On Justice and the Lindsay Clancy Trial

 I hadn't been paying a super amount of attention to the Lindsay Clancy trial.  I just thought it was a tragic situation.  But it had been going on for nearly six weeks, so impossible not to read some things about it.  I thought this article on the America site was good. The title sums it up :

We are expecting too much from the Lindsay Clancy trial - America Magazine

And I think it is true that we are expecting too much from the trial, if the aim is perfect justice. 

"On Aug. 20, when Lindsay Clancy’s former mother-in-law Sue Clancy took the witness stand, Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asked her if she was aware that murder is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church.Judge William Sullivan moved swiftly to strike the reference from the record, but I almost wish he would have let Ms. Buckingham continue. What line of questioning was she pursuing here? It left me considering what God asks of us in the face of such tragedy, what the law requires and where it falls short. "

"Lindsay Clancy is the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse who is accused of strangling and killing her three young children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, in the family’s Massachusetts home on Jan. 24, 2023. Her defense argues that she is not criminally responsible for the deaths because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time they occurred."

"...I do not typically pay much attention to high-profile court cases as they are playing out. I much prefer to wait a few months for the talking heads on an episode of “Dateline” or “20/20” to neatly summarize the whole thing for me, offering a tidy conclusion. But if you are on social media at all, you will know how hard it is to ignore the Lindsay Clancy case. "

Eventually, it was her iPhone notes that hooked me.“I’m going to try my best today”  I’m sad and depressed because I am not able to parent my third child like my first,” Ms. Clancy wrote. “I want to be able to give him all the love he deserves…I’m going to try my best today…I’m terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development.”

"The fact that Ms. Clancy, who had given birth to Callan the previous May, was in the throes of a profound mental health crisis at the time of the murders is disputed by no one—not even the prosecution. Accordingly, Ms. Clancy’s defense has acknowledged that she was, in fact, the person to commit these murders."

"The question the trial seeks to answer is this: Is she criminally responsible for them? But the questions raised by Ms. Clancy’s life and actions are much broader. ...The prominence of the trial has meant that many people, especially mothers, have been forced to grapple with what the trial cannot solve. Questions of mental health and motherhood, good and evil, sickness, sadness. It was hard for me to sleep the first night after I read those testimonies. I understood why I had been trying to keep my distance: Lindsay Clancy reminds me of myself in more ways than I care to think about. I have never experienced intrusive thoughts about harming my children, but I do have a great deal of experience with intrusive thoughts in general, ones I have no intention of, or desire to, act upon. But it can be hard not to feel overwhelmed by them. I have lain awake, Ms. Clancy’s pathetic, optimistic words swirling in my head: “I’m going to try my best today.”

"...I know what it is like to face your day with nothing but an iPhone folder full of hopeful affirmations and a hope that today—please, God—when I tell someone “I’m okay,” I mean it.   I know what it’s like to love so hard, and to fail."

"...But the conversation is polarized. On the other side, innumerable social media posts have been made with the supposed “hot take” that anyone who kills a child, no matter what the reason, needs to go to jail. "

"...So is Lindsay Clancy sick, or a monster? The ferocity of public opinion on this trial represents our collective inability to hold two truths at once: that people can sin, sometimes even terribly, and that people can still contain good."

"...In the courtroom, the law is all that matters, and the law is conveniently explicit. Arguing a court case is straightforward and falls within specific parameters. But broader concepts like good and evil are frustratingly gray, and discerning them calls for employing virtues like compassion, patience and charity."

"...However the jury decides this case, the opposite side will say that the justice system is broken. I’m not sure they are wrong. I don’t know what earthly justice is possible for Cora, Dawson and Callen. I don’t know what legal justice looks like for Lindsay Clancy. But I know that none of them will receive true justice from any decision handed down by a jury of human beings."

"...When Sue Clancy left the stand, she exited the courtroom through the main aisle, passing by the defense table. As she did, she looked straight at her former daughter-in-law. The nod that she gave was brief and her gaze unsmiling, but the meaning of both was unmistakable: recognition. Something tells me that Sue Clancy, a practicing Catholic, knows what a mortal sin is. She knows that such sin separates us from God and one another. And she knows God can forgive it."

Post partum mental illness is an out-of-the-ordinary situation, most people don't experience it to this degree of severity.  But everyone knows someone who has experienced it, at least to a degree. I was fortunate that I didn't experience it after the birth of our children. Just run of the mill fatigue and bodily healing. But it turns out that I did know someone who had post partum depression severely. The relative who was my godmother had it with her children, and with her third required a short hospitalization.  My mom didn't tell me about it until I was an adult. I don't know if she thought I would think less of our relative, or what. But she did say that the doctors advised the couple that they should not attempt another pregnancy. They didn't. And Mom said to me, "I'd better not hear anyone say that birth control is a sin in a situation like that."  It should be noted that the children in most of these situations were loved and wanted, it was just an overwhelming mental crash that occurred afterwards.

Comments on social media have been pretty unsparing, which is maybe understandable. But it isn't true that if the final verdict would end up being "not guilty by reason of insanity", she would be getting off scot free. She is paralyzed from the waist down. She will likely have to be in some type of care facility for the rest of her life, the verdict notwithstanding. There is no such thing as scot free in this case..