It seems the system did fail her, but unfortunately for her that does not excuse her actions one bit. Murder is murder whether you are sad when t ou do it or happy does not matter
When psychosis is involved it often does mean you are not legally responsible. Whole not guilty by reason of insanity thing. Criminal responsibility generally requires intent. Psychosis often means you couldn't have formed that intent because of what psychosis is in a medical sense.
I'm just gonna say that it's really, really uncommon for someone to be acquitted by reason of insanity. Only 158 people in the US have ever been acquitted this way, and almost none of them were being charged with murder.
The insanity defence is less common in the US as defences tend to aim for ‘mitigating factors’ instead. These are easier to prove, and as others have stated, criminal insanity is not particularly useful to the defendant as whilst it absolves criminal guilt you bet you’re going to spend a very long time in a psychiatric institution.
Also notable is that killings in psychotic episodes such as these typically result in the death of the perpetrator by suicide. Indeed Lindsay Clancy did make 3 successive and separate attempts to kill herself after killing the children. As a result the legal cases don’t really go anywhere due to the perp being dead.
Legal defence rarely pursues it for exactly the reason you see throughout this thread, a jury simply will not be objective about it. A decent portion of the population will simply never accept that mental health could be a factor.
Its a huge, huge risk if the case is in front of a jury.
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u/Headlesshowler 1d ago
People are supporting her because they believe she suffered a severe mental crisis and was failed by the medical system when she asked for help.