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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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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.

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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