Murder and Child. - by Stargirl.

The easiest question in the Lindsay Clancy case is whether she killed her children. The difficult question is whether the law should punish her for doing so. Three children are dead. Their mother caused their deaths. Nothing about postpartum psychosis, mental illness, or the insanity defence changes the horror of that fact. But criminal law asks a question that grief does not always want to hear: was she criminally responsible for what she did? That distinction matters. We have our own vocabulary for mental illness in new mothers . In Yoruba, àbísínwín is a word used to describe an ailing mother. Most times, her children are taken away from her.We need to really ask if it's only Lindsay clancy who is at fault here too.Mental illness and legal insanity are not the same thing. A person can be mentally ill and remain criminally responsible. A person can have a psychiatric diagnosis and still understand that what they are doing is wrong. The existence of a mental illness does not hand someone an automatic ticket out of criminal responsibility. But the reverse is also true. We cannot say that because a crime is horrifying, the person who committed it must necessarily have been criminally responsible. That is where the insanity defence comes in. Under Massachusetts law, the question is whether a mental disease or defect substantially deprived the accused of the capacity to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct, or to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law. Where criminal responsibility is properly placed in issue, the Commonwealth must prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a high threshold, and it should be. Because criminal law is not simply about identifying who performed an act. It is also concerned with whether the person possessed the mental capacity necessary to be held responsible for that act. This is the strongest case for the insanity defence. If a severe mental disorder genuinely destroys the capacities upon which criminal responsibility depends, punishment becomes a more complicated question. It would be strange for the law to say, on one hand, that responsibility requires a certain level of mental capacity, and on the other, to punish a person as though that capacity unquestionably existed. But there is an equally important argument against making insanity too easy to establish. Mental illness is not a magic word. If every diagnosis became an automatic defence, the distinction between being mentally ill and being legally insane would collapse. Depression, psychosis, trauma, or any other diagnosis cannot by themselves answer the legal question. The court has to ask what that condition actually did to the accused's mind at the time of the offence. Could she understand the wrongfulness of what she was doing? Could she conform her conduct to the requirements of the law? Was her capacity substantially impaired? Those questions require evidence, not simply a diagnosis. And this is where I think we often get uncomfortable. When a crime is terrible enough, we want the law to be simple. We want to believe that anyone capable of doing something so horrifying must have known exactly what they were doing. But horror is not a legal test. The fact that the victims were three innocent children does not create a different insanity standard. The fact that their killer was their mother does not create one either. The law cannot quietly move the goalposts because the facts are painful. So where do I stand? I do not believe severe mental illness should automatically remove criminal responsibility. I also do not believe the brutality of an offence should automatically establish it. Both positions are too easy. The insanity defence should succeed only where the evidence satisfies the legal threshold. If the evidence shows that Clancy retained the substantial capacity required for criminal responsibility, then mental illness alone should not shield her from criminal punishment. But if the evidence establishes that a severe mental disease deprived her of that capacity, the law must be prepared to recognise that too. That is not excusing murder. It is recognising that criminal responsibility is not simply about what the body did. It is also about what the law can fairly attribute to the mind that acted. And a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity does not necessarily mean that a person simply walks out of court and goes home. The legal system can provide for psychiatric evaluation, treatment and confinement. So the choice is not always “prison or freedom”. Sometimes the law reaches a different conclusion about what kind of accountability is appropriate because it has reached a different conclusion about the person's mental capacity. But there is another part of this conversation that should not get lost behind the legal arguments. Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are real. They deserve more than sympathy after tragedy. They deserve awareness before tragedy. We are very good at asking whether the baby has eaten, whether the baby is sleeping, whether the baby is gaining weight. We should remember to ask whether the mother is sleeping too. We should know the warning signs. We should make it easier for mothers to ask for help without being made to feel weak, ungrateful or incapable of motherhood. Families should be able to recognise when ordinary exhaustion has become something more serious, and professional help should not be the last resort after everything has already fallen apart. Because mental health awareness is not about excusing harmful conduct. It is also about preventing the circumstances in which harmful conduct can happen at all. The courtroom has its job. It must determine whether the legal requirements for criminal responsibility have been satisfied. The rest of us have another job. We should stop waiting for tragedy before we take mental illness seriously. The law must ask whether a person was legally responsible for what she did. But outside the courtroom, perhaps the question we should be asking much earlier is simpler: Who is checking on the person who is struggling before everyone is left asking what went wrong?

Other insights from Stargirl.

Contributor Points

Points-to-Coupons

Referral Earning