Lindsay Clancy case: was it evil, or severe mental illness?

How did you get to anyone with PPD must be found not guilty? Firstly the assertion is that LC was psychotic, not depressed. And responsibility and intent are much more nuanced under the law

Absolutely. Emotive testimony generates a need to hold someone accountable.
The trial is really about whether the person on the stand was truly “responsible” for their deaths or not.

I missed your point that anxiety and depression are excluded, apologies.

So are you saying that under Massachusetts Law if someone has a diagnosis of post partum depression they must automatically be found not guilty of any crime, whatever the degree of the depression, the nature of the crime, their state of mind, the treatment they are on etc? If this is the case then in my view, that is crazy.

As to “It doesn’t matter whether you agree with it or not, the law is the law” , we’re not in a court, we’re having a discussion on MN.

As has no doubt been explained to you already pre-planning does not negate psychosis.

It’s not the case that psychotic patients can’t plan it’s just that their plans are irrational. They tend to channel planning toward ungrounded or belief-driven outcomes.

I’m aware of a case where a man with schizophrenia, who was not taking his meds, made elaborate plans over some time, to kill his gf and her mother hacking one to pieces. He told police they had to be killed because his DP and her mother were witches who were conspiring to kill him.

In this case the treating doctors failed to see the severity of LC’s symptoms despite her attempts to get help. If doctors had diagnosed PPP in time, sadly the deaths and injury could have been avoided.

I think the other parallel we are seeing is how people (including prosecutors sometimes) turn respect/empathy for the victims as a reason to convict (or to decry those who question a conviction). Yes these deaths are terrible - no one is disputing that - but that is not actually pertinent to the question of a defendant's guilt.

You keep making statements which imply that having ANY mental illness means a person must be found not guilty of a crime by reason of their mental illness. It’s just not true, but you sound so confident in stating that it is.

For example, I have diagnosed depression. Years of appointments, medication etc to prove this. If I went to Massachusetts and killed a random person because I felt like it, proof of my mental illness would not stop me being found guilty of first degree murder, would it?

The specifics matter, of how the mental illness affects capacity and the person’s state of mind when they commit the crime. It’s not just black or white, mentally ill = not guilty as you seem to be suggesting.

And apologies if I have misunderstood you, but you do appear to have repeated this idea several times.

And everyone knew that but she still killed their children who she was left alone with

Working with lots of paranoid schizophrenics over the years their delusions make sense to them. I work with a lady who will tell you that the police are out to get her and they are following her because she complained years ago.

There is absolutely no way that i could persuade her differently when she was ill. She was sectioned in the end. This is what should have happened to this lady.

If the defence even hinted that they weren't in a happy marriage, tho, that give motive to LC, so it's in their interest to cast doubt on certain aspects, but not to highlight things that would give her motive.

Post partum psychosis - she was living in a different reality

It's the poor kids who were let down, if the medical and social professionals knew she was a risk at harming them then they should not have been allowed to be with her without supervision or they should have been removed from her care. Her family tried to get her help, she tried to get help but clearly she was not safe to be left alone with the children and they suffered the ultimate price for all the failings.

I mean, from the prosecution's closing address -

"There's no dispute that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from mental illness and that she tried to kill herself," said Assistant District Attorney, Jennifer Sprague.

The defence's case rests on her committing the murders while under "comand hallucinations" due to psychosis.

The prosecution's case rests on her suffering severe depression, without psychosis, as evidenced by the clarity of her pre-planning, and all the treating doctors having encountered no evidence of psychosis at any time prior.

Anyone able to comment on him apparently wearing different shoes in the two shops?

Where do you get these things from? The children were lying face down when he found them, not when the paramedics went to them.

Her body temperature was low because she was lying in the snow, and because she had a spinal cord injury which would disrupt her body's ability to regulate temperature on top of the cold conditions.

I'm not up on Massachusetts law, but apparently the difference mattered in this case, as the prosecution made a point of it.

Can anyone clarify why the kids were lying face down when the paramedics went to the basement, when PC said he attempted CPR? Callan was still alive - why didn't PC try to work on him, instead of sitting on the sofa?

Also, Lindsay was 28 degrees when they arrived - how long was she outdoors to drop to such a low temp?