00:00:09.000The question is whether she was mentally ill to the extent required by law to fulfill the insanity defense.
00:00:14.000Today, we're going to go through the entire case.
00:00:16.000So you know what the hell you're talking about when you talk about this case, because the ridiculous hot takes that you are seeing online from legitimately all sides, they could power a small city.
00:00:26.000Now, as I've been saying, this case is not about you.
00:00:30.000It is not about your dyspepsia at having to deal with annoying toddlers.
00:00:33.000It is not even about the awfulness of postpartum depression.
00:00:36.000It is not about selfish women or abortion or the fall of Western civilization.
00:00:42.000And you should know the fact pattern because if we would like to come to a consensus as Americans, as opposed to just beating each other with pool noodles, the facts ought to matter at least a little bit.
00:00:59.000And one of my great irritations with all of the coverage surrounding Lindsey Clancy's case is that so little of it focuses in on the actual facts of the case.
00:01:07.000And this sort of stuff drives me crazy.
00:01:08.000The same thing happened in a sort of different way with George Floyd.
00:01:12.000The entire George Floyd case, the Derek Chauvin prosecution, none of it was predicated on the facts of the case.
00:01:17.000It was all based on narratives drawn from the case that had very little to do with the actual case.
00:01:22.000So you'll recall that in that particular case, there were narratives that were drawn about the nature of America's criminal justice system being biased against.
00:01:31.000There are all sorts of takes about how America's systemic racism had led to the death of George Floyd.
00:01:36.000And then you looked at the facts of the case and it didn't look like Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.
00:01:41.000Didn't even look like he manslaughtered George Floyd.
00:01:44.000There's not even an accusation of racism in that case.
00:01:46.000And so if you were just looking at that case, the fact pattern of that case, and then you were looking at Americans going after each other and then riots to the tune of $2 billion over that case, you would say this is nuts.
00:01:57.000And we are consistently doing this now in America.
00:02:00.000We are taking outstanding circumstances.
00:02:03.000It's circumstances that are few and far between, incredibly rare with particular fact patterns.
00:02:08.000And then we are using them as ways to project our own dyspepsia with America and with our fellow Americans onto those cases.
00:02:15.000And it's inappropriate and it's wrong.
00:02:17.000Each one of these criminal cases deserves actual attention.
00:02:21.000Instead of us just jumping to the conclusions that we are looking for based on our priors, we should be looking at the fact pattern.
00:02:33.000The reason I'm saying this is because when you try to project Onto extraordinarily uncommon circumstances.
00:02:39.000Your particular life, circumstance, your point of view, America more broadly, the patriarchy, your experiences with your kids, you're doing it wrong.
00:02:47.000Felicide is very, very rare in the United States.
00:02:51.000And multiple felicide by mom is vanishingly rare in the United States.
00:02:56.000There are about 3.6 million births per year in the United States.
00:02:59.000There are somewhere between 450 and 500 cases of felicide every year in the United States, which accounts for about 2.5% of all US homicides annually.
00:03:07.000Most of them are by men, most of them are single homicides.
00:03:11.000There are about 15 to 20 cases of multiple filicide, meaning multiple kids killed by a mom in the United States each year.
00:03:18.000Because they are so rare, that is why we know the names of people like Andrea Yates or Lindsey Clancy.
00:03:23.000Because it is not, in fact, a commonplace occurrence for a mom to kill multiple children.
00:03:30.000The reason I'm pointing this out again is because if you are taking away from Lindsey Clancy's cases that she is just like you, you are doing it wrong.
00:03:36.000Or if you are taking away from Lindsey Clancy's case that women be Cray generally, you are doing it wrong.
00:03:42.000And there are good studies that have been done on filicide and its connection to postpartum psychosis and other forms of mental illness.
00:03:49.000There was one from 2007 in the World Journal of Psychiatry.
00:03:58.000It says, quote, a lesser threshold for hospitalization should be considered for mentally ill mothers of young children due to the possibility of multiple deaths from a filicide suicide.
00:04:08.000Factors which potentially merit psychiatric hospitalization include maternal fears of harming their child.
00:04:13.000Delusions of their child's suffering, improbable concerns about their child's health, and hostility toward a despised partner's favorite child.
00:04:19.000Psychotic mothers who fear that their children may suffer a fate worse than death due to persecutory delusions should either be hospitalized or separated from their children.
00:04:28.000These mothers may be reluctant to share their delusional ideals.
00:04:32.000Because so much of that seems to describe the fact pattern that we're actually looking at.
00:04:37.000As we'll discuss, Lindsey Clancy, either according to the prosecution, believed she should kill her kids.
00:04:43.000Because her kids were an obstacle to her killing herself, or according to the defense, she did so because a voice told her that she needed to kill her kids.
00:04:52.000Either way, one of the things that is interesting and fascinating about this case and the practice of psychiatry generally is extraordinarily imprecise.
00:05:01.000You can have a series of symptoms, and that series of symptoms can be put into a basket of categories.
00:05:08.000There are multiple diagnoses that can be made of any basket of symptoms, particularly when you're talking about complications arising from drug interactions.
00:05:19.000As I say, when it comes to psychiatry, It is essentially a more sophisticated version of the shaman who's using various berries to treat various symptoms.
00:05:45.000And that is complicated by the fact that, unlike other health conditions, psychiatric conditions, because so many of them are internal, You can't see inside somebody's brain the way that you can just x ray a leg.
00:05:57.000That means that very often you don't even know the internal psychiatric symptoms of a person who is under psychiatric care.
00:06:13.000The defense is going to argue that actually Lindsey Clancy was not even telling her psychiatrist everything, which again is not rare.
00:06:21.000It is, in fact, quite common in normal psychiatry, let alone postpartum.
00:06:27.000Psychosis or heavy drug interactions or suicidality.
00:06:31.000People are not always honest with their psychiatrists.
00:06:34.000Okay, so in the Lindsey Clancy case, the charges that were put before the jury were put before the jury by Judge William Sullivan, and here is what he explained The Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any mental disease or defect that may have existed did not deprive the defendant of her ability to behave as the law requires, that is, to obey the law.
00:07:02.000Okay, so under Massachusetts law, basically, there are a few requirements in order to determine whether the insanity defense applies.
00:07:09.000One, she had to understand the nature of what she was doing.
00:07:11.000For the insanity defense to fail, she had to know what she was doing.
00:07:14.000Two, she had to appreciate that what she was doing was wrong.
00:07:18.000You have to know that murder is wrong.
00:07:20.000You can't think that murdering somebody is right at the time.
00:07:23.000Andor she has to be capable of conforming her conduct to the requirements of law.
00:07:28.000Now, there are a series of potential verdicts that we'll get to in a moment.
00:07:32.000There are nine women and three men on the jury.
00:07:51.000Right now, she faces three counts of first degree murder.
00:07:54.000First degree murder in Massachusetts means that Clancy intentionally killed her children with deliberate premeditation or under a prosecution's other theory with extreme atrocity.
00:08:22.000Mentally ill people, like truly mentally ill people, cannot have the requisite amount of intent.
00:08:27.000They can't have the so-called mens rea.
00:08:28.000They can't have the mindset necessary to actually be able to commit a crime.
00:08:32.000Because again, if you are mentally ill to the extent that you can't determine right from wrong, And that you're not capable of conforming your conduct to the requirements of law or understand the nature of what you're doing, that's the insanity defense.
00:08:43.000So, if she's found guilty of first degree murder, mandatory sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole.
00:08:50.000If she's found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, she won't face prison time, but she's not going to walk away.
00:08:56.000I said this on the show last week, and people are like, well, you know, she theoretically could.
00:09:14.000She's still in a mental facility in 2026.
00:09:18.000So, the judge is now offering sort of a Chinese menu of possible charge options.
00:09:23.000I don't like when judges do this, by the way.
00:09:25.000I think it probably ought to be legally barred.
00:09:27.000If a judge is offering several duplicative charges in the attempt to get somebody to say yes to a conviction and then we'll figure out the charge later, I just think that's bad prosecutorial practice.
00:09:39.000But a couple of the other charge options that were added at the 11th hour include second degree murder, in which the jury would have to find that Lindsey Clancy intentionally killed her children, but without premeditation.
00:10:29.000You know, the one who actually took responsibility.
00:10:31.000There's plenty of discussion about artificial intelligence changing the job market, but businesses still need people with good judgment, initiative, and an interest in doing the job well.
00:10:42.000Candidates can go the extra step and tell you in their own words why they're interested in your position.
00:10:46.000And Zip Recruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first so you meet the right people faster.
00:10:52.000Their powerful matching technology helps you find qualified candidates quickly so you can spend less time sorting through applications And more time running your business.
00:10:59.000Find somebody who takes ownership of the problem and actually calls back.
00:11:03.000Save time and meet great candidates sooner with Zip Recruiter.
00:11:06.000Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter will get a quality candidate within the very first day.
00:11:10.000Try it for free at ziprecruiter.comslash daily wire.
00:11:37.000And these are very, very small children.
00:11:40.000Now, friends, relatives, coworkers, teachers, Anani, and Patrick all described Lindsey Clancy before the psychiatric decline as attentive and organized and loving and active and very, very involved with the kids.
00:11:53.000After the birth of her last child, Callan, apparently she started to go into significant mental decline.
00:11:59.000In September 2022, She had massive increases in anxiety as her return to nursing approached.
00:12:06.000She searched for psychiatric help and she was diagnosed with generalized anxiety.
00:12:11.000September 15th, her psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Tufts, prescribed sertraline.
00:12:18.000The defense said that Clancy's mood and agitation worsened with antidepressants.
00:12:22.000The Commonwealth emphasized contemporaneous notes did not document psychosis or mania.
00:12:27.000Now, again, as we'll discuss, not every symptom gets described to psychiatrists.
00:12:32.000This is part of the problem with insanity defense claims, right?
00:12:39.000And also, high anxiety can manifest in things that look like psychosis but aren't quite psychosis and aren't quite mania.
00:12:46.000In October, she started telehealth psychiatric treatment.
00:12:50.000Her notes and messages started reflecting anxiety, sleep trouble, guilt, and feeling disconnected.
00:12:55.000Late October, she had an adverse reaction to an SSRI.
00:12:59.000They then added lorazepam, hydroxazine, and busbarone were also used.
00:13:03.000Now, again, as I said, very often in psychiatry, what will happen is that somebody is put on a medication, they have an adverse reaction to the medication, a secondary symptom arises.
00:13:11.000And now, in order to deal with that secondary symptom, you put a new drug on the premises, right?
00:13:20.000In October 25th, she wrote about resentment that her older children prevented her from experiencing Callan as though he were her first baby, followed by a wish to feel love and connection.
00:13:28.000November 16th, she went to South Shore Hospital's emergency department for insomnia and she was prescribed trazodone.
00:13:36.000And then a little bit later, she connected with a psychiatric nurse practitioner named Julie Paul.
00:13:40.000The intake documented severe anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
00:13:44.000They added on fluoxetine, trazodone, mertazapine, hydroxazine, busbarone, lorazepam, quitiapine.
00:14:17.000On December 4th, she contacted a suicide hotline.
00:14:21.000On December 6th, Patrick expressed concern she was over medicated.
00:14:25.000For the next couple of weeks, family texts described sleep problems, fear, hopelessness, medication reactions, and repeated attempts to obtain care.
00:14:32.000Her Edinburgh postnatal depression scale was reported as 23 and later 17.
00:14:36.000Those are both clinically significant.
00:14:38.000Again, the way that you typically diagnose psychiatric conditions is an actual checklist.
00:14:42.000And if you hit a certain number on the checklist, then you're considered to have the condition.
00:14:45.000As I say, psychiatry is very, very rudimentary.
00:14:49.000I keep saying that because it's important for people to understand it.
00:14:51.000People think that treating the brain is like treating other parts of the body.
00:14:58.000In late December, Patrick later told investigators she had disclosed suicidal thoughts and thoughts of harming the kids.
00:15:04.000Several treating clinicians testified she denied homicidal intent or psychosis to them.
00:15:08.000So, again, this goes to people don't tell their psychiatrists the truth all the time, which informs some of the testimony, as we'll see in just a second.
00:15:17.000December 30th, she went to Massachusetts General Hospital's emergency department and then entered McLean Hospital voluntarily.
00:15:23.000From January 1st to 5th, she was on voluntary psychiatric hospitalization there.
00:15:30.000Dr. Aliyah Goodhart testified that Clancy was depressed and anxious, had reported suicidal thinking, and wanted help.
00:15:36.000She did not show psychosis or mania during the admission, denied a current plan, identified the children's reasons to live, and sought discharge.
00:15:42.000And she was prescribed yet more trazodone and lorazepam.
00:15:45.000She had follow up with Dr. Tufts January 6th.
00:15:49.000She was taking a huge cocktail of drugs January 9th through 16th.
00:15:55.000Her device history, her search history showed searches concerning drug interactions, sleep deprivation, psychosis symptoms, schizophrenia, hallucinations, intrusive thoughts, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide.
00:16:09.000The prosecutors would later argue that she was basically searching up rationales that she could later use to defend against her actions.
00:16:16.000But the defense would argue she was searching that because she was suffering from it.
00:16:19.000A January 20th query asked Can you treat a sociopath?
00:16:23.000The prosecution argued again that all of this showed self monitoring and concealing planning.
00:16:28.000And the defense said, well, the reason that you are searching up hallucinations is because you're having them.
00:16:33.000The defense also elicited records of searches about carotid artery, cutting the throat, and disabling airbags.
00:16:40.000January 24th was the day of the murders, 2023.
00:16:43.000Cora, the oldest, attended a routine pediatric appointment.
00:16:46.000The family played in the snow and built a snowman.
00:16:48.0004 13 p.m., Apple Max Activity examined the route from the home to 3V, that's a Kingston restaurant.
00:16:54.000The prosecution characterized this as calculating how long Patrick would be away.
00:16:58.000The defense noted route searches are routine when ordering food.
00:17:01.000At about 5 15 p.m., Patrick testified he left first for CVS and then for 3V to pick up the food.
00:17:06.000Before leaving, he saw Dawson eating and he said Clancy sounded and acted normal.
00:17:11.000At 5 23 p.m., sorry, at 5 32 p.m., CVS surveillance showed Patrick entering the store.
00:17:16.000At 5 33, there's an incoming call from Patrick to her, followed by a 14 second outgoing callback from Clancy while the phone remained locked.
00:17:26.000Apparently, she sounded normal, according to Patrick, but he recalled an impression she might be in the middle of something.
00:18:15.000The children's toxicology was negative for sedation or poisoning substances.
00:18:18.000There was no evidence they'd been drugged.
00:18:20.000And she was charged February 7th, 2023, with three counts each of first degree murder, strangulation, or suffering, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
00:18:46.000Very often, the person at issue doesn't testify because they don't want to be subjected to cross examination.
00:18:52.000And the jury was told you're not allowed to draw adverse inference from her decision not to testify.
00:18:57.000Again, her affect in the courtroom was a major issue because people were saying that she looked cold or disconnected.
00:19:02.000Again, it is unclear to me at this point.
00:19:04.000I assume she's still on a significant cocktail of drugs at this point.
00:19:10.000Now, we're going to go through the prosecution case.
00:19:13.000So, the prosecution basically argues here that Lindsey Clancy was profoundly depressed, but she was not psychotic.
00:19:19.000They argued that she knew exactly what she was doing, that she understood that it was wrong, and that she deliberately executed a plan to kill her kids and then commit suicide.
00:19:29.000The prosecution says that she was desperately unhappy and suicidal, and that she had come to view her children as an obstacle to killing herself.
00:19:37.000So, in that theory, Killing the kids was part of a rational plan, right?
00:19:43.000Basically, if I kill the kids, then I can kill myself, which theoretically is different from a psychotic delusion.
00:19:49.000Voices made me think that killing the kids was necessary or morally right.
00:19:55.000So they would need to establish that whatever her psychiatric problems, they did not deprive her of criminal responsibility.
00:20:14.000How many people actually know everything they're allowed to do with that money?
00:20:17.000Here's an option that surprises people.
00:20:19.000Certain physical gold and silver can be held inside a self directed IRA.
00:20:22.000Depending on the retirement account you have, qualified IRA or 401k assets may be eligible to roll into a self directed precious metals IRA through a properly executed rollover without triggering current taxes or early withdrawal penalties.
00:20:35.000You don't have to choose gold, but you should at least know that the choice is there, especially given the fact that the stuff you're holding in cash, well, the government, very rarely the government makes the dollar more valuable.
00:20:44.000This is where Golden Crest Metals can help.
00:20:46.000They will walk you through the process from establishing the self directed accounts and coordinating the rollover to choosing eligible metals and arranging secure storage.
00:20:53.000Golden Crest is a boutique precious metals firm.
00:20:55.000Transparent pricing, liquid products, straightforward service, no high pressure call center experience.
00:20:59.000And right now, my listeners can get a free investor kit, a free portfolio review with no obligation, up to 25 grand in free silver on qualifying purchases.
00:23:53.000Now, again, as we'll talk about, and the reason I keep putting focus on this is because I think it is true.
00:24:00.000Just because a psychiatrist testifies that a person who is.
00:24:04.000Psychotic is not fully psychotic or is not expressing.
00:24:08.000Many people who have suicidal ideation will not tell their psychiatrist they are suicidally ideated.
00:24:13.000Now, again, maybe she did, or maybe she was not suicidally ideated, and actually, this whole thing was a plot, right?
00:24:19.000That is the question of fact that is being presented.
00:24:21.000So, again, the prosecution's case is that she was not psychotic, that she was depressed but not psychotic, that she was not in the throes of a manic episode.
00:24:29.000Sometimes a manic episode in bipolar one can manifest as hallucinations and hearing of voices, for example.
00:24:37.000So, the prosecution also called a Dr. Gregory Sathoff, who's a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI for counterterrorism, who says that she did this quickly and methodically.
00:24:48.000Did the defendant tell you that the voice told her where to kill the children? No.
00:24:55.000Did the voice tell her how to kill the children? No.
00:24:58.000Did the voice tell her what to use to kill the children? No.
00:25:03.000Did the voice tell her in what order to kill the children? No.
00:25:08.000Did the voice tell her where to try to kill herself? No.
00:25:12.000Did the voice tell her in what way to kill herself? No.
00:25:18.000The fact that the voice, according to the defendant, the voice didn't tell her any of those things, but instead just said, Kill the kids so you can kill yourself.
00:25:27.000Is that significant in your evaluation in any way?
00:25:33.000Well, in the small amount of time that Miss Clancy had in the home without her husband, it was important in order to carry this out, as well as her suicide, to do this quickly, methodically, and the like.
00:25:55.000And so basically, the case that he's making is that she didn't hear a voice, the voice is made up.
00:25:59.000She knew that she had to act quickly in order to dispose of the children, murder the kids before her husband got home.
00:26:06.000The prosecution also called a forensic psychologist named Dr. Kirk Heilbrunn.
00:26:10.000He said that she had bipolar two, not bipolar one, with manic episodes.
00:26:14.000And so, again, the difference between bipolar one and bipolar two is that bipolar one requires one full manic episode.
00:26:20.000A manic episode is elevated, irritable, energized mood, can manifest with hallucinations, and usually lasts at least a week.
00:26:28.000So, you're talking like a major psychiatric episode.
00:26:34.000A hypomanic episode is a milder form of mania that generally doesn't impede your functioning.
00:26:39.000So the idea would be that if she had never been diagnosed with bipolar one, it would have been surprising for her to hear a hallucination.
00:26:45.000Now, there are cases in which bipolar two has manifested with hallucinations, but this is Dr. Heilbronn.
00:26:52.000I ended up with a diagnosis, making a diagnosis of bipolar two disorder, which is a slightly less, not slightly, it's a less severe form of bipolar disorder.
00:27:07.000And doctor, why did you diagnose with bipolar 2 and not bipolar?
00:27:13.000Because bipolar, as I said, is a more severe kind of diagnosis.
00:28:09.000One of the things that she said when asked about what happened is that in the course of strangling each child, she said, Go to God, baby, go to God.
00:28:25.000And that was part of her expectation that she and the children would be together in heaven with God.
00:28:34.000One doctor, Alvra Mack, also testified for the prosecution.
00:28:39.000That she retained capacity required for having criminal responsibility, which of course is the entire question, is whether she had the mental capacity to know what she was doing was wrong and knew what she was doing as she was doing it.
00:28:51.000The various mental status examinations done by the doctors at the Brigham generally showed normal mental status.
00:28:59.000One particular portion of the record reviews their review of whether or not she had the ability to make a decision, in that case, a change to her health care proxy.
00:29:13.000And so the physicians there were able to examine her closely in order to understand that she did have decision making capacity.
00:29:23.000And that's an example of something you reviewed in the record that was close in time to the incident itself, correct?
00:29:46.000Talking about the bodies of the children.
00:29:50.000She killed them and she left them there on the floor with the bands around their necks.
00:29:56.000She didn't bring them up to their beds and put them with their favorite stuffed animal and cover them up gently and lovingly, leaving them peacefully there.
00:30:23.000And so Sprague's case was that there was a rational order to the killing of the kids, and that because she demonstrated planning capacity, this means she wasn't mentally ill at the time.
00:30:31.000The defense would argue, obviously, that planning capacity does not mean that you're not mentally ill when you're in the throes of doing stuff.
00:30:37.000This, by the way, that latter part is actually true.
00:30:40.000There are people who are mentally ill who have the capacity to plan action.
00:30:43.000The question is whether they know the difference between right and wrong when they're doing it.
00:30:46.000Again, I keep coming back to the legal standard because that's the issue of the case.
00:30:50.000Here was the assistant DA Jennifer Sprague on the rational order of killing of the children.
00:30:56.000You know it was deliberate premeditation because of the way she killed them and the way they died.
00:31:04.000And the order also shows a rationality, the order she killed them in.
00:31:25.000She didn't have time to try to find a child who ran off and hid.
00:31:29.000So, taking Dawson first and moving him to a separate room, having Horace stay with Callan and having Dawson go in another room, that's rational.
00:33:26.000And they were doing the best they could with her level of cooperation and compliance with the plan.
00:33:34.000Okay, so that is the prosecution's case.
00:33:36.000The defense, by contrast, argues that Lindsey Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis.
00:33:41.000And that was actually superimposed on bipolar depressive illnesses and exacerbated by bad psychiatric treatment and mixed medication.
00:33:50.000And they presented a lot of medical evidence talking about everything from suicidal thoughts to severe insomnia to medication problems to psychiatric treatment and ultimately psychotic symptoms.
00:34:01.000So the defense called a bunch of witnesses.
00:34:03.000Those witnesses included Lindsay's mom, who read a text from Lindsay Clancy asking for help about three months before the murder of her children.
00:34:12.000If this is a copy of the text that you're referring to.
00:34:27.000I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don't know how I'm going to get through the day.
00:34:33.000I started taking the medicine my doctor prescribed for anxiety, and I think it's made things worse.
00:34:40.000It's just really scary, and I don't want to be alone.
00:34:45.000He says three months before the killing.
00:34:48.000Dr. Philip Resnick is one of the doctors who was called to testify, and he says that Clancy was psychotic on that day.
00:34:57.000Ms. Clancy's case, she had not only a command hallucination on the day that she killed her children, she had what is known as a delusion of influence.
00:35:11.000That is, not only did she hear a command, But she felt that her body was taken over by an external force where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body.
00:35:28.000It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.
00:35:35.000Another defense witness, Dr. Donald Condi, clinical and forensic psychiatrist, explained that it's also possible that she was lying to her own care providers about her symptoms because she wanted to be with the kids, and she knew that if she testified to her psychiatrist about what was happening, that.
00:35:50.000The kids might be removed from her or she might be involuntarily committed.
00:35:55.000Would you agree that there are reasons that a woman would not tell the doctor or minimize their symptoms out of fear?
00:36:05.000Well, in the records it's stated that Ms. Clancy reported she was worried that her children would be taken away from her, perhaps by the Department of Children and Families, if she reported very severe symptoms.
00:36:21.000The other thing is, as a health care professional, boards of registration sometimes take a dim view of people who have been in treatment for certain psychiatric illnesses.
00:36:35.000And so she might have been concerned about her nursing license, but that's speculation.
00:36:42.000So there are other reasons why a person may be concerned about telling healthcare providers, mandated reporters, that they're hearing voices, correct?
00:37:53.000She said something as I think and I muse and I try real hard to tell you what my opinion is that this woman was acting in her right and right when these children were killed.
00:38:20.000This case is an open question of fact.
00:38:24.000When people show up and they protest outside the courtroom and they project their own feelings onto a case that is horrifically terrible, a tragedy in every element, an act perhaps of the gravest evil, when you project your own issues onto that, you're doing something wrong.
00:38:47.000They're bad for the country and they're also just bad thinking.
00:38:51.000Ricky Schlott spoke with some Clancy supporters outside the courtroom for the New York Post and she described what she saw.
00:39:01.000As much as we might want tangible symbols or stories that reflect our critiques of society, sometimes things are just not that clear.
00:39:11.000And while, yes, I think that some of what the supporters were saying were callous, I think it was also the result of a lot of just.
00:39:19.000Genuine suffering that brought them here.
00:39:21.000And in some ways, one woman told me that this was therapy for her as she sat beside the ashes of her own child who took his life and she blames a failure of the mental health system.
00:39:34.000And, you know, I think that's probably the best snapshot that I can give of how people are doing and why people are here in the first place.
00:39:44.000Now, again, I don't think people should be there in the first place.
00:39:47.000I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about.
00:39:49.000About women's health, lots of reasons to be concerned about psychiatry.
00:39:53.000But turning this into a political football is, to me, an act of patent looniness.
00:40:27.000Such a marvelous, sweet, Innocent person, she's just amazing and so strong and just trying so hard to get up from.
00:40:38.000She's just been beat down for three and a half years and she feels that she's had a fair trial with the judge and the jury's been very attentive and all we can do is hope for the best.
00:40:46.000You may not have used the description.
00:40:48.000Do you want to say, has she said anything about women raising postpartum, psychosis?
00:40:53.000She's very concerned, especially as a labor and delivery nurse.
00:40:56.000She's very concerned about women's rights, the fact that women are.
00:41:04.000I think it's readily apparent that DSM is a joke.
00:41:07.000I couldn't get into the social implications in the trial, understandably, but if the United States would take a lesson from Europe, Belgium, England, France, Peru, a lot of these countries, they take care of their women that have psychosis, keep them with their babies, they don't rip the babies away from them and put the women in jail.
00:41:30.000I mean, I'm sorry, this is not a moment for political activism when your client is on trial for a triple homicide against her own children.
00:41:44.000Apparently they asked to see two bags of pills that were entered into evidence along with the knife that Clancy used in her suicide attempt.
00:41:51.000I'm not sure exactly what they think they're going to find there.
00:41:54.000Maybe the idea is that she was over medicated.
00:42:14.000Because again, the behavior here conforms with the mental illness theory of the case.
00:42:20.000Were this a preponderance of the evidence case, meaning like civil standard, preponderance of the evidence just means a majority of the evidence, then I might be inclined to convict.
00:42:28.000Were I on the jury, I would be inclined to find for the defense on the basis of the insanity defense.
00:42:41.000Lindsey Clancy ended up involuntarily committed for literally the rest of her life, which is what happened to Andrea Yates.
00:42:47.000But that is just me following the facts.
00:42:49.000And I can see others who follow the facts differently.
00:42:51.000My friend Ali Beth Stuckey, for example, she followed the facts and found the opposite conclusion.
00:42:56.000This is one of the reasons why I'm sort of perturbed by the radical polarization and opinion over this case.
00:43:03.000The fact pattern just is not clear, the fact pattern is complex, the burden of proof on the prosecution is high.
00:43:11.000And so, I think if everybody had a little bit more grace for one another while looking at the actual fact patterns, it would be a lot easier to come to the proper conclusions from this case.
00:43:20.000And the proper conclusion from this case is that horrible tragedies happen.
00:43:24.000Psychiatric care in general is an extraordinarily blunt instrument.
00:43:29.000And that sometimes acts of horror and acts of evil don't have the marks of clear justice that we would like to see in life.