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

For the people so sure of her guilt, if she was still in a coma and had never spoken a word. what evidence would you have to convict her of murdering the children noting

• Her prints aren’t on the bands or the knife she used to cut her wrists and throat.
• There were questions around why the wound on her throat didn’t appear to be in the direction you would expect for someone right handed doing a self inflicted wound
• Most of the damming internet searches were proven not to be her
• Much evidence suggests she went head first out of the window severely drug affected or unconscious by her lack of reflexes that she wouldn’t have been in control of if she was fully conscious
• The neighbour saw her in the snow at a time that would make it beyond exceedingly unlikely that a pulse could have been brought back for Callan

There are also many other inconsistencies. I don’t have any issue with accepting women can murder, for mental health reasons or cold blood: I think it’s ridiculous though that anyone can say they know for certain what happened here. It may well have been her but essentially the trial has shown that there was next to no investigation of what happened. That is reasonable doubt, and I suspect her lawyer will go much much harder on these gaps next time. He seemed to get 11 people over the line while just tiptoeing around many of the holes in the police investigation and prosecution case.

I think there’s a little of that but a lot of people didn’t start suspecting the husband until well into the court case.

Or at the very least thinking that the police seriously screwed up the investigation because the physical evidence was peculiar, the witness statements were contradictory, the photo evidence raised more questions than answers, and the husband’s behavior before, during and after the day of the killings has been very odd.

I think the big difference being in the US is being able to watch all the court proceedings live and hear the witness statements rather than just reading reporting on it.

I went into it thinking it would be interesting to see what the evidence would be for proving not in sound mind to be found criminally negligent but now I have serious doubts that she did it.

Internet cranks are losing their tiny minds over this case. Just when you think nothing can surprise you about the virtual world...

A slew of social media addicted women, convinced she wasn't even responsible! They think they've spotted 'glaring' inconsistencies that Clancy's actual qualified defence attorney has missed. Absolute morons.

At her re-trial, she really ought to consider employing Tracey from facebook and Linda from tiktok. Cos who needs eight years in law school, when you have tiktok...??? And, the gold standard, wikipedia.

And the 11 out of 12 jurors who found enough reasonable doubt not to convict her?

@Conundrummum123 We’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether it’s splitting hairs to clarify that women kill their children at roughly (slightly lower, possibly) the same rate as men, and that therefore a woman killing her own child is not much rarer an event than a man killing his own child.

But I do agree with your point that attitudes towards women who kill their children and difficulty grasping why a mother would do this are behind some of the reluctance to admit that LC killed her children and invention of stories when her exh did it.

Actually there are a lot of cranks on social media making up completely untrue stuff however the inconsistency in the evidence we know about because the defense team pointed them out at the trial.

I’ve not watched the case and I don’t know if she did it or not or if he did it, I do believe even if he wasn’t the one who physically killed those poor children, he carries a degree of responsibility as do all the healthcare professionals who let her down.

i just hope we don’t lose sight of desperate conversations needed around women’s health more generally (parking mental health for a second, women’s time to diagnosis for any physical health problem is materially longer than a man’s because women are so routinely gaslit and dismissed)and then specifically post partum mental health because so many women can relate to being dismissed my self and others on this thread included. As well as cultural and societal expectations around motherhood and the chronic lack of support there is for struggling mothers

Exactly this…. I think it’s the filming of their trials that had people changing their mind based on the evidence presented, or lack of. She didn’t go into the case with any level of support, outside of her family. The prosecution hasn’t even been able to find one person to argue she was a terrible mother who hated her children and would want them dead. Their approach doesn’t seem anything like justice for those children, which comes from being curious and just wanting the truth

Those who say her defence lawyer missed the inconsistencies are just acknowledging they didn’t watch the trial. He didn’t miss them, he subtly pointed them all out and was very successful in sowing the seeds of reasonable doubt.

Surely you are not suggesting the jurors believe she didn’t kill her children? You can’t believe that? This is madness

You're suggesting they all thought she didn't actually do it???

I don’t know the minutiae of the case as I haven’t followed it that closely.

But it’s the job of the defence to cast doubt on the prosecution case and they have effectively highlighted these inconsistencies. This I think is what has sparked these theories on SM.

While it might be technically possible for PC to take LC’s phone with him to the shops to establish communication between the two, their phones will presumably have been geofenced by the police and aiui LC’s Apple Watch locates her at home.

So I think the defence did a great job at creating doubt over the official narrative but that doesn’t mean it’s not correct.

Noone knows....

no she’s suggesting they wouldn’t convict her because they had reasonable doubt - which is the facts and im surprised you’re even arguing against facts? Why are you even posting if you’re this clueless about what happened

And despite what must have been intense pressure from the other jurors, the judge and the defence for LC one juror wasn't convinced and held out against them for something like 5 days? I think that shows considerable belief in his own opinion that she was guilty.

Not to convict in this case simply means not guilty of murder in the first degree and incarceration at a psychiatric hospital rather than prison.

without derailing the thread the nuance by which women still proportionally account for less child deaths is telling, the women who do it are typically in the throws of post partum psychosis and other very serious mental illnesses crises v the men and then men’s motivation usually centres on punishment, revenge or control

it’s a different picture, one is of mental illness and the other of abuse

Yes believe the one over the 11 🙄

They were voting to acquit her because they didn’t believe the prosecution had proved their case beyond reasonable doubt.

The one hold out juror admitted that he had doubts too but refused to change his vote - even though that’s exactly the point - you have to vote on the evidence presented not what you feel happened.

It doesn’t matter what the jurors felt - it matters whether the evidence was there to convict.

11 out of 12 said the evidence wasn’t conclusive - and the remaining one admitted it wasn’t conclusive but wouldn’t budge on believing her guilty.

Absolutely.

🤦‍♀️

Yes I’d be facepalming too if I’d posted what you’d posted. At least you have the self awareness to realise what you did 😘

"when women go against this, we as a society cannot fathom it. This juxtaposition is why I think so many people are clinging to the fact that the husband did it and framed her"

I think society can fathom it. It's not like she is the first woman to do it, and she's not even the first woman on trial for murdering their child year in the us.

People quote 95% of murders or family annihilation (does this apply here since the husband survive.)

Well that means the other 5% are women. But certain people say violence is always men and women are non violent ( which most people know is not true - they are just less violent)

So they say the 5% of women have been pushed to it somehow, and usually blame it on a man or institutional misogyny caused by men -as if mentally ill men always get appropriate treatment or help before they commit such heinous acts.

That's an extreme view and a form of misandry It's wrong to apply those statistics here where Patrick's movements are accounted for and most reasonable commentars (men and women) accept she did it; and are only arguing about whether she knew what she was doing was wrong at the time.

Another person who’s not read the outcome and has come on a women’s board to defend a man who doesn’t need defending and completely missed the point…
11 had reasonable doubt and wanted to acquit her!!!

I do have experience. A very close family member suffered from post partum psychosis and she very sadly took her own life.

It's not a question of believing 1 over 11. I'm highlighting the fact that one juror didn't back down from his position despite intense pressure which showed that he certainly didn't agree with the 11. It's obviously not a clear cut case.

I don't know whether she was psychotic or not and I don't see how people watching the court case online can make that judgement either when even the jury was divided.
The jury was made up of 9 women and 3 men. One man held out. I wonder is that fair to have an uneven divide of men and women seeing as men and women are generally having different reactions to the case but it's probably done randomly. Either way, it's hard to see how a retrail can be done fairly given the level of public scrutiny the case has had.