How Would You Have Applied Massachusetts Law in the Lindsay Clancy Trial?
Reason · RC · trust 39/100
[A.] I know lots of people have opinions about the Lindsay Clancy trial, and I wanted to pass along the Massachusetts standard criminal jury instructions for such matters. (I can't be certain that this is the instruction that was actually given in the case, but it's the recommended instruction for such cases, so I assume the actual instruction wasn't far off.) If you have followed the factual allegations in the case, please post a comment and indicate how you would have voted if you were a juror, based on your knowledge (even if limited) of the factual allegations, and why you would have so voted.
[1.] Once evidence triggering the defense is raised, the government must disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. To draw an analogy from how people talk about the reasonable doubt standard as to other guilt/innocence questions, Massachusetts takes the view that it is better that 10 non-insane people are wrongly acquitted than that one insane person is wrongly convicted.
This is not the uniform rule in the U.S.; for instance, in federal cases, the law is almost the opposite—the defendant must prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence. Indeed, my quick research suggests that this is the rule only in a minority of states. But the law in Massachusetts on this is as settled.
[2.] The substantive rule is that a defendant is not criminally responsible if
(a) he or she " suffer[ed] from a mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged offense" (with no further definition of the terms, at least as part of the standard instruction) and
(ii) the defendant lacked "the substantial capacity ... to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law." (From what I understand of the Clancy defense, it is that she suffered from a mental disease and lacked the substantial capacity to refrain from killing her children—or at least there's a reasonable possibility that this was so.)
This substantive standard is likewise not a uniform view throughout the country; many other states follow different approaches. According to a Paul Robinson et al. study from 2015, about 1/3 of the states take the same substantive approach as Massachusetts does.
[B.] Please focus in your comment on how you would apply Massachusetts law , not whether you think the law should be changed (either as to the burden and quantum of proof, or as to the substantive definition of when the defendant isn't legally responsible).
Also, please focus on how you think this standard should apply in this case to this person . The question isn't the prevalence of postpartum psychosis as such, or of how often women can be highly distraught and not kill their children. Nor is it whether Clancy's public supporters or detractors are acting badly or opining foolishly. Rather, the question is whether, on the facts of this case, you would think that there's a reasonable doubt about Clancy's sanity (as defined by the Massachusetts law summarized in item A.2 above).
[C.] If you want more details on the Clancy case, here's a summary by Dr. Sally Satel (The Free Press) , whom I know in some measure and whose work I've generally found to be thoughtful and balanced. She ultimately comes down in favor of acquittal, but the factual summary generally appears consistent with what I've heard from other news sources:
On January 24, 2023, Clancy took her children, one by one, into the basement of the family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. "Go to God, baby," she allegedly said as she asphyxiated each of them with exercise bands. She then made cuts on her wrists and neck, and jumped out of a second-story window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed below the waist. She did these things during the hour it took her husband to complete an errand she asked him to run.
The tragedy was the culmination of five months of anguish and help-seeking . Although Clancy said she initially felt well following Callan's birth in May 2022, she saw a psychiatrist in late summer for help with depression, severe insomnia, and feelings of being overwhelmed by simple tasks like dressing or showering.
Over time, she allegedly began having suicidal ideation and experiencing what have been variously described as "intrusive thoughts" and "auditory hallucinations" telling her that she was "damaged" and would "not be the same," and that "the only option is to die." In December 2022, she told her husband and mother that she had thoughts of harming her children and was worried that other people could hear those thoughts.
After Clancy's husband left to pick up food and medication on January 24, 2023, she said that a loud, demanding male voice told her over and over, "This is your last chance. You have to kill the kids so you can kill yourself." She allegedly entered "a dreamlike state" and watched herself act, feeling as if she had "no choice." A hospital chaplain who met with Clancy within weeks of the crime testified that Clancy said the voice "told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe."
From September 2022 to January 2023, Clancy received several formal diagnoses: adjustment disorder and generalized anxiety disorder at the Aster Mental Health clinic, and major depressive disorder at McLean Hospital. A psychiatric nurse practitioner raised the possibility of postpartum depression before the killings, though it was never formally diagnosed, and Clancy's bipolar disorder and PTSD were not fully diagnosed until afterward.
Why so many different diagnoses? And why might postpartum psychosis have been missed until after the killings? Unlike postpartum depression, a relatively common diagnosis that occurs in one out of eight deliveries, postpartum psychosis is rare, occurring just once or twice in every 1,000 deliveries.
Clancy's situation was also not textbook postpartum psychosis. She did not have symptoms for three months after Callan's birth, although, according to the DSM-5 , postpartum psychosis manifests rapidly within the…
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