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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.
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.
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.
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