctor, which you can then use as an excuse.

I'm more open to the psychosis explanation than most people here, but I feel like "the experts" are on shaky ground on the issue, and are pulling a "trust me, bro".

The experts in this case (both testifying and misc. people commenting) are essentially the people in the legal system/healthcare whose specific job is to tell if people are full of shit. The field has well developed and researched things like forensic inventories that are designed to catch people who exaggerate or mislead about their symptoms. These tools are not readily available online for the obvious reasons, but to give an example of the kind of thing you would do - if someone is pretending to have cognitive deficits to avoid blame you can ask them a question that even someone with severe retardation or dementia can answer like "what's 2+2." Anyone who can't answer that is going to be highly suspicious. The actual assessment is going to be a much more robust and complicated elaboration on that sort of concept.

It's also going to involve actual exposure to similar cases, knowledge of the criminal profiles involved (what does narcissistic family annihilation actually look, how does it contrast with borderline, suicidal, and so on).

The field has some limitations of course but doctors are doing this every day all over the country and it works fine and is a standard part of the legal system.

How many murderers have you actually met? I've treated hundreds and I'm not even a forensic psychiatrist - and even with that caveat I could guess the type of crime sometimes from doing my unrelated business. Resnick has probably evaluated 1,000s of killers and he's made a career out of sorting them and even wrote the book on it.

I'm not 100% convinced of the argument but I do have enough information to understand that expertise can exist on these matters and I'm seeing a bunch line up in a certain way...

The field has some limitations of course but doctors are doing this every day all over the country and it works fine and is a standard part of the legal system.

You can say the same thing about transgender healthcare, that doesn't mean it rests on sound assumptions. Everything you said here only reinforces my impression that this is more of an art than a science, and the whole thing is based on trust, which I don't have a lot to spare at the moment.

if someone is pretending to have cognitive deficits to avoid blame you can ask them a question that even someone with severe retardation or dementia can answer like "what's 2+2." Anyone who can't answer that is going to be highly suspicious.

This in particular sounds like the whole thing rests on "the experts" having 20-30 IQ points on the people they're investigating, and being reasonably confident they'll be doing the manipulating, rather than being manipulated. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption here, and I'm really not seeing anything that's supposed to catch this case in particular.

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I've not paid close attention to the trial but surely she could possess a rational rage toward her children for dashing her hopes and dreams of being an international superstar, superspy, or some other path incompatible with being a responsible mother of three.

Absolutely but what do people with those types of feelings do? They lash out impulsively crashing their car. They grab a weapon at hand and do something. Most commonly they attack the husband.

The mixture of poor/irrational planning and premeditation supposedly leans towards this kind of pathology.

She "gains" the ability to die knowing no one will be able to take care of her children better than she did, and they will never love someone else more than her.

I do think she's mad, you don't kill your kids and try to kill yourself because you're mentally well, but being unwell enough to think your kids are better off dead isn't the same as not knowing that killing them is illegal, which is what the insanity defense is meant to cover.

This is true but you've already narrowed the solution space down quite a bit once you are talking about this from every motivation in the world to a much smaller subset with a higher percentage of possible explanations involving type of illness the insanity defense applies to.

Then what distinguishes her 'psychosis' from any other criminal's desire to do evil?

Your question answers itself (emphasis mine).

How can I criticize women for being retarded and not listening to actual information if I don't listen to experts and people with specific knowledge of the case.

Probably because experts had spent 20+ years of burning the trust that they had built (not that expert witnesses deserve any goodwill at all, they are as sincere as prostitute having orgasm with a john). Also what ratio of said experts could be classified as woke?

For all the things that "woke" did, it frustrates me that "CSI is garbage science" wasn't one of them. TV shows gives unrealistic expectations, and the actual forensic science has longstanding, real concerns about accuracy in certain not-uncommon uses (bite marks, splatter patterns). AFAIK DNA and fingerprints are fairly robust, though.

and the actual forensic science has longstanding, real concerns about accuracy in certain not-uncommon uses (bite marks, splatter patterns)

Arson analysis, psychological profiling, gun ID from casings and bullets...

You should be glad "woke" didn’t make that their thing; the pattern of the post-woke right suggests that the baby would have been thrown out with the bathwater as everything was made a partisan issue.

Assuming experts are wrong without any investigation is even worse mental hygiene than assuming they are right without any investigation, and is a massively common intellectual failure in certain communities including our own.

Yes, expert witnesses are paid to support a side during the trial, but that doesn't mean that all expert witnesses are equally credible. Some expert witnesses wrote the textbook. Some expert witnesses evaluated the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh. Some are random fillers. Guess which the Clancy defense team got?

Likewise experts in the field may in fact not be involved in the case at all and taking a stance, as in my link.

Lastly - I hate woke and see it everywhere, but Jesus you can't reach to it for everything. Forensic physicians are some of the least woke people around for obvious reasons.

Assuming experts are wrong without any investigation is even worse mental hygiene than assuming they are right without any investigation, and is a massively common intellectual failure in certain communities including our own.

That's not what's happening here, though. People are noticing that expert opinions disagree with their own judgment and deciding that the fact that the opinions come from "experts" doesn't override their judgment, because they value the "expert" opinion no more than that of a layman. It's not assuming that they're wrong, it's using the conclusion that they lack expertise in what they claim to be experts, which might be correct or incorrect, but certainly eminently reasonable when it comes to anything around psychology in 2026.

To claim that "expert opinion" should sway your opinion either way is assuming that they are (more) right (than a layman) without any investigation. To not let it sway your opinion and simply disagree when their opinion disagrees with yours isn't assuming they are wrong, no more than it's assuming any layman is wrong if you don't let a layman's opinion on something convince you.

Judgement requires discernment. Most of the opinions on this case I see here and elsewhere are unwarranted opinions generally without any specific information about this case or information on how mental health or insanity pleas work in general.

It is the same level of zero effort opinion put forth by the women on social media who say that the husband did it "because he just looked like he did it okay." Prettying it up by appealing to anger at doctors for covid or wokeness doesn't change the fact that much of the ink spilled on this is uninformed and is absent any specific or general knowledge.

The number of times I've seen people mix together psychology and psychiatry, or argue that somehow this case was going to excuse women from murder charges because of natural hormone variations is unreal. Very basic misunderstandings of facts should be a sign to step back and ask questions.

I'm not seeing a lot of that.

OK, so maybe everyone's judgment about this trial here is bad, exactly as bad as Clancy's supporters. I don't see anywhere in what I wrote that would conflict with that at all. This doesn't change the fact that it's entirely reasonable to conclude that "expert opinions" in this case is no more valuable than one's own judgment. Whatever lack of discernment that anyone here (or anywhere) has, given the current state of psychology and experts thereof, it'd be entirely reasonable to conclude that those experts' opinions are corrupted or biased or incomplete or just plain wrong to a similar extent, i.e. like any non-expert layman's.

If you reframe this discussion as "I, a person who is not an aerospace engineer, is disagreeing with the findings of aerospace engineers who have no financial incentive and the inventor of the airplane, who happens to be hired by the defense" that is an accurate enough presentation.

It also makes the commentary look stupid.

I don't know what your job is, but imagine you are explaining something about your job and a used car salesman slams in like Kanye and goes ima let you finish but you are totally wrong.

That also sounds pretty stupid, no?

who have no financial incentive

Aren't expert witnesses usually paid?

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If you reframe this discussion as "I, a person who is not an aerospace engineer, is disagreeing with the findings of aerospace engineers who have no financial incentive and the inventor of the airplane, who happens to be hired by the defense" that is an accurate enough presentation.

This is a terrible analogy, and I think you're smart enough to know it. Let's use an analogy that's more akin to psychology:

If you reframe this discussion as "I, a person who is not a homeopathy researcher, is disagreeing with the findings of homeopathy researchers who have no financial incentive and the inventor of homeopathic therapies, who happens to be hired by the defense (presumably regarding some dispute about homeopathic therapy)" that is an accurate enough presentation.

The difference between aerospace engineering and homeopathy/psychology is that the former has loads of empirical evidence and concrete track record of success as detectable and measurable by a layman in everyday life, while the latter 2 not only lack empirical evidence but often go directly against it.

If you want to claim that modern psychology as practiced by modern psychologists has as much credibility as modern aerospace engineering as practiced by modern aerospace engineers, then just say that. That can be an interesting venue of conversation, where people can discuss the various details and specifics of what gives these people credibility or doesn't. But just making some vague statement about "expert opinions" and "assuming" they're wrong (again, no such thing happened) looks like you're just trying to smuggle in a bailey via a motte.

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Out of all the medical fields, psychology is probably one of the most wishy-washy ones. There is a good underlying question.
Can women be convicted of anything once a month, postpartum, in perimenopause... ?

Could a hypothetical transwoman or transman with no apparent mental illness, diagnosis, psych ward visits on record, etc, claim the insanity defense based on their injection or unusual fluctuation of crazy-inducing female hormones?

So much of this is based off of misunderstandings and this is why I get so tremendously frustrated with people here.

Psychology is not a medical field. Psychiatry is. Large chunks of psychiatry are functionally psychology, large chunks are not and have just as good or bad of an evidence base as the rest of medicine. Usually people here complaining about medicine and psychiatry don't seem to realize that everyone involved has a very good understanding of what has firm and shaky evidence and so on. Psychiatry also is the victim of long running smear campaigns by august institutions like Scientology and individuals who literally have the inability to acknowledge they have an illness even as the voices tell them to kill their family.

With respect to the specific issue at hand only part of this is medical at all, a large chunk of it is multi-century long discussions in the fields of law, politics, and ethics about how governance, criminality, and the law work. Coming into an intellectual tradition of some of the wisest and smartest people who have ever lived trying to figure out how to organize society and going "IDK insanity defense is bad" is profoundly ill advised.

Yes screeching women on TikTok are making weird arguments but none of the actual knowledge holders or decisions makers are trying to excuse women from committing crimes because they are on their periods. This is a profound misunderstanding of the issue at hand.

You can get a serious, permanent mental illness (ex: schizophrenia) from menopause, you can kill someone because of that illness, and you can still be held criminally liable.

People are just pouncing on preexisting biases without any understanding of how this works.

I think there are a lot of problems in the field. Over diagnosis of disorders and over medication are perennial concerns in psychiatry and psychology. Psychology, upon which psychiatry is based has a replication problem meaning that most results are never subjected to scrutiny. Given these problems, I don’t think it reasonable to simply nod along to what psychiatry says without bothering to do something as crazy as read the evidence.

I have no objection to people attempting to evaluate for themselves the persuasiveness of the arguments, the research, the literature, and so on. It is very common here and elsewhere for people to just go "no fuck you they must be woke and im mad about covid" which is the exact level of analysis exhibited by the "he did it cause he's a gemini" people.

Psychiatry is fundamental a medical field which means that inter rater reliability, effect size, and so on are baked in and seriously researched. They do have some problems but most of that is structural (ex: SSRIs clearly work, why does the literature not show that to some extent?...well medical research is hard).

While medical research has all kinds of problems the stance here is comically overblown.

For instance most of the over-dx problems make sense in context (for instance giving people labels so they can get insurance coverage for therapy, scummy patients/doctors in the ADHD market, and so on).

SSRIs do not clearly work. That is, it is far from clear the benefit outweighs the harms. There has been little studies on long term SSRI usage despite SSRIs being highly addictive (ie trials were measured in terms of weeks; not years).

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I noticed that you conveniently ignored my question related to the highly scientific qualification of transgenderism as mentally sound by competent psychology experts.

There are plenty of competent people in Psychiatry and plenty in Psychology as well. By your own admission, these bright, competent, highly-educated experts may spend up to 2 weeks a year in training meant to erase racial or sexist biases that their lying eyes have implanted in them.
Very few of them ever complain about this state of affair, or under the cover of pseudo-anonymity on such platforms.
The ones that do, once in a while, point out that the emperor is naked, end up in big trouble with both their own regulation agencies and the government, as was demonstrated between say 2020 and 2023.

They may have very good understanding of what has firm and shaky evidence, but they are not always compelled to share that understanding with the wider public, and sometimes, perhaps, they disguise it in favor of what their Masters ask them to.

With respect to the specific issue at hand only part of this is medical at all, a large chunk of it is multi-century long discussions in the fields of law, politics, and ethics about how governance, criminality, and the law work. Coming into an intellectual tradition of some of the wisest and smartest people who have ever lived trying to figure out how to organize society and going "IDK insanity defense is bad" is profoundly ill advised.

Or maybe going 'IDK maybe black people are just as smart people?' Oh that's not ill-advised, that's just uh socially-acceptable.
Now, what was socially-acceptable way back when experts were still respected? One of the fathers of modern neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot was all about hysteria, you know the 'b# be crazy, yo' disease. Why'd we give up on that again?
Same profoundly scientific reason that the threshold for mental retardation was lowered to 70 in the 70s to conveniently not have half of the African-American population qualify as mentally retarded?

I didn't bring up transgenderism because it's not relevant. Medicine has blindspots just like everyone else does. Blindspots aren't the same as blindness.

Starting by blaming politics/wokeness/feminism/whatever is retarded. Investigate first then blame PRN. Sometimes a blindspot is pumped in Pharma money, but you can't just assume all drugs were only approved because of Pharma. That's stupid.

Insanity pleas are part of a long running attempt at codifying criminal responsibility that has been argued about through many waves of predominant social ideologies.

Also hysteria doesn't work the way you think it does, and bringing it up is a feminist complaint anyway?

Medicine has blindspots just like everyone else does. Blindspots aren't the same as blindness.

How many blindspots should the common man assume that the experts have? Would an expert know how many blindspots they have themselves?

Starting by blaming politics/wokeness/feminism/whatever is retarded.

It's a good starting point when examining anything coming out of academia after the Long March through the Institutions.
Experts have been telling us that they are activists, that they are biased, that not being biased in the same way they are is against Science, etc. We are listening to the experts.
Who do you trust more to keep a secret in confidence, the guy with a rainbow or the one who drops the nword in front of you?

Also hysteria doesn't work the way you think it does, and bringing it up is a feminist complaint anyway?

I probably don't have a good understanding of hysteria and other mental issues that have been credited or discredited in history in accordance with political, cultural or social changes.

The number of times I've seen people mix together psychology and psychiatry, or argue that somehow this case was going to excuse women from murder charges because of natural hormone variations is unreal.

Why not? Women are already excused from murder charges for their prepartum condition, they call it 'reproductive healthcare'.
Why should this new cultural development not end up like the previous cultural developments, such as the 'sex change' or 'soul mixed up at birth' lunacy?
What makes you confident that this slope is not that slippery?

The definition of "fitness to stand trial" is defined by law, not by psychiatrists; tossing this standard aside to give carte blanche to psychiatry - who's guild has publicaly announced opposition to the death penalty, btw - is rank injustice.

Yes, the "experts" are wrong, and in fact they are proud to be so.

My intake of the details of the case has led me to believe in the insanity defense.

That being said, my intake of the widespread support Clancy has received from women has also led me to believe in an insanity defense against a large percentage of politically active women.

My intake of the details of the case has led me to believe in the insanity defense.

As I said elsewhere the insanity defense is a very specific thing that doesn't mean what people think it does.

As I mentioned on Twitter, people pleading "beyond a reasonable doubt" clearly have no clue what it means. If this case doesn't clear the hurdle of then it is literally impossible for any case, short of the defendent literally taking the stand and telling the Court "Yo, I'm actually perfectly fine, I'm just pleading Insanity because I know it's a Get Out of Jail Free Card. Blow me." and any defense attorney in MA not pleading insanity is guilty of professional negligence.

Issues with the specific legal framework in MA may in fact be valid and reasonable but are not the responsibility of physicians, psychiatrists, or Lindsay Clancy.

The issue is not with MA law*, it is with your bizarre interpretation of "beyond reasonable doubt" which discards both the "beyond" and "reasonable" parts. The "reasonable person" standard has been well established for decades, it's not some subjective mystery.

I ask again, think about the consequences of what you are saying. Commonwealth v. McHoul has been the standard in Massachusetts since 1967. The Prosecution in this case presented expert testimony that "command voice" for around 20 minutes, interrupted by a phone calls with the spouse to ensure he would not be present to stop the act, they presented evidence of premeditation, they cleared any hurdle any reasonable person would raise.

Yet you insist they did not. This has consequences that you must account for. If what you are saying is true, then it is impossible for a prosecutor to ever defeat an insanity defense. As such, every defense attorney practicing in Massachusetts for the past 60 years who has not just had their client plead NGRI for the past 60 years has been in gross negligence. This is an absurdity, so one arguing in good faith should feel the need to re-examine their priors and question if perhaps their understanding of MA's Insanity Defense might, just might, be incorrect.

*Which, frankly, isn't as extreme as people are pretending it is. I'd agree that it's backwards, but it's not really a problem.

The law, as you describe it, is so transparently absurd that it renders itself moot. No case will actually be decided by any such law, since evidence can be arbitrarily interpreted any which way a jury intuits. It simply amounts to asking the jury whether they feel like the defendant is a bad person that they want to punish.

I'm not sure I see how that follows.

Yes, that's the impression I am getting, and it's true for both sides. It feels like a loss for a lot of people if she is found not guilty. That feeling is exacerbated by the pink-wearing banshees outside the courthouse. On the other hand, it will feel like a win for her staunch supporters. More broadly though, I think more people will see these supporters as the real societal problem that needs to be addressed.

I think, no matter what happens, this will just continue to add to the general schism between men and women. Men are starting to develop some of the same in-group bias that women have always had.

More broadly though, I think more people will see these supporters as the real societal problem that needs to be addressed.

Yeah toxic positivity, female in-group bias and her mentality as well as social media are really making a large slice of women into intellectual zombies. I'd hazard that lots of men have always been this way but they've tended to go into a variety of directions which limits social disruption. Since the current epidemic in women functions as a voting bloc it causes...problems.

That's a surprise to me, I would have guessed that the holdouts were a small number of women who are regularly online and exposed to all the pro-Clancy agitation. Perhaps I have been getting too much of my information from Matt Walsh.

but am horrified by the defense of her and holding her up as some kind of hero.

Yeah, for me that's pretty much the issue. There's this feminist notion that women should never be held accountable for their wrongdoing (that indeed, wrongdoing is something men do, not women) and it's annoying to say the least. (Of course they'll never come out and say it, but when a woman publicly misbehaves, it's pretty normal for feminists to come forward, minimize things, and blame the misbehavior on some man or a stand-in for men.)

I think she’s guilty of premeditated, cold blooded murder.

I don't have a strong opinion about this. In fact, the just result might very well be for her to be acquitted. Unfortunately the case has become a culture war issue; if she's acquitted it's a victory for feminists so part of me was hoping for a conviction, although I try to resist such feelings.

Touch on the pulse of /pol/. It is as you would expect. Even the coldest of cynics briefly had their hearts lifted at the outcome.

Some of the problem here is different states have different standards.

Under modern U.S. federal law and in the vast majority of state legal systems, the defense bears the burden of proof when asserting an insanity defense. Pleading insanity is a risky move because it basically admits the facts of the case, that the defendant really did do the crime, and but the defense will put forward a convincing argument that the defendant was insane at the time to the degree that they didn't realize they were doing something wrong.

I think a lot of people have this intuitive understanding of the insanity plea that sanity is generally presumed, the defendant must affirmatively prove insanity. Under those rules, I think Clancy would have been found guilty of First Degree Murder.

Massachusetts, where Clancy lives, is one of the few exceptions. As long as the defense provides some kind of documentation or evidence that raises the possibility of insanity, the prosecution must then prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was legally sane at the time of the crime. Which seems to me to be a really challenging standard, but that's the law there.

Which seems to me to be a really challenging standard, but that's the law there.

That's literally the standard in every criminal case. What about "beyond reasonable doubt" is confusing here? It doesn't mean "well, there could have been a .00001% chance martians did it and planted evidence," it's using the "reasonable person standard." Why are so many people pretending that's not well-settled law?

The "beyond reasonable doubt" standard generally is in reference to doubt related to physical actions that occurred. "It's he-said, she-said and there's no cameras, so there's no way to know for sure what happened" is reasonable doubt.

How do you prove someone is sane? I don't even know how you prove someone is sane in the present moment beyond reasonable doubt. How do you prove someone was "sane" at the time of committing a crime beyond a reasonable doubt? And when the courts mean "sane" they mean "understood what they were doing was wrong."

Is it even possible? There's a tautology the defense can always pull - crime is irrational, if someone is committing a crime then they are showing they didn't fully understand what they were doing was wrong, therefore there is always reasonable doubt that the person was sane at the time of the crime.

In the case of Clancy, I think the fact that she concealed it on a phone call while she was in the process of doing it does show the preponderance of evidence shows she knows she was doing something wrong. It doesn't matter how much mental anguish she was in or how mental illness made it seem like killing her kids was preferable to not killing her kids. She was cognizant enough to understand that if others knew of her plans she would have been prevented from doing so. This indicates strongly that she was criminally sane.

But proving sanity beyond reasonable doubt... if the courts presume everyone is insane until proven otherwise how can we have a functional society? I must assume you are insane as well. I must assume the crossing guard and the teacher and the barista are all insane until proven otherwise. A presumption of sanity seems more conducive to a functional society.

The burden to prove that she was not insane has been on the prosecution, so the legal argument here might be sound. It seems like a weird way to trial murders though. Why doesn't every murderer in Massachusetts just go for the insanity defense? Such an assertion seems impossible to conclusively disprove in most cases.

"Dr. Kafka is here, he's given me this intake form, but all it says is 'are you sane?' for all of the questions. It goes on for hundreds of pages..."

No. As far as I understand it, the insanity defense (NGRI) shifts the burden to the defense. Same with self defense in other circumstance.

Look into hard evidence like meta data from the accused's phone about when she walked up and down steps from the murder basement around her lucid phonecall to her husband.

Edit: Well I might be wrong. Under state law the prosecution may need to provide proof she was insane (which I believe is largely unproovable)

No. As far as I understand it, the insanity defense (NGRI) shifts the burden to the defense.

In Massachusetts this is specifically not the case.

Why don't every murderer in Massachusetts just go for the insanity defense?

I don't think our insanity defenses are really as coherent as I'd like them to be. I don't have a much better proposal, but the combination of "no sane person willfully kills another (involuntarily, to disclaim euthanasia)" and "it's only murder if it's done by someone sane in the moment", neither of which strike me as incontrovertibly wrong at an axiomatic level, implies "murder is not a commit-able crime", which strikes me as obviously wrong.

Any recommendations on how we're supposed to square that circle?

And that's in addition to dramatic unclarity about "reasonable doubt" and P-values (the law seems to refuse to specify a number). I can only hope if I'm charged with a crime to have a particle physicist on my jury for whom five sigma (p < 3e-7) is a reasonable threshold for conclusions.

Right now, the secret "real system" seems to be that the both sides will make a highly emotional argument, and then the jurors go and decide however they want. Jury selection is by far the most important factor, and written legal precedent means very little. Hooray.

Any recommendations on how we're supposed to square that circle?

The simple answer is flipping the burden of proof. Institute a presumption of sanity just like there is a presumption of innocence. The blackbox nature of what precisely happened in your head at the scene, probably makes proving insanity so hard that it's basically only possible if you recently escaped a psych ward. Is that really acceptable though, if it means that you miss a lot of people who legitimately were not in control of themselves when it happened?

You could also keep the burden on the prosecution but reduce the criteria to "more likely than not". "It is most likely she was sane as we see evidence of planning, prior abuse, etc."

Or you could combine the two and shift the burden to the defense, but all they have to prove is that she was more likely than not to be psychotic. Show that she had a history of past episodes and no history of abusing the kids. Or something like that. This still leaves the issue of how responsible she was in managing her illness. It sounds like she may have been doctor shopping and stopping her medication without medical guidance. In that case, I would imagine there is an argument that she knowingly caused this risk for her kids and should at least be held somewhat liable for what happened.

I can only hope if I'm charged with a crime to have a particle physicist on my jury for whom five sigma (p < 3e-7) is a reasonable threshold for conclusions.

lol

The blackbox nature of what precisely happened in your head at the scene, probably makes proving insanity so hard that it's basically only possible if you recently escaped a psych ward.

The funny thing about escapable psych wards is that you tend to have a motive for escaping them even if sane; they are, after all, full of crazy people, and if they're escapable they're probably pretty lousy about security.

Or you could combine the two and shift the burden to the defense, but all they have to prove is that she was more likely than not to be psychotic

This is what about half of US states have done. The burden is on the defense, but it's a "Preponderance of Evidence" burden instead of beyond reasonable doubt. This would be my preference but unfortunately not the standard here.

I'm thinking we'll probably see a lot more of that after all the attention this is getting.

If Lindsay Clancy has actually started to say stuff like "I killed my kids, please kill me, I deserve the death sentence", I think it will be easy to say "yeah she's got mental problems".

This seems like something a murderer would say in order to sound insane.

Actually, it sounds like something a sane person would say if they recognized they had slaughtered the entirety of their children. Instead, she's in court trying to exonerate herself. If she really felt sorry, she'd have pled guilty. Or better yet, killed herself. Any normal person's life would and should be over in these circumstances, regardless of the reason why they did it.

From Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein:

That night I tried to figure out how such things could be kept from happening. Of course, they hardly ever do nowadays - but even once is 'way too many. I never did reach an answer that satisfied me. This Dillinger - he looked like anybody else, and his behavior and record couldn't have been too odd or he would never have reached Camp Currie in the first place. I suppose he was one of those pathological personalities you read about - no way to spot them.

Well, if there was no way to keep it from happening once, there was only one sure way to keep it from happening twice. Which we had used.

If Dillinger had understood what he was doing (which seemed incredible) then he got what was coming to him . . . except that it seemed a shame that he hadn't suffered as much as had little Barbara Anne - he practically hadn't suffered at all.

But suppose, as seemed more likely, that he was so crazy that he had never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?

Well, we shoot mad dogs, don't we?

Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness -

I couldn't see but two possibilities. Either he couldn't be made well - in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others - or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society . . . and thought over what he had done while he was "sick" - what could be left for him but suicide? How could he live with himself?

And suppose he escaped before he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe again? How do you explain that to bereaved parents? In view of his record?

I couldn't see but one answer.

Well, a lot of things that actually insane people would say also sound like something a murderer would say in order to sound insane, for obvious reasons. It's one of those Very Hard Problems without a solution.

Seems like the kind of gamble a Sicillian would make when death is on the line


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