The Grey Area - by Maq

‎I have seen psychosis up close.‎One year in university, a friend of mine went through a psychotic episode and set her room on fire.‎This was one of the kindest, most selfless people I had ever met.‎There was so much smoke, and yet she was standing right outside the room. I thought she was crying. I thought maybe she and her roommate were in shock.‎So I walked towards her to pull her away from the smoke.‎She turned around.‎And there was a knife in her hand.‎Her roommate had actually been trying to get water to douse the fire, and my friend was holding the knife up to stop her. Now she was holding it up to me.‎That was one of the scariest moments of my life.‎Eventually, everyone had to deal with the aftermath. It was a few weeks before exams, but now people had lost belongings they needed. A final-year student lost her laptop and school documents. A hostel room had been destroyed. People were displaced. There were financial and psychological consequences.‎When I think about that incident now, I don't think, “What a horrible person.”‎I think, “I wonder how she's doing now.”‎Because I knew the person she was.‎But I also saw what she was capable of doing while she was psychotic.‎That is why the Lindsay Clancy case bothers me so much.‎I don't want to debate whether mental illness exists. I know it does. I know postpartum psychosis exists. I know that a person can become so detached from reality that they can do things the person they were before would never have imagined doing.‎What I want to know is what happens after.‎Mental illness can explain a crime, but it cannot make the crime disappear.‎There are people who argue that Lindsay should be sent to a psychiatric institution for treatment and rehabilitation rather than punished criminally.‎I understand why.‎If someone is so severely psychotic that they genuinely cannot understand reality, cannot appreciate the wrongfulness of what they are doing, or cannot control their actions, then their mental state clearly matters when we talk about criminal responsibility.‎And Lindsay was not someone who simply ignored her problems and woke up one morning and decided to kill her children. She sought help. She saw multiple mental health professionals. She voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. She was vocal about her deteriorating mental health and was trying to get better.‎That raises difficult questions about whether the people and systems around her recognized how serious her condition had become.‎But I don't think treatment and accountability have to cancel each other out.‎Because there is another side to this conversation.‎Three children died.‎Cora was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old.‎And their lives were taken away by their own mother.‎In my friend's case, at least some of the damage could be repaired.‎A laptop could be replaced. Documents could be recovered. A room could be repaired. The people affected could eventually move forward.‎But what happens when the thing that was taken cannot be replaced?‎You cannot replace a child.‎There is no amount of remorse or treatment that can make three dead children alive again.‎Then there is the question that gets too little attention: which Lindsay are we judging?‎I cannot tell you what Lindsay Clancy's mind is like today. I wasn't at the trial, and I am not her doctor.‎But I can tell you that the killings happened more than three years ago.‎I can tell you that during the trial, testimony suggested that she had not heard the male voice she said commanded her to kill her children since the killings.‎If the argument for removing criminal punishment is that Lindsay was so severely mentally ill that she could not understand what she was doing, what happens when that mental state passes?‎Are we still treating the illness that caused the crime?‎Or are we dealing with a person who is no longer in that same state?‎A person who recovers is not innocent of what she did.‎Recovery just makes the verdict harder.‎We're trying to judge the mind of a person at one moment in time, while the person herself has had three years to become someone psychologically different.And the delay creates a problem because the more her condition has changed, the harder it becomes to establish exactly how ill she was then.‎So what is punishment actually supposed to accomplish?‎If punishment is simply about making someone suffer because they caused suffering, then perhaps mental illness changes very little.‎But if punishment is also about accountability, justice, protection and rehabilitation, then mental illness has to matter.‎Someone who commits a crime while profoundly disconnected from reality is not necessarily in the same position as someone who commits that same crime while fully understanding what they are doing.‎That does not mean there should be no consequences. It just means that the consequences may need to look different.‎I don't think Lindsay should have to choose between psychiatric treatment and accountability.‎Why can't it be both?‎She could serve a prison sentence while continuing to receive the psychiatric care she needs. Her mental illness could be taken into account when determining the nature and severity of that sentence without it automatically erasing criminal responsibility altogether. I still wonder how my friend is doing. I don't think she is a horrible person, but I will never forget what happened. In her case, someone could pay for the damage. But no one can bring back Cora, Dawson and Callan.‎A verdict that says only that Lindsay was ill describes her. But a conviction, with consequences, describes what she did.‎

Other insights from Maq

Contributor Points

Points-to-Coupons

Referral Earning