Lindsay clancy trial

[Widowwith2]

Has anyone else been following the lindsay clancy trial? What is everyone thinkin? I dont think she done it

Again, they were judging her mental state. She could have been a bad mother but if she was genuinely psychotic then she’d be Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.

The juror who gave her being a good mother as a reason and talked about what she did or didn’t do, seemed to have no idea what she was judging.

I know and everyone knows that most people would seriously struggle to get past that, they would think that well she had a habit of being abusive and was often cruel, that was who she was as a person, so this was murder.

Or the opposite - a psychotic mother who had a history of harming her kids when she was off her head could point at that history to support her claim of passing McHoul.

The fact she was a good mother makes it far harder to say "But then out of the blue I became Psychotic for just long enough to kill my kids." From a legal POV much better to kill your kids on your 9th psychotic episode than your first and only.

Glad that lone juror held out for those kids.

Do we want to start a precedent that women are too emotional to deal with the consequences of their actions?

If it becomes fixed enough then it can absolutely be considered to be a delusion and psychotic.

The contents of the belief don't have to sound bizarre in order to be a delusion.

Someone could believe that they have to kill themselves and have to take their kids with them because the kids will never cope without them and they'll have an awful life etc.

They could have a very strong view that they'd be better off dead with them or it could become delusional and a pathological conviction that to them this is an objective fact they they are better off dead and has to be done.

I agree that sometimes it is a mercy killing or maybe the mother was suffering abuse etc, but it's not relevant to the Lindsay Clancy case.

No Dr Spinelli said bipolar I according to the civil suits and I believe the jury got her report. The hospital and experts in the trial said Bipolar II.

Again, you know that jurors are human and would have a human response.

If someone was a good mother that will influence many and they will be biased, likewise if they were an abusive mother that will influence many and they will be biased.

Works both ways and it's inescapable, regardless of what the jury are instructed to do.

Ok, I stand corrected then. I thought they all thought bipolar 2.

Yes, there might be a subconscious bias but to stand there and complain about the one juror ‘not following the law’, then to proudly ‘explain’ your decision in such a way (she was a good mother), to not understand what they were deciding (whether she did it or not) and so on is bloody ironic.

They could have a very strong view that they'd be better off dead with them or it could become delusional and a pathological conviction that to them this is an objective fact they they are better off dead and has to be done

That’s a very thin line between a strongly held belief and a delusional and pathological conviction. People make bad/wrong decisions all the time. I don’t assume they’re all delusional. They’ve made their own assessment, which might differ from many others’. That doesn’t mean they’re psychotic.

Why on earth would it start that precedent?

There are men who have been found NGRI or who have become severely mentally unwell and killed people and many have accepted that that man just had serious mental health problems.

I certainly haven't looked at those cases and then decided that because those men became severely unwell and so were not criminally responsible that that means that men as a whole are too emotional to deal with the consequences of their actions.

So if anyone uses a case like this to generalise for all women then it says far more about them, they're doing it because they want to.

Yes but that's the whole problem, there's a thin line, and people are trying to assess whether the line was crossed, which is difficult because the actual evidence is inside that persons head on that day.

And Massachusetts law says the persons mental illness only had to substantially deprive the person of the ability to understand the wrongfulness of their actions or to obey the law, not completely deprive it, but substantially, so again it's difficult to assess because there often there isn't something specific to point at that will prove if the line was crossed or not, it just comes down to opinion, hence why there is so much disagreement on this subject.

Yes, there’s no surefire way to assess it @kkloo All we can do is consider the evidence. It’s a pity LC herself couldn’t/chose not to testify. I would also have liked a neutral selection of experts (ie not chosen by the defence or prosecution) to give their opinions.

I don’t like the system in Massachusetts. People should be considered sane then have to prove they’re not, if that’s what they’re claiming. Most people are, after all, sane and aware of the law. What’s to stop anyone claiming to have had a temporary bout of insanity or psychosis when they committed a crime? The onus shouldn’t be on the prosecution to prove they’re sane.

I imagine “substantially” is similar to “reasonable doubt”, ie a matter of individual opinion. A unanimous verdict must be hard. I think more neutral evidence about LC from experts and maybe an expert in faking psychosis would be helpful.

I wonder if there’ll be another trial?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5577390-lindsay-clancy-trial-continued

New thread here

Thank you 😊

New thread with apologies to @Widowwith2

This thread is filling up fast. Would like to discuss the decision on Tuesday 29th September.

Status is currently a mistrial with 11 jurors agreed not guilty by reason of insanity.

I agree somewhat but mainly from the perspective that they should have been careful of what they say because of how this has been taken, I would say the instruction on reasonable doubt is more fundamental to the jury's actual decision making than the instruction not to be swayed by emotion or sympathy.

The instruction on not being swayed by emotion or sympathy is of course important but people are human and many will be swayed by it, but the instruction on reasonable doubt is fundamental, it's the burden of proof. They're told that no matter you think, if the burden of proof is not met then you cannot convict.

Let's say this had been treated like a juror misconduct issue and there had been a proper inquiry I would fully expect a failure to apply the reasonable doubt standard as a much more serious issue than a juror admitting they were swayed by emotion and thought she was a good mother.

It's also quite reductionist to just put it down to them saying she was a good mother, they felt like this due to the evidence presented to them, from that standpoint if you think well the evidence showed that this person was a very good mother many are going to think that the killings then showed an extreme departure from that so something extraordinary must have happened.

This is only an issue if the jurors stopped completely and that point and said lalalalalala I'm not even going to listen to or consider the prosecutions theories, but if they listen to them and consider them and the prosecution still hasn't convinced them beyond a reasonable doubt then that doesn't mean the jurors haven't followed instructions.

And Dr Mack was an absolute shit show of a witness for the prosecution. Heilbrun and Saathoff were better but I thought some of what they said was deliberately misleading and they certainly didn't convince me that she was capable of obeying the law despite her mental illness.

Well this is the thing, we can only consider the evidence and there is rarely going to be a consensus on things like this.

A neutral selection of experts would be great, but again I think opinion would still be split.

What’s to stop anyone claiming to have had a temporary bout of insanity or psychosis when they committed a crime?

Nothing's stopping them from claiming it, but they're highly unlikely to succeed.

I imagine “substantially” is similar to “reasonable doubt”, ie a matter of individual opinion. A unanimous verdict must be hard.

Yes absolutely, this is why people have debated this for millennia, I guess if you look at the law it seems straightforward enough, mental illness plus either being unable to understand the wrongfulness of your actions or being unable to conform your behaviour to the law.
It reads fine but then when you actually try to apply it to individual cases it's not quite so simple.

And then when you see that it only has to have 'substantially' deprived them of the capacity it gets even more difficult!

I wonder if there’ll be another trial?

I'm leaning towards no but impossible to know.

Nothing's stopping them from claiming it, but they're highly unlikely to succeed

I don’t share your optimism. I think someone who committed a crime and was sane enough to know it was wrong, could easily claim NGRI in Massachusetts. As you say, there’s rarely going to be a consensus and opinions from experts will be split. How do you prove that someone was sane at the time they committed an offence? It would come down to a balance of probabilities. Nobody can 100% know what was in someone’s head at the time.

That's up to the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, as it stands currently in the Massachusetts Commonwealth.

Leaning towards no for another trial as well.

Just a reminder that if anyone wants to continue with the discussion, you can do so in the new thread.

Nothing's stopping them from claiming it, but they're highly unlikely to succeed.

Yes. Because there would likely be overwhelming evidence that they failed the McHoul test. Things like an absence of history of psychosis, no diagnosis of psychosis, detailed and elaborate planning of the crime, perhaps they might send lucid texts and a lucid phone call during the crime? Maybe waking up and immediately asking about legal representation?

Is that the sort of evidence that would mean a false claim would be unlikely to succeed?

Or did you have some other evidence of sanity in mind that would typically be present to give them away?

Well Danny in a large amount of crimes there's an ordinary, comprehensible motive which would be a huge piece of evidence that people would look at, but I didn't think that needed to be pointed out.

Agree.