Thank you for that information.

“I don’t know what I would have done on this jury. I’ve read about the evidence, but i wasn’t in court.”

My attitude also. As the lone, hold out juror on a murder trial* I have personal experience that the evidence and arguments presented to jurors, along with the judge’s instructions, can be quite different from what the general public perceives reading media accounts.

*I eventually changed my vote reviewing and discussing the evidence with the other jurors. It was a complex case and not nearly as cut and dry as it seemed to the casual observer.

I am sorry for your mother and sister, and for you and your surviving sister. Being raised by a parent in such a state must have been very difficult.

Post-partum depression was not what Clancy is claiming to have suffered. It is post-partum psychosis, plus exacerbated manic-depression. That’s a different entity. And yet many people keep saying postpartum depression.

Postpartum psychosis is rare and postpartum depression is common. But with postpartum psychosis, the person is often at risk for harming or killing her children even through she has shown nothing but love and caring for them in the past. Postpartum psychosis does not lead to bank robbery or random crimes, when it leads to crimes. It leads to child harming or child murder, usually under the sway of a delusion of some sort, and often coupled with suicide attempts or completed suicide.

See this:

The postpartum period is the time of highest risk in a woman’s lifetime for the development of a mental illness. Although the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) defines the postpartum period as the immediate, relatively short time following delivery, in research studies this period has been defined as ranging from a few days to 12 months.

Postpartum-onset psychological problems generally fall into one of three categories: so-called baby blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. Baby blues affect up to 70 percent of mothers and include mild symptoms of crying and irritability which end by the second week after childbirth. Postpartum-onset depression affects from 7 to 15 percent of mothers and is characterized by sadness, crying, self-blame, loss of control, irritability, anxiety, tension, and sleep difficulties. Factors such as personality, negative feelings toward the infant, marital discord, poor social supports, and ambivalence over parenthood appear to predispose women to the onset of depressive symptoms in the postpartum period.

Postpartum psychosis, the most severe of postpartum mental disorders, occurs in 1 to 2 of 1,000 births and frequently requires hospitalization to stabilize symptoms. … The disorder is characterized by an extended period of loss of contact with reality that may include auditory or visual hallucinations, delusions, or rapid mood swings. The auditory and visual hallucinations may focus on violence toward self or the infant.

Risk factors for postpartum psychosis can be of both biologic and genetic origins. One study found that the rate of postpartum psychosis in mothers with bipolar disorder was 26 percent, with the rate in mothers with bipolar disorder and a family history of postpartum psychosis increasing to 57 percent. …

… [R]esearch supports that postpartum psychosis is associated with prominent cognitive disturbances, ranging from mental confusion and indecision to intrusive and bizarre thoughts. Women with this disorder can appear delirious and disorganized. Second, symptoms can arise and dissipate suddenly, with the woman appearing lucid one moment and psychotic the next. Third, although DSM-IV-TR classifies it as a psychotic disorder not otherwise specified, research shows that the syndrome can have both affective and psychotic components.

It has been estimated that four percent of women with postpartum psychosis commit infanticide. …

The insanity defense is successful in less than 0.1 percent of all criminal trials. However, major population studies, including McKee and Shea, d’Orban, and Bourget and Bradford, found insanity pleas successful in 20, 27, and 15 percent of infanticide cases, respectively. These results suggest that, regardless of the legal or medical guidelines, the law treats women who kill their children with more leniency. Nonetheless, infanticide case outcomes vary extremely. At least two such women have been sentenced to death, whereas some have been released without a prison sentence

That article is from 2012, and the review of cases goes back a ways before that. So we’re not talking about the result of recent internet social media hysteria influencing trials. Most of the data almost certainly predates the ascendance of social media.

I have seen nothing whatsoever the anyone has said about Clancy that was negative, prior to her mental/emotional problems after the birth of her third child, and of course the murders. The idea that she was some sort of hidden violent psychopath (and/or liar) for her entire life and as a mother of her first two children, and no one has reported anything other than exemplary and loving behavior, is I suppose theoretically possible but I think HIGHLY unlikely.

Been mentoring a kid for the last couple of years. Two of those years I was in an office next to the nurse’s office in an el ed. Shocked at the number of kids who came in for behavior pills. Not counting those whose meds were early. Multiply that by the number of kids in the state and….. Doesn’t take a high probability of a really negative reaction to end up with a really bad reaction in one.
I’ve been prescribed a common sleep aid. The dosage doesn’t work. Twice as much has a negative reaction. I have a relation taking, by body weight, ten times my scrip and with no issues at all.
With the size of the iceberg, to use an overused metaphor, even the smallest tip is inevitable,

Molly Brown:

I can go there. I’ll agree that it’s possible for a mother to methodically strangle her children while psychotic.

But it is also possible IMO that her psychosis was a cover for malice. Or maybe some combo.

I just don’t know.

But her sympathizers? They are deeply wrong and should know better.