A trial that has split the country
When Lindsay Clancy appeared in a Plymouth, Massachusetts courtroom on Thursday, she faced murder charges for the deaths of her three young children, ages 5, 3, and 8 months. The trial has become a focal point for a deeply divided American public, resurrecting long-simmering questions about how society treats mothers who kill their children.
Outside the courthouse, Tasha Kenney, a teacher who lives 90 minutes away, joined hundreds of other women dressed in pink to show support for Clancy. Kenney said she woke at 4 a.m. to make the drive because she had suffered severe postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter a decade ago. She believes the Clancy children could have been saved if warning signs had been heeded.
The scene captured the broader national response. For many, the case is evidence that the United States neglects new mothers and fails to properly care for maternal mental health. Others are outraged that the methodical killing of three innocents could be treated as anything other than murder. They point to the nearly $1 million donated to a fund for Clancy's parents as evidence of what they call "cultural rot."
Prosecutors: A calculated act
The district attorney's office, led by Timothy Cruz, has taken the position that Clancy's actions were "selfish" and "calculated." In her opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham described Clancy as "extremely controlling, meticulous, and manipulative." Jonathan Hatami, a child abuse prosecutor in Los Angeles County, said in an interview that he was disturbed that people seemed more worried about Clancy than the children she has admitted to killing.
"We can't be killing children and then say, 'Oh, I'm happy now that mental health is being discussed,'" Hatami said.
A history of maternal mental illness
Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse, repeatedly sought psychiatric help after giving birth to her third child, according to reports. Her case has drawn comparisons to Andrea Yates, the Texas nurse who drowned her five children in a bathtub 25 years ago. Yates' defense centered on profound psychosis; her lawyer, George Parnham, said she wanted to be executed because she believed the devil lived within her. The first jury found Yates guilty, but a second jury acquitted her by reason of insanity. Yates, now 62, remains at the Kerrville State Hospital.
Michelle Oberman, a legal scholar who has studied mothers who kill, said of the Clancy case: "We can't really look away. It is just stunning and epic, in the magnitude of loss and the unthinkability of the crime."
Clancy's co-worker Margaret Hamp testified that when she explained the Yates case to Clancy, Clancy cried and said, "How could a mother hurt her children?" Over a decade ago, when Clancy joined the maternity ward staff at Massachusetts General Hospital, she had never heard of the Yates drownings.
The legal landscape
Some three dozen countries offer juries an option between murder and insanity for postpartum crimes, with significantly lower penalties for mothers who kill infants. Only one such law has passed in the United States, in Illinois in 2018.
In most jurisdictions, juries are not informed of the consequences of an insanity acquittal. Massachusetts is unusual in that juries are likely to be told that an insanity finding would mean indefinite commitment to a mental hospital, according to defense lawyer Peter Elikann. A 2012 study of 34 cases in which a woman was charged with killing her baby found that insanity defenses succeeded in almost half.
A family torn apart
Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's husband, has divorced her but also defended her publicly. He is suing the clinicians who treated her, alleging they failed to recognize the severity of her condition.
The pundit war
The case has become a battleground for commentators. Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative Christian commentator, listed 13 medications Clancy had been prescribed in the months before the killing and said: "This is what happens when you only listen to your doctor." Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked, "Who are these soft people?" and added, "Three kids are dead!"
The Daily Wire, a right-wing website, blamed excess commentary on the case on liberals and used Clancy's name in at least a dozen headlines. The pundit ecosystem has drawn true-crime aficionados, domestic violence survivors, and even forensic astrology practitioners; one alternate theory of the crime was illustrated using Bratz dolls and a shoe box.
The human cost
Renee Kimball, an organizer of the courthouse demonstration, said she still deals with the aftereffects of her own postpartum anxiety and depression. For her, and for the hundreds who traveled to Plymouth, the case is not abstract.
"We can't really look away," Oberman said. The trial continues.