The verdict America needs after Lindsay Clancy

www.americanthinker.com

I hesitate to pile on to the mountains of words and ocean of ink that have already been spilled on the Lindsay Clancy case. I’ve worked for 37 years as a paralegal, starting out as a “walk-on hire” at a big-city public defender’s office in 1989.

In my very first case, I got a genuinely innocent man out of prison. Since then, I’ve seen about 40 ways for sneaky, unscrupulous Chicago defense lawyers to game the system. It’s obvious to me that Massachusetts, like every other left-wing state, has painted itself into a corner.

Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury home in January 2023. She planned it carefully enough to send her husband out for takeout and medicine. Then she made a half-hearted attempt on her own life. These facts are not in dispute.

What followed was a five-week mistrial, after roughly 38 hours of deliberations. The jury of nine women and three men deadlocked 11-1. God bless the lone holdout: He voted to convict and refused to budge.

The other 11, overwhelmingly left-wing white Karens, wanted a finding of not guilty due to postpartum psychosis. Reports from fellow jurors describe intense pressure on that one man.

Defense counsel later called the outcome a “robbery” by a single juror with an agenda. That juror is going to be exposed, doxxed, and by Karens for the rest of his life, for doing the right thing — unless he changes his name and moves to Texas.

Of course the woman is crazy — utterly, bat-guano crazy. An insane dog that bites one person, or three, gets put down. She’s clearly insane and should face the same outcome.

If the medications she was prescribed somehow made her worse, then hold those medical professionals accountable separately for their role. Can anyone point to a single case where a mother murders her three children and isn’t considered insane?

I’m perfectly fine with a “guilty by reason of insanity” finding. If that were the consistent standard, we’d see far less of this nonsense from high-priced defense teams. Don’t want to get executed? Simple: Don’t kill your kids.

Clancy’s well funded lawyers floated a hormone defense. Should that same logic apply to an 18-year-old black man, suddenly flooded with naturally high testosterone, who flies into a rage and beats his Girlfriend of the Month, or shakes his crying baby to death?

This miscarriage of justice in the Clancy case raises far more troubling questions than it answers.

Here’s a statistical fact: Violent male criminals tend to have higher-than-average testosterone levels. Does that excuse their crimes? Absolutely not. They need to go to prison; if they killed, the death penalty needs to be on the table. It has deterrent value. The result would be fewer murders and fewer assaults.

The binary choice of “guilty” or “not guilty by reason of insanity” in Massachusetts forces juries into a false dichotomy. The Commonwealth must prove Mrs. Clancy was not suffering from a mental illness that rendered her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct, or conform her behavior to the requirements of the law.

Of course, we all know how difficult it is to prove someone is not insane when she claims to be insane. And proof beyond reasonable doubt is a tall mountain to climb.

One juror applied that standard and concluded that Mrs. Clancy was guilty. Eleven others did not. The result is a mistrial, continued institutionalization at taxpayer expense, and the real possibility of a second trial or a plea that leaves the public unprotected.

A third option already exists, in roughly a dozen states: Guilty but Mentally Ill.

Here in Illinois, we’ve had it since 1981 under 720 ILCS § 5/6-2. The defendant is convicted and sentenced exactly as if found guilty, but the court orders psychiatric evaluation and treatment during incarceration.

The verdict acknowledges mental illness without erasing criminal responsibility. It closes the revolving door that lets some criminals walk free once a psychiatrist signs a release form.

Massachusetts already operates specialized facilities for the criminally mentally ill. Bridgewater State Hospital, run by the Department of Correction, houses men committed after findings of lack of criminal responsibility or incompetence. It’s a medium-security prison with forensic psychiatric units.

Illinois maintains residential treatment units and secure treatment units inside its prison system for inmates with serious mental illness. These are not luxury spas. They are locked facilities, where treatment occurs under correctional security.

The solution is a third verdict option, between “guilty” and “innocent.” Congress and the states should adopt a uniform “Guilty but Mentally Ill” verdict by constitutional amendment, in all violent felony cases. This makes it available in every American jurisdiction, whenever a defendant claims that mental illness forced the crime.

Upon a GBMI finding, the defendant becomes an involuntarily committed patient in a secure forensic facility. The burden of proof then shifts. She must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she has been cured — that without medication, she is no longer a danger to herself or others.

Fail that test, and she stays in prison. In practice, in most cases, it becomes a life sentence with no parole, served in a therapeutic prison rather than a general population yard.

Postpartum psychosis is real and tragic. So is the deliberate strangulation of three small children. Society has every right to protect itself from both.

The current system forces juries to choose between total moral absolution and a pure guilty verdict that may ignore genuine illness.

A courageous man in a Massachusetts jury room saw that clearly and refused to be shouted down. The rest of the country should take the same hard look.

Image via Raw Pixel.