Lindsay Clancy trial continued.

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Previous thread here.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5565097-lindsay-clancy-trial?page=10&reply=154694959

You still haven’t answered my question.

It's a stupid question.
And it's not 'muddying the waters' to not answer a hypothetical question that you're asking yourself simply to muddy the waters.

But I'll answer.

Would I defend her if they were my children? Well it's impossible to know. I have very strong and firm opinions that people who commit crimes when legally insane are not criminally responsible but it's literally impossible to tell if I would still hold that opinion if someone did it to my kids because it's a trauma I have never experienced so there's no way to know. All I can do is guess at my reaction and I would assume that I would still want the correct verdict, so if they were legally insane at the time I think that is what I would want.

I live in Ireland and if it happened here then someone could spend longer in the central mental hospital than they would if they got a prison sentence anyway, and we've actually had cases where people have preferred to plead guilty to get a predetermined prison sentence rather than spend an indeterminate amount of time in the central mental hospital!

Which is interesting because it means we could have the reverse here, sometimes the families of victims will be angry that the person is pleading NGRI thinking they are trying to avoid a prison sentence, in Ireland it could be the opposite and people could be angry the person is pleading guilty in order to potentially avoid never getting out of a psychiatric hospital.

It’s not extremely common, sorry. It’s not extremely common to say that your baby, a child under 2 is the most difficult human you have ever come across.

And yet the people who have doxxed him (the court ordered anonyminity unless jurors chose to come forward themselves until later this month so illegal for them to do so) would not be bothered by this had he voted the way they wanted. I dont care about him, but it does set a dangerous precedent for jurors; just another in a long line of clownery in this trial.

It is interesting though how a lot seem to just be using the evidence that aligns with their opinion and disregarding the rest or drawing wild conclusions devoid of fact or evidence (not on here, but on broader social media).

That post is very run of the mill. Saying you love your child but they’re really tricky to deal with. I can not tell you how many times I’ve seen a mum write that. And asking for help with behaviour or wondering if their kid is SEN etc

I believe fully that some people can be criminally insane - of course I do and to ignore that possibility would be inhumane.

However, I think it is very rare. And I do not think that LC was criminally insane. I don’t believe the evidence supports it. I also think there are people who would rather be in a hospital than a US jail.

Why is it a stupid question? It’s so easy to stick up for someone when it was her children she killed and not yours.

I disagree. And I’m a mum of 3 autistic children. I would never talk like that about any of them, much less online.

Well yes- a mother who was struggling who we heard during the trial had reached out to people in real life (as well as it seems on the internet) for advice and support. This is what I mean about people interpreting 'evidence' to align with their view, you mention no one would call their child the 'most difficult human' but dont mention the many other bits.

Well it's a very specific crime and you're turning it into something else, but yet refused to consider a case of an adult killing their parent due to psychiatric problems, people often also feel sorry for everyone involved in those cases too, because it's again it's a very specific crime and people often see it as an extreme family tragedy that is devastating.

Does that mean people think that it's ok for people to kill their family members when they're mentally ill? No it just means that people recognise that it's very specific and different crime to most other murders and devastatingly sad and often even the family left behind feel the same way, so it would follow that so do many members of the public.

In a case where a random person or unrelated person kills someone because they're insane very few feel sorry for the perpetrator because all the focus is on the victim and the victims family and their loss but when it's intrafamilial and mental illness was the cause it often has an extra sadness to it.

Everyone keeps calling it postpartum psychosis, but she didn't have postpartum psychosis. She initially developed postpartum depression and was prescribed an SSRI. She then went into toxic shock, which triggered severe insomnia, psychosis and mania. Those symptoms were subsequently misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder.

From that point onwards, she was prescribed more and more psychiatric medication, and each new medication seemed to make the psychosis worse. She was eventually prescribed six more SSRIs, alongside a cocktail of anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills.

The fact that such heavy medication wasn't having the expected effect should have raised serious concerns that something else was medically wrong. Someone in toxic shock does not respond to medication in the way clinicians would normally expect.

What she experienced wasn't simply postpartum psychosis. The sequence matters: postpartum depression came first, followed by toxic shock, severe insomnia and then psychosis and mania in the context of extensive medication exposure. What she had was drug-induced psychosis, not postpartum psychosis.

I think the whole thing is a weird thing to write about your 19 month old child.

The problem for me is that she was perfectly able to conform her behavior to the law whilst her husband was in the house. And she tried to get him out so she could hurt the children.
That's not a problem for me because people who have such delusions often can and do wait until they have an opportunity (or create one) to do it when they know they will be able to complete it.

I’ve posted both your comments above so it’s clear what I’m talking about. I’ve met people who were in psychosis. One in particular sticks in my mind because the psychosis wasn’t immediately obvious. That is, he wasn’t shouting or raving or drawing attention to himself. He was quieter than usual, which I did notice, but I just thought he was tired or pre-occupied. He then came up to me and had a chat, as he’d done many times before. It started off normally, then it became apparent from what he was saying was that he very much wasn’t mentally well.

However, he was completely unaware of the fact his conversation and thoughts were insane. He made no attempt to hide things or whisper. He spoke completely normally as though we were having a regular chat - except what he said was clearly mad.

My point is that someone in psychosis wouldn’t need to ‘create an opportunity’ because they wouldn’t recognise the madness of their thoughts and plan. To them it would be normal. Thinking about LC, if she was in psychosis a) PC would have noticed; and b) she’d have carried out her plan with him in the house working because she wouldn’t have recognised it as insane, but just an everyday job she had to do.

To me, the fact she knew enough to know she needed him out of the house because he might stop her, shows she was aware she was about to do a very bad thing. If you say, ‘ah, but she was so mad, she had no idea what was going on’, then I draw your attention to my first point: PC would have noticed something wrong, something different. He didn’t. He said she had a good day, they’d communicated and she seemed fine and normal.

Did she suddenly became psychotic when he left the house, I think that’s very unlikely. Moreover, if she only became psychotic at that point, why was she doing the pre-planning of getting him out of the house prior to this supposed sudden psychosis?

Exactly and people conveniently ignore that postpartum psychosis is something that happens hours and days after birth, not 8 months later!

My point is that someone in psychosis wouldn’t need to ‘create an opportunity’ because they wouldn’t recognise the madness of their thoughts and plan. To them it would be normal. Thinking about LC, if she was in psychosis a) PC would have noticed; and b) she’d have carried out her plan with him in the house working because she wouldn’t have recognised it as insane, but just an everyday job she had to do.

This isn't necessarily true for all. Someone who is psychotic could have a very fixed delusion that this has to happen and they have to do it, but still be aware that other people would not agree with them and would try to stop them but that for them it is the objective truth and they have a fixed conviction it must happen, this was also the case for Deirdre Morley, she said she knew she had to do it before her husband came home.

And yet her defence teams case was:

She had postpartum psychosis exasperated by over medication and a failed mental health system.

Whilst a lot hinged on the medications, why erase what her own counsel was arguing?

She was never diagnosed with ppp though. It is quite common for a defence to use the possibility of diminished responsibility to get people off. I have seen it very often in the UK, as well.

Again, I don’t believe that people who were insane should be put in jail. That is barbaric. I just don’t believe LC was insane - I don’t think the evidence supports it at all.

I know, but some on here seem to ignore that the defence built their case around her having it (and medical negligence pushed as a reason for the lack of diagnosis) so I guess are supporting the prosecution by acknowledging nothing suggests she had it. Over medication casuing psychosis was never peddled, it exasperating supposed PPP was.

Ok and many of us do believe she was insane so maybe you should accept that instead of making out that people think that she brought them into this world so she can take them out.

My point was that I believe if she had killed other people’s children and not her own, there would be far fewer people trying to empathise with her and more people saying she should be locked up.

Yes and I explained why, it’s a very specific crime which many people often react to differently compared to other murders and it is the same for adults killing their parents so it’s nothing to do with thinking she brought them into the world so she can take them out.

no one thinks killing family members is fine because they’re family, no one thinks oh she just killed her own kids so it’s fine or he just killed his mother so it’s fine, but these type of things are just generally seen differently than when it’s outside the family.

But they shouldn’t be seen differently because that means that people are no longer considering objectively whether there is actually proof of insanity.

She was mentally unwell but the evidence shows she knew what she did was wrong.

But they are seen differently by many and it will be a hard bias to get past, especially if the family are saying no this was a good person and this was out of character.

The other side of it is that other people are strongly biased in the other direction and often say “mental illness is no excuse” and plenty of them wouldn’t care how much proof there was of insanity they’d find the person guilty.

You seem strongly biased yourself regarding this case so how can you look at it objectively?

You’re pointing to things like the Facebook post as strong evidence of your theory and when people tell you it’s very common you continue to deny that it is and are completely unmoved from your view.

No ‘one thing’ is strong evidence. Look, I didn’t know the woman. I may be wrong but I don’t think so based on the totality of the evidence that I have seen. I have no reason to want her to be guilty just because.

I look at things from a point of view of what’s the most likely explanation because that’s usually the correct one.

I worry about the evolution of a culture where women can get away with murdering their children and people feel sorry for them.

The idea that she could walk free and repeat this cycle is horrifying.

True, I should have clarified with ‘many people’, but I just don’t see the evidence that LC was in psychosis. If, as you suggest, she knew PC wouldn’t agree with her plan, then PC could still have noticed she wasn’t herself. He might not have understood just how much she was not herself, he might even have realised but never envisaged she’d do something like that, but he would have recalled the ‘not quite herself’ in hindsight when he gave evidence.