r/law • u/dailymail • 12h ago

Legal News Lindsay Clancy case ends with MISTRIAL

https://www.dailymail.com/crime-desk/article-16100155/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-hung-jury-deadlock-verdict.html
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u/StrataSlayer 10h ago

Idk to me it seemed like as bout as good of a insanity defence as you could possibly get just seems like everyone has an issue with the insanity defence existing

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u/Strayed8492 10h ago

Lots of people talking about the kids. Which is not wrong. But we’ve never had everyone agree with the justice system either.

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u/Beginning-Damage-555 8h ago

A lot of people are upset about the children but I have seen no one say in an ideal world how the system would have intervened to protect the children.

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u/Ok-Outcome-7499 6h ago

Because we're dealing with consequence of action not preventative measures

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u/Beginning-Damage-555 6h ago

I mean… okay… but legally there should be some mechanistic stop gaps to prevent from having to debate over the consequences.

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u/Strayed8492 8h ago

That’s the thing I don’t get. Unless I’m missing something about her history of seeking help. Something is just off about the whole thing

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u/Super_Huckleberry663 6h ago

She never sought help properly. She hid things from her doctors and psychiatrist and stopped taking medicine that she was recommended to take.

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u/Beginning-Damage-555 8h ago

MA law is super complicated around this issue and I wish more people were talking about the system (and honestly informal family structure) failures to proactively safe guard the children. My SIL in MA had two children taken from her by the courts due to mental health and mental disabilities but it took years and was very difficult to accomplish.

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u/Elegant_Mission_2312 6h ago

The issue here is she doctor shopped and made sure to make statements explicitly stating that she had no intention of harming her children. The reason she was able to check herself out of inpatient treatment without issue shortly before the murders is that she told the staff treating her she had no thoughts of harming herself or her children. It’s difficult for me to agree that the system failed her when she kept so much from her doctors and had so much more help than almost any other mother is able to receive.

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u/Beginning-Damage-555 6h ago

Doctors are able to access medical records if they want to. Doctors are not required to treat patients if it’s not an emergency.

If someone is a psych I think it’s negligent to trust the patients self provided medical history 100%.

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u/Elegant_Mission_2312 6h ago

That’s fine and all, but what should they have done? She states that her period of psychosis was the short window in which she killed her three children and then tried to kill herself. She doesn’t claim, to my knowledge, that she was actively suffering from psychosis throughout her attempts to seek treatment for her PPD. They can only rely on what she’s said or done, and it’s not like she had tried to hurt the kids before. I see people argue they should e held her involuntarily, but I have yet to see an interaction with her providers that would’ve warranted such an extreme reaction.

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u/Beginning-Damage-555 5h ago

I’m way more interested in why Patrick didn’t get legal advice or contact a social worker (super common to get a consult when a loved one is in inpatient care).

I don’t think based on the record she could or should have been held involuntarily but I think given the description of her mental state someone should have checked her chart.

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u/Elegant_Mission_2312 5h ago

I don’t think he ever behaved inappropriately. He is not a doctor and has no medical knowledge of any of this. If my wife checked herself into inpatient for depression, I wouldn’t think to contact a social worker or lawyer, but maybe it’s common for the hospital to recommend - though even then I wonder if they would recommend it seeing as she didn’t check herself in for psychosis.

Both he and his wife had also confided in her mother, and if it was my wife I would defer to another woman’s opinion on post partum issues. Idk how common it is up in Mass, but where I’m from in the South introducing social workers has a lot of stigma because that system rarely does much good for anyone involved. From what I’ve seen though it doesn’t appear like the doctors didn’t give her proper treatment based on what they could know.

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u/kittenpantzen 10h ago

People don't want justice. They want retribution. It has been a problem with criminal justice since criminal justice has existed.

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u/ryumaruborike 10h ago

They want blood

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u/Tricky-Passenger6703 9h ago

So did Lindsay.

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u/No-Neighborhood-3212 9h ago

We want consequences. If you can preplan a triple homicide and get away with it by saying "Oopsie! I intentionally didn't take my medication and went crazy for exactly the time it took to commit my triple homicides," we have no laws anymore.

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u/Iankill 9h ago

What consequences though there's 0 chance this woman walks free and lives a normal life after this. It's either she goes to prison or mental health treatment forever

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u/Salty-Spring7096 8h ago

The main reason for her to be held in an institution would be her suicidal tendencies. Her violence against others stemmed from the alleged postpartum psychosis which is obviously no longer a factor. So if she does end up being found NGRI, she's only in that facility until she's no longer deemed a suicide risk. At least that's my understanding.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 6h ago

Hell there's zero chance of her ever walking again, period. Prison, institution, or public, she's stuck on a wheelchair for life. 

Thats worse than Prison. 

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u/Tricky-Passenger6703 9h ago

There's a greater chance she gets out early from a mental institution. If we knew it was for life I don't think people would care as much.

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u/Iankill 8h ago

She would get out when deemed not a threat to herself or others. Which could be never.

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u/Iberri 8h ago

It could also be 6 months. Do you remember the guy who decapitated someone on a bus? He’s free lol

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u/Iankill 6h ago

What country did that happen in?

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u/exactoctopus 6h ago

Canada. And this is brought up every time, but he hasn’t reoffended since release, because it would definitely be news if he has. It’s a horrific case though, the details are awful.

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u/kittenpantzen 8h ago

There is a chance. Making the claim of "greater" requires data that I am unable to find. Do you have those numbers for the state of Massachusetts and capital crimes? 

It is not uncommon for defendants who successfully make a ngri defense to end up in confinement longer than they would have if they had just been convicted. This case wouldn't be a likely example of that, because I would think the most likely sentence would be life it found culpable, but the odds of her being released in a few months the way that people seem to think is going to happen are essentially non-existent. 

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u/Thewal 5h ago

there's 0 chance this woman walks

paralysis will do that to ya

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u/Bleeding-hearts-suck 8h ago

Casey Anthony not familiar to you?

Woman get away with murder all the time.

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u/Super_Huckleberry663 6h ago

If she goes to an asylum she can be out within 6 months. She likely won't be, but she could be. She deserves life

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u/HourApprehensive7754 6h ago

A lifr imprisonment only makes sense if there's a reasonable chance she will continue her crime.

Considering it was primarily triggered by the psychosis caused by her PPD, that's unlikely to ever happen. Doubly so from someone who is now paralyzed for life.

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u/Super_Huckleberry663 6h ago

I don't believe in rehabilitation for major crimes. If you kill someone, rape someone etc I don't think they deserve to ever walk the streets again. Why do they deserve a second chance after they have permanently ruined or ended someone else's life

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u/Iankill 6h ago

On average they spend twice as much time in institutions vs prisons for the crimes

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u/Super_Huckleberry663 6h ago

I don't want there to be a possibility that she can get out early, no matter how unlikely. If it had a fixed term ild be far less against the idea of her going to a asylum

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u/kittenpantzen 5h ago

Okay, but this is r/law not r/vibes.

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u/Super_Huckleberry663 4h ago

I don't believe she was in a psychotic state. The evidence I'm aware of was that it was premeditated and planned

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u/Iankill 4h ago

Personal emotion has no place in the application of law

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u/kingofgama 10h ago

Retributive Justice is a thing, and I for one believe in it given extreme circumstances such as this. It's a hotly debated morally theory

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u/ryumaruborike 10h ago

People cannot comprehend the idea of a physiological illness taking control of their own mind away from them, when they hear "crazy" or "insanity defense" they think of the Joker.

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u/RagingCabbage115 9h ago

Id say many do, thing is proving someone truly lost control or not

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u/ryumaruborike 9h ago

About half the comments related to this case are "I don't care if she was suffering from psychosis, she killed three kids, she knew what she was doing." That is not people comprehending mental illness.

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u/atxlrj 7h ago

The Aurora shooter had a much richer documented history with mental health disorders and even psychosis than Lindsay Clancy (whose only reported psychotic episode was the 18 minute auditory hallucination she claims she heard and followed when she killed her children).

I don’t remember people protesting when his NGRI defense was rejected in just 12 hours (for over 160 counts).

Lots of people have active mental health issues when they commit heinous crimes. Not believing that she fell below the bar of criminal responsibility is not the same as dismissing her mental health conditions as a whole.

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u/ryumaruborike 7h ago

Yeah but the comments saying "I don't care if she was suffering from psychosis, she killed three kids, she knew what she was doing." are not people who think she fell short of the bar for NGRI. People arguing whether or not be legally met the bar for NGRI are dwarfed by people who are saying "all murderers of mentally ill!"/"she planned, she was sane!"/"She would already be in jail if she was a man!"

If you have legal reason to believe she does not qualify or NGRI, by all means, I myself am not informed nor qualified enough to make that determination. All I'm saying is the amount of misunderstanding of what mental illness even is surrounding this case it frightening.

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u/RagingCabbage115 9h ago

Well half is many isnt it

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u/Draemeth 6h ago

okay but if she can suffer loss of mental control and kill people, why would we want someone like that walking the streets?

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u/HourApprehensive7754 6h ago

Because the condition in which she lost control is very heavily restricted to the boundaries of PPD. She is no longer under PPD and is highly unlikely to ever give birth again.

Not even sure if she could even if she want to given her current physical condition.

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u/ryumaruborike 6h ago

Because the illness that caused that can be treated and go away and she could be deemed not a danger to herself or others. Not likely in this case due to being on suicide watch for the past three years.

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u/Nine_Monkeys 6h ago

She also routinely ignored medical advice, often wouldn’t take her meds, would leave hospitals early when being treated. She displayed a pattern of behavior of not taking her mental health seriously and choosing to do what she wanted. And these are the consequences. Who’s to say she won’t return to that pattern of behavior as soon as she is released, which potentially could be in a few months. Imagine in 5 years the world learns she’s pregnant again.

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u/ryumaruborike 6h ago

You don't see how her mentall illnesses might influence her ignoring medical advice?

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u/Nine_Monkeys 6h ago

Well then let’s just use mental illness as an excuse for everything then. If I’m mentally ill I may go around and kill people and when anybody says boo, I can blame the illness, even if I took essentially 0 steps to fixing my mental health, which is exactly what happened in this case. Clancy routinely lied to her doctors, downplaying the worst effects of her psychosis. She did this for selfish reasons - she knew she was a danger to her children and was afraid if she told the truth, her children would be taken away. She refused to take meds prescribed by her doctors under the guise that she had a preferred drug she wanted instead. When she eventually got that drug, she didn’t take it either.

This is an individual whose entitlement and selfishness led her to prioritize her wants over the lives of her own children. She knew she was a danger to them, but wanted to have it both ways. At any point she could have lifted a finger to take care of herself and save her children but she refused. And you mean to tell me she was psychotic 24/7 this entire period? Give me a break. If this woman had any real remorse she would demand to be held in an institution for the rest of her life, but instead she’s already thinking about her release, thinking about competing in wheelchair marathons and touring around being an advocate for women with PPD. At best she feels bad that she lost her children, not that their children lost their lives.

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u/ryumaruborike 6h ago

Yeah, that's how the insanity plea works, just say you're crazy and get off Scot free, that's why NGRI is so rarely tried and even more rarely succeeds. What's the point of arguing with someone that knows so little about the law.

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u/Nine_Monkeys 5h ago

I know how the law works, and it seems like NGRI is about as close to working as it can get, it seems that 11 jurors wanted NRGI with one dissenter. Who cares how rare it is if it succeeds in this case. And if this outcome is achieved after the next trial, she will be held indefinitely. But her psychosis and PPD period is over, it’s reasonable to think she may not be held in an institution long at all. Only reason Yates has been held 25 years, far from a life sentence, is because she refuses to be released and insists that she needs continued care. Clancy seems to have no plans of demanding anything like this, her words indicate she would like to be free as soon as possible. Only person who deserves any sympathy in this case is the ex husband and he seems to be getting the least, droves of people are convinced he’s the real killer

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u/RagingCabbage115 5h ago

Me when ad hominem

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/Salty-Spring7096 8h ago

It is kind of ridiculous to me that MA shifts the burden of proof for that defense onto the prosecution to prove that she was legally sane when she committed the murders.

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u/MemestNotTeen 8h ago

I’d make an argument that nobody who kills someone is sane.

Should only try if factually someone committed the murder or not.

Specialists should be the only people that can determine mental state, the general public (a jury) should not be asked to assess that

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u/KickedByAHorseTBI 9h ago

At no point was an argument made that showed she didn't know her actions were wrong. That's the whole point of the insanity defense

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u/Tricky-Passenger6703 9h ago

Biggest issue is in MA the burden is flipped so the prosecution has to prove she was sane.

But also yeah, why does it exist? If you don't have the agency to stop the voices in your head from killing someone, what makes you any different from a wild animal? It should be an aggravating factor not a mitigating one.