The Lindsay Clancy eleven and the sole holdout
Seems there are two extremes right now on the subject of the Clancy case, at least in terms of the bulk of online discussion. I don’t fit into either camp – not those who say Clancy is some sort of heroic persecuted figure (or that her husband did it), nor those who say she’s nothing but a vicious killer who wanted her kids dead and came up with the excuse of mental illness for her own evil actions.
Modern-day jurors have a tendency to discuss trials and deliberations publicly, and a number of Clancy case jurors have come out with a lot to say, post-trial. Their decision came down, as I figured it would, to the idea of reasonable doubt, held by eleven jurors who would have put Clancy in a mental hospital for an undetermined amount of time rather than in prison for life.
I’ve written before about the fact that Massachusetts law supports that verdict (whether you think it’s a good law or not, and personally I do not) and how unusual that law is. Here’s a post I wrote on the subject.
I will add that in law school I studied the law of criminal responsibility as it relates to mental illness, and I also have my training as a family therapist, and I have long thought there is no good solution to the problem of psychosis and crime. There is a wide variety of legal approaches – very wide, actually – all with pros and cons, and all unsatisfactory.
The approach I prefer is to sentence the person, and if there is diminished responsibility because of a psychosis, the person starts serving the sentence in a mental hospital and finishes out the term in prison when the hospital deems the person recovered from the psychosis, with the total in both institutions being the time served. It’s not a great solution at all, but I think it is probably better than the others.
But it’s very far from the law prevailing in Massachusetts, the law under which Clancy was tried and which operates in this case.
Those who believe Clancy should have been found guilty seem to perceive a sex divide in the jurors’ opinions because the lone holdout was a male – as well as a race divide because he was also black. But there were two other males on the jury, and they sided with the nine women on the panel. The jurors are being portrayed by many on the right more or less this way (the following excerpt is by John Hinderaker):
You know the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case? The one who thought strangling her three children was a crime worth punishing? The one the liberal white women jurors denounced as dumb? Unable to understand the jury instructions and comprehend the subtle concept of reasonable doubt? Turns out he was the only juror “of color.” The holdout juror was a black guy …
But that’s a false dichotomy. Based on Massachusetts law, I might even have reluctantly sided with those “liberal white women jurors” in their verdict (not necessarily in their descriptions of the lone holdout, which by the way don’t seem to have actually included the word or even the concept “dumb”). Was the holdout the only person on the jury who thought strangling three children was a horrific crime “worth punishing”? But the jurors were not being asked if it was a serious crime worth punishing. They were being asked whether Clancy’s moral sense and criminal responsibility were compromised by her serious mental problems:
“We weren’t trying to figure out if she murdered the children. She did. And she’s admitting that. We’re trying to figure out did she know right from wrong at that time,” foreperson Roni Carlson said.
Legally in Massachusetts, if the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lindsay Clancy knew right from wrong and also could have restrained herself from those criminal acts, then the verdict of the eleven would be quite appropriate. That seems to me to be the case, whether I like that verdict or not. But instead, the lone holdout is being considered by the right as a hero and as the only virtuous person on the jury, and the eleven others (nine women and two men) are considered to be excusing the murder of children rather than trying to follow the law while realizing full well how horrific these crimes were.
But the most important reason the holdout should come in for criticism is this (at least, according to the other jurors who gave interviews): he had agreed with them that there was reasonable doubt that Clancy should be held fully responsible and yet he was determined to find her guilty anyway. That’s a form of jury nullification, basically, because it’s not the way the law in Massachusetts works. In Massachusetts, if reasonable doubt on the score exists, you must find the defendant not guilty:
“He admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited,” the foreperson said.
“There were three forms I had to fill out and I started filling them out, I wrote my signature on each one but then he said, ‘But I’m still not going to say she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.’”
Nor did the interviewed jurors blame Clancy’s husband Patrick instead, which was one of the conspiracy theories popular with some especially extreme online Lindsay-defenders. Here’s what two of the jurors said about Clancy’s husband:
Juror No. 5 said she “will never be the same” after hearing Patrick’s 911 call, which was not publicly broadcast.
The “horrifying” [911 call made by Patrick] dispelled any online conspiracy theories that the husband was somehow involved, according to the anonymous panelist.
“All I could think was that if these people could have heard that visceral, blood-curdling scream, I don’t think I could name a single actor or actress that could have performed that the way he did, and not that he performed it, but I will never be the same after that,” she said.
“Just to imagine living through that and being the person to find your children in that scenario, it shakes you.”
I think it’s very interesting that a great many people on the right who think Clancy absolutely should have been found guilty are playing the race card about the lone holdout juror. They are asserting that the eleven (who were white) who voted to commit Clancy are racists putting down a heroic black man.
Now it turns out that the holdout juror had a history of domestic violence allegations. The Hinderaker article says this:
It is a rule of modern life that anyone who dissents from leftist dogma must be destroyed.
However, there was a reason to reveal the information that’s not about “destroying” this man. That reason was this [my emphasis]:
The holdout juror who caused Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial has a history of alleged domestic violence such as grabbing his wife by the throat and punching his nephew, according to a report.
The still-unnamed juror, only described as a black man in his 30s, faced a criminal charge in September 2021 for allegedly assaulting his wife, NBC10 Boston reported. …
A juror questionnaire in Massachusetts asks whether someone has been arrested, charged with a crime, or been served with a court order — all boxes that the holdout juror should have checked.
If he’d answered honestly, he almost certainly would not have been serving on the jury. I think this matters and that it’s not merely some idle and vicious doxxing, as Matt Walsh writes:
They’re flat-out doxxing an anonymous juror because he didn’t acquit a triple murderer. These people are evil beasts. Demons from hell.
And Hinderaker wrote:
This was an effort by a “reporter” named Sue O’Connell and a Boston television station, NBC10, to doxx the holdout juror and ruin his life. Why? So that in the future, no one will dare to oppose the agenda of the far left while serving on a jury. Every juror must toe the line, or else.
Left out is the fact that the juror apparently lied in order to get on the jury. And so perhaps he did have an agenda after all. There’s a reason they ask that question of jurors. Do we not care about that sort of thing anymore? I submit that we should care and that we certainly would care if this juror had come to a conclusion with which we disagreed.
It’s fully possible to give a reasoned argument about why a guilty verdict would have been the correct one. But do it without playing the race card – something about which the right always mocks the left. And do it without pretending that this guy didn’t violate the jury selection rules, at least if these allegations about him are true.
Thank you for providing a balanced perspective. Perhaps those of us on the social-political right need to be more careful in what we say about this case and especially about the jury.
Neo, thank you for your balanced and nuanced summary of this sad case. I haven’t paid much attention to the case up til now, because the sensationalism distracts from more important issues we face. However, the case reveals much about our social conflicts and rot.
I also second your last paragraph. It’s disgusting that Republicans who decry the race card, jump to use it when they think it supports their narrative. If racial “color blindness” is a good thing, the holdout juror’s race is irrelevant.
Nonetheless … I can’t help but feel the endgame here is to get the holdout fully doxxed, absolutely ruin his life and maybe even, happily to their minds, get him killed.
His name is going to come out.
It is indeed possible to give a reasoned argument about why a guilty verdict would have been the correct one. To do so involves reviewing all of the facts presented to the jury, and not just the ones singled out in online commentary. The transcript of the trial and video are available online. I’ve quoted from them here from time to time.
To take one example, multiple experts testified that people in psychosis can still be criminally responsible. Multiple experts, including those called by the defense, agreed that Clancy’s psychosis, if it genuinely happened, was extremely unusual in multiple ways and exhibited red flags for malingering. Of course, the defense experts think she probably wasn’t malingering and the prosecution experts think she probably was. That’s why there’s a jury, to decide how much weight to put on that kind of testimony. That a defense expert says this or that is not enough to create “reasonable doubt” or no one could possibly be convicted of anything, defense experts always have something to say for the defense. The judge instructed the jury to consider the entire totality of presented evidence to judge Clancy’s criminal responsibility or lack of, not just medical testimony, and emphasized that “beyond reasonable doubt” does not mean “beyond any possible doubt”.
Very few people are willing to take the time and trouble to do review all the facts, instead they are just lining up behind one commentator’s summary or another. This is not a new thing, of course, it’s a very old thing. Legacy media used to do this for all of us routinely and we never were able to do it ourselves without a great deal of expensive effort. But the facts are publicly and easily available even if very few people wish to make any use of them.
As for the holdout juror, there is no doubt he was expressly targeted to deliver a lesson. Somebody who knew his name, still under impound at the time, dug through his records and fed it to a receptive journalist. We have no idea what lies the other jurors may have told to get on that jury because nobody dug into them to make an example out of them. Very soon his name will not be impounded and we will see plenty more hit pieces, which will no doubt encourage other jurors in the retrial much as the Chauvin jurors were encouraged by all the rioting.
The medical testimony re Clancy’s sudden and very transient “psychotic” state of mind is important. And the negatives of the holdout juror does not mean he was wrong in his decision. I personally feel Clancy deserves the death penalty. I cannot imagine asphyxiating three young kids, one by one, strangling them, one’s own kids, and then ahwell there’s the end of psychosis. This was a monstrous act.
neo – In a roundabout way, you address something that has been bothering me since the beginning of this mess. I have seen many advocates for Clancy’s acquittal by reason of insanity argue that the stakes of the trial were just about whether Clancy would spend the rest of her life in prison or in a mental institution.
I’m not so sure that’s true.
Isn’t it the case that a defendant who is not guilty by reason of a mental defect can be kept in custody at a mental hospital only while the mental defect is present and must be released when the mental defect resolves?
Clancy’s story is that she had one brief episode of postpartum psychosis in January of 2023 when she strangled her children. Clancy’s youngest was 8 months old at the time. That means it has now been more than 4 years since Clancy gave birth. I understand that postpartum psychosis typically resolves in a matter of months after childbirth. See the link below.
So if Clancy were to be acquitted, how long would it take for a doctor to honestly vouch that she was no longer suffering from postpartum psychosis and could be released?
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24152-postpartum-psychosis
— huxley
No doubt. Neo is right, and so are you.
The whole Clancy case has been a classic example of how the ongoing cold civil war processes everything through the lens of ‘how does this defeat the other side?’ and nothing much else. The rage on both sides existed before the case became public, and supercedes the case.
There is no such thing as unbiased news coverage, and there never has been. It just can’t exist. All coverage, all sources, have agendas, usually multiple ones.
One reason I have not commented much on the whole Clancy case is precisely that I don’t know enough to have a fully informed opinion about it, and I distrust the coverage. I distrust one side more than the other, but I fully trust neither because I recognize the agendas in play.
The stories have ‘templates’ that the subjects of the stories get slotted into, over and over and over. The Clancy case is just the latest example.
There’s the ‘mentally ill woman crushed by a patriarchal system’ template. There’s the ‘conniving murderer scams the bleeding-heart judicial system by pretending to be insane’ template. There’s the ‘heroic holdout for justice on a demented jury’ template. There’s the ‘blue State legal system that ignores justice’ template. There’s even the ‘sneaky murdering husband throws blame on his wife’ template. There are many others.
The actual facts tend to be secondary to how they can be fit into a template. If we’re not careful, we can fall into the habit of testing the validity of a possible fact by whether it matches our preferred/accepted template.
The real world is too complicated for that, though.
I haven’t seen the original documents involved with the juror’s DV charge (as in, some say there was a wife allegation in divorce proceedings, some outlets indicated he was actually arrested, some say charged and dismissed, another says a nephew sought an order of protection more recently). MA is fairly lenient about sealing, expungement, and getting orders of protection at the outset ex parte. Without seeing the actual documents, I wouldn’t decide what qualifies as being arrested, charged with a crime, or having been served with a court order. It also wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the juror was himself confused (as in, currently, or forever in time, or was there a time limit?).
I agree that the MA law is poorly written; essentially, putting the burden on the prosecution to prove a negative. I view that as a near-impossible standard, so I would then consider, what were the legislators thinking at the time when they wrote the law that way?
I think that for THIS case, on THESE facts (and mindful of our gracious host’s more in-depth experience with family therapy/dynamics issues), I would not want to be the juror who sets the precedent that you can get away with child murder if you do some doctor shopping in advance, and confess to your pastor later.
I don’t fault either juror outcome.
I can see why the holdout decided that the planning (and to me, the most damning, that she seemingly directed hubby on another errand mid-murder when he called; and picked the strongest kid to murder first), especially against the background of her medical training and experience, was evidence that she knew what she did was wrong; the “suicide” was for show; and that she was guilty.
I equally can see why the remaining jurors thought that if the legal standard is, the prosecution hasn’t ruled out the possibility that she was nuts at the time, then that standard hasn’t been met; so not guilty.
But then again, I wouldn’t have interpreted the law-drafters as having set that standard with its reasonable-doubt language.
Is the doubt reasonable or not. We, as a society, have really lost that sense of reasonable person standard (not just in criminal cases; in civil matters too). For me, a nurse, with medical training, who was evaluated at one of the best hospitals, etc., it is not reasonable to assume that she REALLY did not know what the risks/wrongs were, given the nature and extent of her planning, and actions, etc. My sense from the details I have read, is that she strikes me as one of those people who not just wanted, but expected the world to work according to the movie in their head. (One of which would include, I WILL have a happy perfect family). And when people (notably, her headstrong child, husband) do not comply, it leads them to a rage/anger where I could completely see her doing what she did with an intent to murder. I also think that is one reason why you get more of a gender skew on this issue, from those on the political left who likewise think if we just did X, we could achieve perfection. “Why can’t we just do …” are some of the worst words you would hear as a legislator from a passionate activist. Because not everyone wants to just live in the utopia you have conjured up. There are always pluses, minuses, different interest groups, stakeholders, long-term consequences, interests, goals, etc. People disinclined to accept the messiness of the human experience are your pink-wearing supporters. They want the Right people to do the Good thing so that Procedurally, we get Correct outcomes, which shows we are Caring and Just. Sigh.
Nate the Lawyer’s observation that the defense counsel successfully put the “system” on trial, is a good one. I’ll be curious if the prosecution the next time around cross-examines Patrick Clancy and the mother in law more about the pending civil cases, and how that might be creating its own bias. (The female jurors talked about how much it mattered to them that they did not think Lindsay was a bad mother; but of course those witnesses are going to say that–they can’t bring the kids back, and they lose their million dollar payday settlements from the doctors/hospitals/pharma if they were to say otherwise (and do you really want to admit you chose a monster for a mother?)). An aggressive prosecutor might also want to move for at least disqualification of the attorney in view of the juror targeting (and apparently his wife has also been snotting about on social media). I’m curious whether he is getting a cut of the civil case fees (or is attorney of record) too, hence his frustration on decision day at losing his at least 1/3 or more of the settlement paycheck.
I am also concerned that there has now been so much publicity about the case, she will never get a fair trial going forward.
A juror questionnaire in Massachusetts asks whether someone has been arrested, charged with a crime, or been served with a court order — all boxes that the holdout juror should have checked.
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Was he arrested or charged with a crime? Why would having been served disqualify you as a juror?
@Bauxite:the stakes of the trial were just about whether Clancy would spend the rest of her life in prison or in a mental institution.
Absolutely not true. There’s a new review every six months. If the court thinks she’s not a danger to herself or others, she goes free. Just having bipolar 2 is not enough to be a danger to oneself or others, literally millions of people have that. If she was malingering about her psychosis and is no longer suicidal there would be no ground to keep her in the hospital.
she was no longer suffering from postpartum psychosis
This right here is one of the false impressions created by online commentary. She only claimed to have had one episode of psychosis, that happened “postpartum”–her attorney uses that word to mean “any time in the rest of your life after you ever had a baby no matter how long you live”.
The phrase you used, that lots of people use, makes it sound like it was something that was ongoing and not just one time. But it was only one time, according to the only evidence we have that she ever had it, her own word.
Massachusetts law on criminal responsibility is foolish.
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The jury should be faced with a series of binary decisions in cases like this. Guilty or not of 1st degree murder (if that’s the top count on the bill), and, if not, guilty or not on each of the lesser included offenses.
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There is no element of this case which requires a determination of a scalar. The sentence should be specified in the statute, not at the discretion of the judge.
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If it’s your contention she should receive a dispensation because she was distressed, that would be a matter for executive clemency (in a sane legal system, which we do not have).
You’ll recall the scene in the film As Good as it Gets.
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Publisher’s functionary: How do you write women so well?
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Mell Udall: Easy. I think of a man. Then I remove reason and accountability.
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You’re looking at an element of contemporary girl culture more prevalent among the female population (or at least the bourgeois component thereof) than was the case when my mother’s contemporaries were of age to be serving on juries. It’s the notion that women are accountable only when it is convenient to them. (One element of this is offloading blame on the nearest man).
Niketas Choniates – It’s so tough to read tone on the Internet, but I sense that you’re trying to rebut my point, which is odd, because I believe we agree. (Maybe you reflexively assume that I disagree because of our sparring over Trump.)
But anyway, there are absolutely Clancy supporters who rebut objections to her potential acquittal by asserting that the trial was really just about whether she spends the rest of her life in a mental institution or a prison.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think there is a very good chance that those folks are either lying or mistaken and that an acquittal by reason of insanity would lead to Clancy becoming a free woman in the very near future.
@Bauxite: It’s so tough to read tone on the Internet, but I sense that you’re trying to rebut my point
I’m not trying to rebut your point, if anything I’m supporting it.
I’m saying that those you mention who say “trial was really just about whether she spends the rest of her life in a mental institution or a prison” are absolutely wrong. She gets a chance to go free every six months if a court at that time thinks she’s not dangerous to herself or others. If she was malingering about her single episode of psychosis and she no longer appears suicidal, how could they keep her?
I’m also saying that a phrase that you mentioned “no longer suffering from postpartum psychosis”, commonly used, gives a false impression of what Clancy said was wrong with her. She claims to have had a single episode of psychosis, which happened at some point in time after she gave birth.
It’s disgusting that Republicans who decry the race card, jump to use it when they think it supports their narrative.
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They didn’t.
@Bauxite:
“Isn’t it the case that a defendant who is not guilty by reason of a mental defect can be kept in custody at a mental hospital only while the mental defect is present and must be released when the mental defect resolves?”
I think you are correct. There are periodic psych reviews, which are reviewed by the court. See my second comment here:
https://thenewneo.com/2026/08/25/the-lindsay-clancy-case/
I guess if the court can somehow determine that she’s still dangerous, it can keep her confined. But she will need a new diagnosis, something other than postpartum psychosis.
I wonder how men in relationships with super pro-Clancy women are taking this.
I sure wouldn’t marry one.
Judge Sullivan’s instruction to the jury about how long Clancy would be in the hospital, if at all, if found “not guilty” by lack of criminal responsibility:
It’s both: she has to still be mentally ill, and be dangerous. If it’s not both, they let her out. She can be mentally ill but not dangerous, and then she’s out. The hospital is not a punishment and she is not sentenced to it.
I am “Clancy’d Out”
Art Deco and all:
The article says he “faced charges.” Also that he had active retraining orders on him. If that is true and he did not disclose these things, he is in violation. In addition, the allegations are about violence to women (his wife), which would be relevant, as well as to a minor child (his nephew). He apparently grabbed his wife by the throat. Was he trying to choke her? Relevant. The violence was witnessed by other family members.
This is the right’s big hero?
@neo:This is the right’s big hero?
If this man had truly done all these awful things–as opposed to allegations where we’re getting half the story, but let’s assume all these things–and he had saved a drowning child or run into a burning building to help an old person, that would still have been the right thing to do. A correct action can be celebrated even if performed by a flawed person.
Nothing he’s alleged to have done rises to strangling three children, to my knowledge, but who knows what they’ll dig up…
And suppose some of the eleven who voted “not guilty” have done similar bad things, also should have been kept off the jury if they answered honestly? We don’t know, because no one is trying to find out; no one is making an example of them.
Consider that at the time of publication of this story his name is still under embargo. Someone doxxed him to someone who dug up what they could and fed it to a journalist–including about his rent and eviction proceedings, which has no relevance whatever to anything at issue in the Clancy trial. This could happen to you or me or anyone who “votes wrong” in a high profile case. Jury duty, let’s remember, is not voluntary. I think it is entirely appropriate to say that what is being done to him is wrong even if he is a flawed person.
In everything said about him, he, like Clancy, is legally to be presumed innocent, and he, like Clancy, had a legal defense, but we’re not hearing any of that.
After all these millennia mankind is still stuck with the archaic ‘Rule of Law‘…
@Niketas at 1:49 pm:
Thank you for that. It would seem to me that after reviewing those instructions anyone continuing to proclaim that following an insanity finding she would necessarily have spent much of the rest of her life incarcerated in some way is being intentionally obtuse.
I agree with Niketas FWIW.
“Rule of Law”
Thou shalt not murder.
Even applies to one’s own children.
How quaint, for the pagan.
om:
Most people are unaware of this, but in most Judeo-Christian traditions there are exceptions for mental illness and other diminished capacities. This is not some recent invention.
See this and this.
We don’t know if he checked the boxes are not. We know he was not excluded from the jury.
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You’re source says he ‘faced charges’. Does that mean he was formally charged?
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That he had a restraining order against him doesn’t tell us the evidentiary standard applied or what he was accused of having done.
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That he had a rough altercation with his wife in the course of a divorce doesn’t faze me. A couple which has a friendly divorce didn’t need one.
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We have younger relations I’d be pleased to snarl at and slap.
I find it reprehensible that a TV station had access to the identity of the holdout juror.
What This Clancy Juror Admitted to Is the Worst Revelation Yet
@Art Deco:We don’t know if he checked the boxes are not.
This is true. The original reporting says
Of course they didn’t let that stop them from going with the story anyway, nor did they check up on any other jurors.
Niketas
As far as I can tell, there has been no investigation into the backgrounds of the other 11 jurors. Pure as the driven snow, no doubt. 🙂
Because Black Lives Matter (as long as they toe the party line—otherwise it’s back to the plantation).
This is the right’s big hero?
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A. I’d rather he paid his rent. I’ll regard this matter with some economy because I don’t know what his job situation is of late or anything about his child support obligations.
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B. I’d rather he had an orderly domestic life. He sounds volatile. Then again, his wife may have been worse.
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C. People admire him for sticking to his guns against eleven other people and taking a stand for personal agency.
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Left out is the fact that the juror apparently lied in order to get on the jury. And so perhaps he did have an agenda after all.
Do we know that he lied? Maybe he checked those boxes and was still allowed on the jury. Maybe the defense even wanted him on the jury, thinking he’d be sympathetic to the defendant.
As to his having an agenda, it seems that lots of the jurors came in with an agenda. Perhaps they should be subject to the same scrutiny as the holdout. Or better, none of them should be, since their anonymity is supposed to be protected.
Supposing that this was jury nullification, that happens all the time, often with no recourse, as it results in the acquittal of someone obviously guilty (O.J. Simpson, for example). At least in this case there is the possibility of a retrial.
huxley on September 14, 2026 at 1:47 pm said:
I wonder how men in relationships with super pro-Clancy women are taking this.
I sure wouldn’t marry one.”
If ok to strangle three helpless innocents due to temp insanity, should be easy to use same defense after murdering husband who displeases wife enough to “drive her crazy”.
Questions from the outside;
Was the concern about no black jurors on the Karmelo Anthony case a matter of missing the given of juror null?
How do you explain “reasonable doubt”? Compared to a bit of doubt? Or visceral doubt where you can’t put your finger on the issue….. Or maybe reasonable doubt if a couple of more pieces of evidence had been forthcoming so it’s only partly reasonable doubt? Did he use the term for something else because he’d heard it about a zllllion times and it’s what came to his mind as a term when it came up in a sentence?
Did the judge give a serious discussion or instruction or even a class on “reasonable doubt” as it pertains to law as opposed to how you make up your mind about something else?
Dud she know what she was doing was “wrong”? Define “wrong”. Am I going to get in trouble if I’m caught? Will I feel awful and guilty and ashamed for the rest of my life? Will I go to Hell?
She didn’t have a “break” when a couple of her meds got crossways and go shrieking into the nursery with a baseball bat and it was over in thirty seconds. She felt the kids in her hands. Felt their struggles, watched the fear and pleading in their faces and went ahead.
Planned in advance at least to get hubby out of the way at the right time. Then tried or faked trying suicide. Thus knowing at least she might get into trouble if she were caught unless she had an excuse. Or she wished to be dead, too. One de definition for such insanity is you don’t know what you’re doing. This was not available here. So we’re left with irresistible force, the other definition. It’s hard to prove, but when you contemplate a mother killing her own kids, it seems the only answer.
As to suicide, we have the cuts on her wrists and neck. First cop on the scene said they weren’t bleeding enough to require compression with gauze cops carry in their first aid packets, so he went on to see what else was happening. Heard a doc refer to such marks as “hesitation” marks in a soldier in my unit. Not sure whether the idea that one contemplated suicide until the process seemed more severe than imagined means insanity. Next week our guy was sent back to training–first stop was the grenade range. After finishing that block, Infantry AIT, he came in to thank us for making a man of him. …..OOOOOkay. But I suspect those were pretty hesitant hesitation marks. Lindsays’?
As to jumping? First, there was report of blood on the siding below the window, indicating she may have clambered out to hang from the sill, giving her a five-foot drop. Looks safer. But, the human body doesn’t do what you want it to do in a jump without practice. When I was in jump school, you might have seen a formation of wannabe hardasses doing what looked like a weird line dance on solid ground. To train our bodies against the reflex. After which we jumped off four-foot walls into pits of wood mulch. Over and over, getting corrected. Never did we have anything approximating a twelve-foot free fall. Because those are dangerous. Won’t kill you but they might well mess you up. So what did Lindsay think she was doing? Try to pitch herself out the window head first? Difficult to figure out how to do that and to do it so your body lets you hit head first. Recall the first time you tried to go off the high board feet first at the municipal pool’s high board? Into water? And head first off the low board. She had no head or facial injuries. So, in any event, she calculated the likelihood of suicide wrong or her ability to stick a landing from twelve feet or five feet. Or if she had half the brains God gave a goose, she’d have figured she could land right and still look as if she failed a legitimate suicide attempt. That she guessed wrong doesn’t affect what went before. Planned to the last period. Can that all be part of irresistible force?
And does this all go away, never to return, whatever caused it is all used up? Guaranteed? And, so, if you get a good six-month review at the mental hospital, you’re good to go? What kind of doubt would anybody have looking at that possibility?
white, pink, purple, black, male, female, unknown – color and sex isn’t the issue. Killing three children is the issue.
Of course she was insane – it was an insane act.
That’s no reason she should go on living.
I had to rape that woman; my hormones forced it on me.
fullmoon @ 4:57,
YouTube is full of lots of men having second thoughts.
How The Lindsay Clancy Case Has Entered The Dating World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcbMQRBOHno
The larger issue is that if extreme hormonal imbalances, however temporary, can excuse extreme violence, then the societal repercussions for women will also be extreme.
“She Exposed The Truth About The Lindsay Clancy Case”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kzI6_vTNjro
Geoffrey Britain:
You write, “The larger issue is that if extreme hormonal imbalances, however temporary, can excuse extreme violence.”
First of all, women are FAR less violent than men. That is a statistical fact. So whatever hormonal imbalances they have, extreme violence is a very rare outcome for women.
Secondly. that is not the issue in the Clancy case, although I suppose it might be the issue for a few people. But it shows a profound misunderstanding and simplification of what is alleged in the Clancy case. It was not even remotely a case of simple hormonal imbalance. Women have hormonal fluctuations all the time and almost never kill. Clancy is alleging a rare combination of many elements: a postpartum psychosis which is a poorly understood phenomenon but assuredly not just a hormonal imbalance, and also a co-existing mental problem called bipolar, plus a psychotic break that was a combination of extreme sleeplessness, medication, and the pre-existing bipolar.
Nor is it alleged that this excused the killings. It is alleged that she had diminished responsibility because of all that.
DT:
See my response to Geoffrey Britain above this.
Richard Aubrey:
Law often revolves around defining things that are not strictly definable; people do the best they can.
The Clancy jury received the usual instructions about what “reasonable doubt” is.
Plus, if the juror said he did have reasonable doubt and yet would find her guilty, that violates the Massachusetts law and it doesn’t matter how the juror defines “reasonable doubt.”
Sorry, but it was his decision, and he made it.
How many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin?
The eleven and the defence attorney (and the attorney’s wife) didn’t get what they wanted; “help for Lindsay” and help for all the murdered children in the future of Massachusetts?
I think it’s interesting how the scrutiny is focused on the motives of the lone holdout juror, and has now turned to finding reasons to discredit him, while seemingly unwilling to consider the motives of the other jurors. In another article, the interview of one of these self-promoting celebrity jurors was discussed:
‘Pressed on her mindset heading into the trial in an interview with Shanelle Kaul on CBS Saturday Morning, Devlin said, “We knew that this was a turning point and this would be something that could change. Something to make it better for other women in the future, for other families, you know, justice for those children is this never happening again.” ‘
Going into the trial, ‘they knew’? They? Does it seem that she was not only willing, but eager to serve on this particular case? Like she was advocating for a cause, and this was an opportunity? Devlin is also the juror that revealed during the interview that the holdout was a black man, kicking off the Dox-a-palooza.
The Massachusetts law sucks and should be changed. It places an unreasonable burden on the prosecution. But having three jurors falling all over themselves to take ‘Their Story’ public as soon as a mistrial is called, tells me that they are motivated by something else, opportunities that lie outside the pursuit of justice for this case. It feels more like exploiting an opportunity to validate a crusade. I think there should be more scrutiny over who is stepping all over the rules of jury conduct and attorney conduct. I think the judge made a good call, because maybe this is a mistrial on many levels.
They say they’re angry because he admitted to having ‘reasonable doubt’. Did he, though? Why would I believe anything they say about a man who disagrees with them? If he said it, is it then irrevocable? Or can he ponder further and decide, no, actually that’s wrong – in my mind, she’s guilty of first degree murder? It seems to me the only official thing that matters, is how did he vote when they took the vote? As long as he’s voting in good faith. And I need not point out, that good faith is in short supply, as evidenced by these doxxing fools.
Do you want to guess how much credibility I give to any of the media whores that “served” on that jury?
Their 15 minutes of “fame” is past done, contemptible, all of them
This is not a good look for you, neo.
Late to the party and my plane’s about to take off.
I’m with Niketas Choniates and Art Deco throughout this thread.
“if these allegations about him are true”
A huge “if”. There is a reason we hold the media in disrepute. “If the allegations of genocide are true …” need I go on?
Art Deco:
Nope. If he stuck to his guns on an issue with which they didn’t agree, they would castigate rather than admire him and accuse him of either lack of comprehension or nullification or both.
Exercise bands will never again be seen as innocent objects.
Time to move on.
I am with the Mosaic code on this:Murder (most foul) deserves death.
Neo. If he had vague doubts but didn’t think they rose to change his mind, he might call them what?
I personally think you have to be insane in a normal definition to do what she did. But that’s just me.. Can you get uninsane by committing the act? Get it out of your system? Or are you always going to in a psychosis break, or always far more liable than average to have one next time something related comes along? If I truly thought the shrinks would turn her loose when the next Big Thing hits the headlines….what would be the responsible thing to ?
Anyone know if Clancy was an atheist, agnostic, born Christian but gave up?
The reason I ask that is the moral aspect of all this – not the “Psychology Today” aspect which seems open to interpretation and all over the place. Not the legal mumbo jumbo, jury selection, trial stuff trivia just a basic question as to whether her moral nature was there at all.
Anyone read about or know about that?
Cicero:
The Mosaic code doesn’t define murder in detail, but ancient Jewish law built on it provides criminal responsibility exemptions.
IrishOtter:
I’m being objective and applying my knowledge. It think it’s a good look for me whether you happen to agree with me or not. It’s what I always try to do here, knowing that some people will not agree.
Richard Aubrey:
If he had vague doubts but they didn’t rise to the level of changing his mind, the last thing he should call them is “reasonable doubt” if he understands what his duty is as a juror according to the law.
And if, despite having reasonable doubt, he can’t follow the law and render a verdict according to the law, he shouldn’t serve on this particular jury. He could always say so at the outset and he probably will not have to serve.
What’s more, if this particular juror has outstanding restraining orders against him, he could have divulged that fact and he probably wouldn’t have had to serve.
The insanity plea is – and should be – a defense to the formation of the key element in any first degree homicide: specific intent.
The MA law requiring the prosecution to prove lack of insanity beyond a reasonable doubt is a complete inversion of the law of burden of proof in 49 other states and all Federal law. Taken literally, the MA law on insanity makes it *almost* impossible to convict anyone of a crime requiring specific intent. No prosecutor can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant wasn’t criminally insane. That’s proving a negative…except the negative is a state of mind…where the defendant isn’t required to testify.
That said, if they want to keep that standard, the law should be changed to a bifurcated finding: First degree homicide is one jury decision (to which there is no insanity plea allowed); then during the penalty phase of the trial, the prosecution has to prove lack of insanity. Prosecution does that and the defendant goes to prison; prosecution fails to do that, defendant goes to an asylum until they can be released to prison to serve out their term.
@das:Taken literally, the MA law on insanity makes it *almost* impossible to convict anyone of a crime requiring specific intent.
Judge Sullivan did not appear to think the MA law makes it almost impossible when he instructed the jury on criminal responsibility. Either Judge Sullivan has the law wrong, or lots of people outside MA don’t know how it works in practice. People are convicted of crimes in Massachusetts–I checked–so the state must be reaching its burden the vast majority of the time.
A reasonable juror who followed all the facts presented to this jury could be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible. They have evidence from both sides’ experts that Clancy could have been malingering, and they have evidence from multiple experts that people in psychosis or with bipolar 2 can be criminally responsible as Judge Sullivan explained the term.
Judge Sullivan also emphasized that “mental defect” is not a medical term and it is up to the jury to decide what that is, using all available evidence and not just the testimony of doctors or experts:
So a juror could be convinced on two grounds that MA had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt:
First, that whatever was wrong with Clancy mentally is not a “mental disease or defect” in the legal sense.
Second, that whatever was wrong with Clancy mentally did not remove her capability to conform to the law.
A juror only needs to be convinced of one of these, and could reach either of these through the totality of evidence provided of Clancy’s behavior before and after the murders.
I don’t disagree with Neo that the law in Massachusetts seem to be set up to make this verdict a near certainty. But until I hear the hold out say he had reasonable doubt that she sane I am not really up for trusting the woman who was foreman. She clearly was jazzed about finding a way to find Clancy not guilty.
The big problem I have is how many people are pretending that Clancy will spend a lot of time in the mental hospital. Why would she. How long can postpartum psychosis last?
there are also a lot of people who think this will help women get “help” but if anything Lindsey Clancy had too much help and we have already seen a fan girl of hers murder her own children.
@martin:I don’t disagree with Neo that the law in Massachusetts seem to be set up to make this verdict a near certainty.
I do, because Massachusetts convicts criminals all the time, so they must be meeting their burden of proof pretty often. Here’s a hand-wringing piece in the Boston Globe about how they are doing it TOO often.
Niketas:
Pleading not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility due to mental illness is rare. In criminal cases in which there is no such plea, the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. With the insanity defense it works differently in Masssachusetts; the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no impediment due to mental problems. That is proving a negative beyond a reasonable doubt. Much harder to prove.
“This is the right’s big hero?”
Does this apply to anyone here? And I don’t see how conservatives pointing out the usual hypocrisy of the Left denotes jumping on the racism bandwagon. I’ve filed the whole thing under, “the law is an ass.” The added fact of women wearing pink and behaving as we have seen is just another marker of the upsetting trajectory of our times.
Sounds like LC is now a useless eater, must be cheaper to euthanize her.
LC may be counting her luck not being a canuck.
Pleading not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility due to mental illness is rare.
Why is it rare? If proving a negative beyond a reasonable doubt is much harder to prove, then why isn’t it every defense attorney’s go to? Something isn’t adding up.
@neo:With the insanity defense it works differently in Masssachusetts
I cannot square your interpretation with Judge Sullivan’s instructions to the jury. I’m not convinced your interpretation of how the law works is correct.
If it is true that the defense can utter magic words that can just raise the bar to “proving a negative beyond a reasonable doubt,” then why isn’t this tactic far common?
Why did the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev not use it for the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013? His famous lawyers just didn’t think of it, or didn’t look up Massachusetts law?
And if it’s so difficult to prove the negative once the defense makes the claim, how was Michael McDermott convicted of the Edgewater shootings in 2000 when he faked mental illness?
neo, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.
Only one of the two Tsaranev brothers was captured alive. IIRC the survivor hit his brother with the get away car, but that may not have killed him. The survivor was captured while hiding in a tarped-over boat that was in storage out of the water.
neo, continuing to pray for your ex, and of course, for you.
I think Neo makes a lot of sense. But there is one other issue that should be considered: the difference between Lindsay’s (claimed) condition, and schizophrenia or whatever Jeffrey Dahmer’s condition was. We don’t know what causes schizophrenia (or Dahmerism), but the only known “cure” is taking life-long medication. The medication may or may not work, and the patient may choose not to take it, and often does so choose. So it makes sense to keep that person in an institution forever.
If it is determined that the cause of Lindsay’s condition was the meds she was given, and withdrawing those meds — that she didn’t want in the first place — effective cures her for life, then that is the only treatment she needs.
Not sure about the conclusion that the holdout lied on the jury questionnaire if it asked if he had been arrested, charged with a crime, or been served with a court order. There were allegations made against him in his divorce and in unlawful detainer proceedings (which are civil proceedings) but these are merely allegations, not arrests, criminal charges or court orders. These are merely unproven allegations dressed up and misrepresented in the media as real things that happened! And it’s interesting that only the holdout juror was subjected to this post verdict “background check” and public outing whereas the remaining 11 jurors were not.
OTOH, one of the other 11 expressed that her vote was not based on an evaluation of the evidence but in her urgency to strike a blow to make the public aware of the issue of “post partum.” Appalling!
I agree that everyone has gone to their corners and that there may be a path to a finding of insanity but the 11 jurors themselves by their post verdict pronouncements have indicated that that’s not the path they took.
A Martel:
Could you give a link to that statement about post-partum by one of the 11 jurors?
As for the existence or nonexistence of court orders against the lone juror, this is the quote from the link I gave in the post:
That is a very real court order. This is something he should have disclosed.
Plus, regarding charges: the article says the criminal charges were dismissed (his wife decided to withdraw because she was afraid of losing custody, for whatever reason). If criminal charges are dismissed, that means that the person was originally charged.
More details here:
So the issue, as I stated, is whether he lied on his questionnaire. I think that if he lied, a further issue is why he lied. We don’t know for sure that he lied because the questionnaires are not available. Can we assume that, if he’d told the truth, he would not have been on the jury? It’s not an automatic thing, but it’s certainly not unlikely.
We also don’t know if the other jurors were investigated by the press, although I doubt they were. Certainly no articles were written about their pasts. But I bet some of the public sympathetic to the lone juror are trying to find out if they had such violations on their records.
Lastly, as I’ve indicated, this is the biggest issue IMHO:
If this guy were a holdout for the “not guilty” plea and the others wanted to convict, I doubt most people on this thread who are now defending him would still be defending him.
I don’t like the Massachusetts law, as I’ve stated. I think that most laws concerning the issue of criminal responsibility and insanity are poor, but the Massachusetts one is one of the poorest. Nevertheless, it was the governing law in this case. If the reports of the other jurors about the lone holdout believing there was reasonable doubt and yet deciding “guilty” were accurate, then he either failed to understand the law and/or failed to apply it.
Neo. My last question about what the hold-out should do responsibly presumes he thinks there is a serious flaw in the case which requires juror null. I don’t know that is the issue at hand, but it’s extremely complicated and one might see a different issue; You may recall the fuss over forced-district busing in Boston in the Seventies. Like most of those involved in forcing this on Boston’s lower orders, the judge in question lived in an upscale ‘burb and his kids weren’t affected. This allowed the Just and Righteous to call parents whose kids were not so lucky, ‘racist”. And such has happened with career criminals in blue cities and blue states forever. See the guy who knifed Iryna. If the hold-out presumed, which would not, given the history, be far-fetched, that Clancy would be out, on the street in a year, if not sooner, then he might be justified in thinking holding out is the best thing to do. Maybe next trial, they’ll figure out how to protect the rest of the citizens. The implicit promise about the insanity defense is that society is going to be protected, however long it takes. What if nobody believes the implicit promise?
For everyone who thinks the Massachusetts law means anyone and everyone could plead insanity and would win, that’s not the way it works in practice.
If there is no evidence of mental illness – no diagnosis, no treatment, nothing of the sort – then the defendant will not succeed. Most people do not have that sort of history. Lindsay Clancy did have it, and it went back in time for months before the murders.
In addition, she had a history prior to that of being non-violent, law-abiding, and by all accounts an excellent mother.
It’s not a typical criminal profile or even close to it. Most defendants are nothing like Lindsay Clancy and therefore if they claimed not guilty by reason of mental health problems the prosecution probably would have successfully rebutted the claims. Therefore it’s not usually raised as a defense.
Sharon W:
The “great hero” remark is about tons of comments and articles I’ve seen all around the internet. Does it apply to anyone here?
Those who believe the lone juror was principled and correct, standing bravely against a bunch of liberal harpies, consider him a hero. I’ve seen this quite often on the right, as I indicated. I don’t recall whether anyone here – and I’m not going to check every comment here – has that attitude. But it’s very common on the right side of the blogosphere, particularly in memes.
Here’s a summary from Google AI:
I’ve personally seen these memes, as well as comments to that effect – I believe on a number of sites but quite a few on Instapundit. Here’s just one example of very many.
A couple of thoughts on this.
I’ve seen advanced at least once that a reasonable argument can be made Clancy’s defense attorney, in a real irony unlike that Alanais Morrissette song, likely WANTED the hold out on the jury, and that it is also reasonably likely they knew his history in the court system regardless of how he checked the boxes. To the second point, it appears that anybody with basic identity information and access to public court documents can find this guy’s history in about 15 minutes. (I’m going to leave aside the implication that for some reason nobody explains he would have been rejected for jury duty before being empaneled. Is there any evidence that is standard practice in MA?) It’s crazy to think Reddington didn’t have somebody doing background on the potential jurors at that minimal level. And other than being a man, why would Reddington not want him on the jury? Who is going to be ‘profiled’ as more skeptical of the police and the prosecuting attorneys than a black man who has been, as the kids say, ‘justice involved’? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the vitriol that came out of Reddington came from a rather quick realization (IIRC, the head Karen jury foreman doxxed the juror’s votes by number) that the guy he expected to be a sure-thing ‘not guilty’ vote was the guy holding out for conviction.
The other point is regarding the seeming binary choice between letting her go on the insanity plea and convicting her on first degree murder. I believe from at least a few things I’ve read that the jury was also presented with at least the option to find her guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder. I haven’t read the actual jury instructions like Niketas but I did look up the MA model jury instructions for homicide, and it seems that a jury could find the prosecution met the burden of proving the murder charge but if they left doubt as to possible mental impairment then the correct finding is to judge Clancy guilty of involuntary manslaughter. I suspect that when the head Karen and others claimed the juror said he had ‘reasonable doubt’ that he was making a reference to exactly this finding. This would be ‘reasonable doubt’ that Clancy was guilty of first degree murder under MA law but not reasonable doubt as to the fact she committed murder. IIRC Clancy admitted to killing her kids so there is little room for doubting that she committed murder if you believe her actions indicated clear premeditation which is one of the primary elements, not something that distinguishes first degree murder from voluntary manslaughter.
Juror Paula Devlin stated: “We knew that this was a turning point, and this would be something that could change something to make it better for other women.”
Nope. If he stuck to his guns on an issue with which they didn’t agree, they would castigate rather than admire him and accuse him of either lack of comprehension or nullification or both.
==
So what?
This juror Paula Devlin is also a true-crime junkie who is heavily involved in the Free Karen Read movement to free a woman charged with murder. But the holdout juror’s impartiality is suspect because of a domestic abuse charge that was dismissed?
Sorry, the true-crime súper fan was juror Kellie Farina who apparently also has charges against her for assault and battery.
Perhaps the one thing we can all agree on is that it’s a damn good thing she didn’t have more than three kids….
So, is it possible that Clancy will, upon a re-trial, eventually get a sentence of a couple of years or so in some mental health facility and then be set free??
Presumably she would be released from such a facility when she is no longer a threat to society.
That would set a new precedent.
Was not Charles Manson and his drug addled followers “crazy” folks when they committed murder and probably under the influence of all sorts of drugs?
How come they all got life in prison?? After all, they probably could not really understand what they were doing.
What about Jeffrey Dahmer ; a real crazy nut case who killed and then ate his victims. He most certainly was mentally unstable. He got life in prison and was killed while there.
Why?
After all he was really crazy and as such, could not control nor truly understand what he was doing.
If Clancy’s husband had been the murderer of the children, would the same jury vote in an identical manner as they did for Mrs. Clancy??
I have a tough time believing that folks who can create a plan of action , follow it, and then commit a murder did not know what they were doing and really did not understand what they were doing.
“In 1973, psychologist David Rosenhan sent eight mentally healthy volunteers to psychiatric hospitals, where they feigned a single symptom to gain admission and then acted normally; all were diagnosed with a mental disorder and hospitalized, and staff never detected the deception.”
Here’s a really bizarre and crazy theory; Lindsay Clancy was a labor and delivery nurse and her medical background enabled her to create a scenario and the evidence – an entire story – that indicated she was struggling with postpartum psychosis. Once this was all in place, she killed her kids.
The whole jury was compromised by activism either directly or indirectly by being susceptible to the bullying of the activists. The majority activists listened to experts (nurses) from among their numbers to support their position and bully the holdout activists.
The murdered kids and the rest of society deserve a non activist jury that will consider and evaluate the evidence.
I didn’t catch this during the editing period but “the correct finding is to judge Clancy guilty of involuntary manslaughter” should be VOLUNTARY manslaughter.
@Christopher B:I haven’t read the actual jury instructions like Niketas
Judge Sullivan’s instructions to the jury on manslaughter:
Thank you for this careful review.
There are two ultimate points to be made about the holdout juror, I think.
One: deliberations lasted for days. I don’t think anyone outside of the jury, and maybe even only the holdout himself, can evaluate the holdout’s thinking on whether reasonable doubt was present based on one particular day, and hold him to that finding forever.
There were conflicting opinions offered by the mental health experts, and so jurors had a basis to conclude one way or the other about her culpability.
Two: The holdout (apparently) did not disclose his arrest record during jury selection. That’s a big problem. The judge would have had to closely question him and then possibly have excused him for cause. As a prosecutor, I certainly would have used a peremptory challenge to exclude him from the jury.
They were never going to convict her no matter what evidence was provided.
I’m coming around to Neo’s proposal that the defendant be convicted and sentenced to prison, but the sentence will be served in a psych ward unless and until the mental disability resolves, after which the remainder is served in prison. The disability doesn’t excuse the crime, but it temporarily alters the course of punishment as long as it persists.
It’s an approach that honestly acknowledges the extremely fuzzy line between criminally culpable and dangerously insane.
— Wendy K. Laubach
One of the things that makes this an unpopular idea among so many is that they fear (and not without some reason based on past history) that there is a significant chance Clancy would end up being freed early if she is deemed ‘cured’ or ‘no longer a threat’.
That sort of thing is not as common as sometimes perceived, but it’s by no means unheard of, either. Nor is it unheard of for such people to sometimes then reoffend.
Classic high profile example: John Hinkley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley_Jr.#Further_reading
Yes, that’s not under Massachusetts law, but it’s the same sort of perception.
People would be more open to insanity clemency if they were more confident it would stick when used.
— Art Deco
It means that when we see him praised by Righties, it’s not because they admire his pluck or determination, it’s simply a rooting interest in ‘their side’, no different than arguing about an umpire’s call at a baseball game. That same determination would be excoriated as a character flaw if the outcome reversed.
The Left is no different, they hate him not because they think he is a bad person or acted in bad faith, but because they hate the result. They would praise him and condemn his doxxing if he had voted as they preferred.
This kind of high-profile media circus undercuts the whole purpose of criminal trials and the jury system.
While I appreciate the reference to John Hinckley, I don’t think that fits the potential issue which may be at hand, with the hold out or with his supporters.
If you live in a blue state, near a blue city, or in one, the cumulative effect of seeing one after another bad guy allowed to wander and assault people can be a heavy weight on any scales you’re employing.
The guy Daniel Penny had to restrain ….how many times arrested or had a ‘”brush with the law and he’s still screaming threats at subway riders. The guy who khifed Iryna had how many “brushes’ with the law, let go time after time? Was he convicted? Doesn’t matter. It’s how many times should he have been tried and didn’t even get that far. Now, where is he? Incompetent to stand trial, last i heard. Is he out? Ankle monitor monitored forty hours a week? Cashless bail. Institutionalized? Promsied institutionalized time shortened by mayby 50%. Endless examples, year after year,can’t fail to make an impression. And when “insanity” with an indeterminate (no matter what They say, there’s no telling, considering all the other times it wasn’t solid). What, a juror might be asking himself, will this mean in terms of actual time off the street, no matter what They tell us? “involuntary”manslaughter. Means she didn’t mean to do it. She just did stupid stuff anybody with a lick of sense would know was horribly dangerous, so….not even her fault….so….how long is she off the street? And none of that considers the barrage of sympathy from the outside and from other jurors which may well reflect the sense of whatever part of the establishment is in charge of keeping her away from the rest of us? For a juror to have moral responsibility to act according to the law, he needs to trust the law. To trust it will do waht it says. And if the law has demonstrated it won’t, it’s up to him to do the right thing even if it differs from what he’s told in court. That’s why there’s juror null. So I guess the next question is how we convince people to trust the law in issues like this. Jump right in.
HC68–per Neo’s idea, there would be no question of turning the convict loose upon a psychiatric cure. The prison sentence would still be there to be served, only deferred as long as there was a need for psychiatric treatment. When the treatment is over, the prison begins.
That says nothing, of course, about the continuing danger that some parole board will turn the convict loose, but that’s true with or without a special insanity plea.
neo:
“DT: See my response to Geoffrey Britain above this.”
I saw your response, you make some points, but on this matter, we’ll have to disagree. Murder is murder, sick or not. The proper sentence for such should be carried out more often. If not a deterrent for all, it’s a deterrent for one.
Um, you might want to think that one through again.
Here’s a hint:
Actually, not even the second part of that “hint” is correct…simply because, by definition, NOTHING he does, or says, CAN BE acceptable.
By definition.
(This is what drives Bill Maher up the wall, not that I watch him or think much about him—though he has proven to be a courageous individual, if still somewhat limited by his ideology—who ably demonstrates the adage that in a society where everyone is blind—in this case blinded by an all-too-often seething, fanatical hatred—the one-eyed man is king.)
File under: Dreyfus Jew Trump
Um, while the above may be true in some cases, for all too many you might want to think it through again.
Here’s a hint regarding those all too many:
Actually, not even the second part of that “hint” is correct…simply because, by definition, for those all too many, NOTHING he does or says, CAN BE acceptable.
By definition.
(This is what drives Bill Maher up the wall, not that I watch him or think much about him—though he has proven to be a courageous individual, if still somewhat blinkered by his ideology—who ably demonstrates the adage that in a society where everyone is blind—in this case blinded by an all-too-often seething, fanatical, consuming hatred—the one-eyed man is king.)
File under: Dreyfus Jew Trump
I gotta disagree with our host.
The Right celebrates the line juror for staying a manly man who requires that a murderer be accountable for her murders. Instead, we have the post hoc invention of the briefest psychosis inaginable. How convenient.
Yes. I am soured and cynical about today’s entitled princess “women.” I want nothing whatsoever to do with them. I hold them in moral contempt.
Obviously, our host differs in this regard. But alike cases — either of the accused or the jurors — ought to be treated alike. A foundational principle of justice everyone concedes.
More information on the holdout juror (though how accurate it is is anyone’s guess):
‘…[He] is a “devoutly Catholic Haitian immigrant.” His brother says faith had nothing to do with refusing to acquit a woman who killed her 3 kids. He and his family live in fear of retribution….’
https://instapundit.com/823166/
Yes, she’s crazy. Absolutely! Killing your kids is crazy.
Neo, please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the fundamental issue – legally, at this trial – about whether Clancy had a ‘psychotic’ break or not? A psychotic break caused by hormones or drugs or cumulative stress or whatever, would be the deciding factor in having no criminal responsibility. The holdout juror obviously did not believe she had a psychotic break.* Not sure what the others thought – their opinions all seem to be based on sympathy for her ‘condition’. Not the same thing at all.
*Neither do I.
Has the evidence of a psychotic break been sufficiently separated from the post-partum depression issue? In other words, is the latter confusing consideration of the former? Muddying the waters? Not what SHOULD BE. Not what IS. But, for purposes of the jury, and, separately, for purposes of public discussion, as relevant or not as that may be?
Post partum depression seems to be the major issue in public discussion. Is it relevant in this case at all? Did the defense point to it as an aggravating factor in the psychotic break. Causal factor? Or not at all? And if not, what evidenc, outside of the act itself, is there of the break which can be differentiated from the depression? IOW, had there been no depression, what characteristics of the break before and after the act would have been obvious? Or despite the asserted separation of the two, does the defense NEED the depression?
The simple problem is that the Internet has rendered ANY doubts as reasonable.
It means that when we see him praised by Righties, it’s not because they admire his pluck or determination, it’s simply a rooting interest in ‘their side’, no different than arguing about an umpire’s call at a baseball game. That same determination would be excoriated as a character flaw if the outcome reversed.
==
Why not read what people actually write and what they actually say? You’re listening to the voices in your head.
“neo on September 14, 2026 at 2:28 pm said:
Art Deco and all:
The article says he “faced charges.” Also that he had active retraining orders on him. If that is true and he did not disclose these things, he is in violation. In addition, the allegations are about violence to women (his wife), which would be relevant, as well as to a minor child (his nephew). He apparently grabbed his wife by the throat. Was he trying to choke her? Relevant. The violence was witnessed by other family members.
This is the right’s big hero?”
And now the juror has spoken out.
Prior to the DV claim he had initiated divorce proceeding as he found out his wife was not a citizen and was in the country illegally – he has stated the marriage was a fraud on him and the country to obtain citizenship.
Her DV claim was in retaliation and was dropped.
The “child” was 6 inches taller than him, and the family witnesses were the ex-wife’s family. This is one of those cases where to describe someone as a child may be technically correct but severely misleading.
om: The simple problem is that the Internet has rendered ANY doubts as reasonable.
Important!
AppleBetty:
That was Nate Winchester and I agree with both of you. 🙂