If you think Lindsay Clancy should rot in prison for the rest of her life, you did not watch the trial. You probably also think the case pitted men against women and Republicans against Democrats. Wrong.
The trial was a battle between those who believe the law should take a person’s mental illness into account when determining culpability, and those who don’t.
If you don’t care that Lindsay was ill, the issue for you is black and white: three children are dead and the killer must pay with incarceration for life. For everyone else, the issue is gray. Three children are dead and it isn’t at all clear who should pay.
From the law’s perspective, Lindsay Clancy’s mental condition HAD to be considered by the jury, and unless the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she was sane, she was entitled to verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. (NGI) Period.
Both sides agreed that Lindsay was severely mentally ill. They also agreed that she loved her children. In fact, every witness who knew Lindsay Clancy testified that she was a wonderful mother who, though unwell, loved her children dearly. It’s hard to square loving your children with killing them because, as my friend Joanna put it, “you cannot kill your children if you love them.” But the fact that love and killing do not go well together is exactly how you know that Lindsay was mentally ill. Love and killing DO go together ONLY if the loving person is unwell.
The jury’s vote of 11-1 for NGI is overwhelming proof that it wasn’t even a close case. The one holdout was entitled to his opinion, but it matters – a lot – that 11 other people, men and women, saw things differently.
From the defense perspective, a hung jury is as good as a win because with numbers like that, there is zero chance District Attorney Tim Cruz will re-try Lindsay Clancy. The first trial was a budget buster and 11-1 means he can never win a guilty verdict. Indeed, as I said in an earlier column, it’s obvious that Cruz secretly agrees with the defense that Lindsay deserves an insanity verdict but he’s a politician with a reputation for being a tough guy. He couldn’t afford to look soft on violence against children, so his only option was to try the case and blame the jury for an NGI.
Keeping up appearances, Cruz came out swinging after the jury failed to reach a verdict, but he will agree to a plea deal when the heat dies down. In a few months, Kevin Reddington will announce that Lindsay suffered setbacks, then Cruz will announce that he and Reddington have reached an agreement. Lindsay will be found NGI and spend five years in a locked mental facility before she files her first petition for release. It’s the right result, and if Lindsay is anything like Andrea Yates, who killed her five children in Texas many years ago and was found NGI, she might never ask to be released.
Cruz shouldn’t be criticized if he agrees to an NGI for Lindsay. It doesn’t disrespect the children or diminish their suffering. Everyone on all sides feels deeply for little Cora, Dawson, and Callan – three defenseless children who stood no chance. But we forget that the pain for Lindsay is exponentially worse. We can all move on to the next story. Lindsay can’t. No loving mother could, and she was indisputably a loving mother.
A mother’s love is hard to understand, unless you’ve felt it. Pregnancy and childbirth are not easy. A cantaloupe-sized head emerging from a dime-sized opening is nothing compared to the hours and sometimes days of labor pains. A new word should be invented to describe the pain because excruciating doesn’t come close. But somehow the unbearable suffering is instantly erased by the profound love that arrives with the first cry. It’s this transcendent love that makes it so hard for people to understand why Lindsay did what she did. “Even people with severe mental health problems manage not to kill their children,” they say. True enough. But the rare cases where mothers do kill their children almost always involve severe mental health problems.
Mind you, some parents do hate their children, and the worst ones even give birth for horrendous reasons, like selling their babies for drugs. (This happens more than you think). For those monsters, there should be zero tolerance for the insanity defenses they manufacture just in time for trial. Lindsay is not in this category yet some people see her as evil because it helps “explain” the insanity of what she did. But there is zero evidence that she was ever a bad person, much less an evil one. Her husband and his mother both testified in her favor. Everyone said she loved her children, and feared for their well-being, irrationally as it turns out, which was part of the problem.
Lindsay asked for help from professionals, but it didn’t work. For years she struggled with mental illness and began to feel hopeless. When hopelessness runs its course, it often ends badly. In the context of suicide, hopelessness can look like acceptance at the end. A person might report feeling well – and appear happy and healthy – on the very day that they take their own life. This makes no sense to most of us but experts say it makes perfect sense. The person feels well because they have accepted what is about to happen. In some cases, homicide is suicide turned outward. A person can appear well because the worrying is over. Lindsay had an unusually good day with the kids only hours before she killed them.
Believing that a mother could at once love and kill her children is terrifying, so we try to distance ourselves because it feels better. But that distancing can make it harder to understand why Lindsay did what she did. Some people don’t care about the why; they want Lindsay in prison regardless of her mental health. But that leaves us with no resolution and no peace, and it will not help other children in similar circumstances. To the contrary, pounding the table for guilt will cause more tragedies because fewer mothers will ask for help out of fear they will be seen as evil.
Lindsay is not evil and she will soon get her NGI plea deal because it’s the right thing to do. Between now and then, how about we stay focused on defenseless children by speaking up with an equally loud voice the next time a man is charged with annihilating his family. Five children a day die from abuse in this country; that’s one every five hours – and most of the killers are men with no mental health issues.
Remember that the next time a child shows up dead. If you want Lindsay Clancy in prison because your heart breaks for her children, then speak up for all the other dead children, or shut up.
Plymouth DA Tim Cruz speaks Friday after a mistrial was declared in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial. (Amanda Sabga/Boston Herald)