A Murder Trial in Massachusetts
New York Times · LC · trust 23/100
How the trial of Lindsay Clancy has become a proxy for how people view society’s ills.
Listen · 13:29 min Share full article A close-up of Lindsay Clancy in court on Friday. Credit... Pool photo by Mark Chavous By Shaila Dewan
In almost any other case, it would be an odd declaration of allegiance. But Clancy is not a typical murder suspect. She attempted for months after the birth of her third child to get treatment for what she reported was her increasing postpartum derangement. Then she killed her children, she has admitted, in what she says was a state of psychosis. Closing arguments begin tomorrow. ( Here’s what to know about the trial .)
Should she be treated like an ordinary killer? That question is a Rorschach test for Americans fascinated by this case. Some say Clancy was failed by a system that doesn’t take postpartum mental illness seriously enough. “It should not take tragedy for people to pay attention to mental health,” said Renee Kimball, the organizer of the courthouse demonstration.
Other people are horrified by arguments like that, saying they ignore the facts of this incomprehensible crime. “I don’t look at her and feel sorry for her,” said the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “Three kids are dead!”
Whatever the jury decides, for many people the case has become a proxy for all manner of perceived societal ills .
One perspective on this calamity remains straightforward: Clancy killed her children and must pay the price. That is the view of the prosecution (which has charged her with first-degree murder, a crime with a mandatory life sentence) as well as several pundits. A headline on one conservative site put it this way: “Lindsay Clancy Defenders Are Just as Sick as She Is.”
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