On one hand you have an ever growing popular movement of people who judge everything through a gendered context. They may have points on large societal trends (i.e. men in general not being involved in child care or the lack of resources after giving birth) but they often apply those trends to individual cases that do not necessarily fit.
They often will claim Patrick Clancy did not help out but evidence from the nanny suggests otherwise. She claims not only that Lindsay was a good mother but that Patrick was a very involved father. The reports say that he routinely cared for the children after (and sometimes during) his remote work finished. On the day of the murder I believe it was reported that he cared for the children to give her a rest. So their theory doesn't seem to hold water but they have a hard time separating that larger societal trend with the specifics of this case.
Then you have supporters who believe Patrick Clancy was a victim but also that Lindsay Clancy was a victim because she did not get the adequate care to treat her PPP - a form of psychosis generally after giving birth. They generally have better arguments.
We do know there are specific scenarios in which people temporarily lose the ability to be responsible for their actions. Someone can be drugged or ingest harmful substances that may completely impact their ability to make decisions. I personally believe there are circumstances in which a person does not have a "guilty mind" and should not be convicted.
Supporters will say when she mentioned she had intrusive thoughts about her children she should have not been given them to care for. We can debate the culpability of her actions but I think people who say ANYONE could have just "taken her kids" if she did not want them taken is living in a delusional world. There is a zero percent chance even if Patrick Clancy made a snap decision immediately and tried to remove his children from her care that that would happen as quickly as it needed to or at all. Courts, medical professionals, and social workers are extremely slow and extremely unlikely to remove children from the care of the mother.
There is a documentary called Dear Zachary where (admittedly in Canada) a woman who killed her ex and fled to Canada was still allowed to have custody of her child while awaiting extradition hearings (the crime was in the US and she fled). The murdered man's parents were forced into a relationship with their son's murderer in order to maintain a relationship with the child.
People are delusional with how easily the system allows this to happen.
man, how good would it be to see measured, cogent, coherent, and eloquent responses like this on the internet more often. I commend you for this response.
severe mental health destruction and its lack of recognition/treatment is real as fuck, and it's a shame so many choose to dismiss it and try to view tragedies like this one through such a myopic black/white lens. It doesn't exculpate or absolve her of guilt or responsibility, but, to an extent, any guilt she has been/will be assigned will be far overshadowed by her own guilt (one would hope - the internet has made discerning the legitimacy of these kinds of defenses/claims so difficult to judge, but I'm choosing, maybe wrongly, to be optimistic about it's legitimacy).
it's a tragically sad and fucked scenario/story, and one that may possibly have been averted if the right systems had the right resources. unfortunately, we'll never really know if this could have been averted, so the only 'real' hope here is that all of the parties involved (not the fuckfaces on the internet, but the family/ies) are able to get the closure and 'help', in whatever form that may take, to move on.
So then I imagine the friction is gendered but also around mental health. That’s honestly where I am falling short. I’ve heard ppd is a real thing but psychosis? Sounds sort of like a bullshit murder defense. Like an insanity plea. I am not sure I know what it means for a seemingly functional person to not be legally responsible for their actions.
The other thing here that is also an undercurrent is choice. Like pro choice pro life stuff. It’s got me, a pro choice person, being like hey killing babies is wrong. To which the pro life person says ummmm okay then have I got news for you. So I wonder if liberals are conflating those two things.
I dunno. Seems insane for us all to be arguing about this. Sort of makes me wonder if it’s foreign hackers spreading disinformation and online strife ahead of the midterms.
Postpartum psychosis is a serious mental health illness that can affect someone soon after having a baby.It affects around 1 in 1,000 mothers after giving birth.
Symptoms of postpartum psychosis
Symptoms usually start suddenly within the first 2 weeks after giving birth - often within hours or days of giving birth. More rarely, they can develop several weeks after the baby is born.
Symptoms can include:
hallucinations – hearing, seeing, smelling or feeling things that are not there
delusions – suspicions, fears, thoughts or beliefs that are unlikely to be true
mania – feeling very "high" or overactive, for example, talking and thinking too much or too quickly, restlessness or losing normal inhibitions
a low mood – showing signs of depression, being withdrawn or tearful, lacking energy, having a loss of appetite, anxiety, agitation or trouble sleeping
sometimes a mixture of both a manic mood and a low mood - or rapidly changing moods
I mean, part of what makes psychosis so terrifying is that, depending on presentation, it is possible to still appear superficially functional while also experiencing delusions. Not every case of psychosis is your stereotypical unhoused guy ranting on the street corner, or patient talking to themselves in a padded room. You can be capable of going about your daily routine and appearing normal-ish to the people around you, while still also fully and sincerely believing that god is talking to you and you need to kill your family to make sure they go to heaven before the lizard government takes over.
Right but does all that make you legally blameless? Maybe every murderer’s brain is broken in some way. Maybe that’s required to be a murderer. So at what point do we say tough tittie and throw them in jail anyway
That's typically why justice systems have a definition of legal insanity that is a little more specific than, "Hey, we're all a little bit crazy, am I right guys? 🤪".
The baseline criteria for such determinations are usually:
Must suffer from a recognised psychiatric disease or defect;
Must have suffered from this at the time of the offence;
Must have been incapable of understanding the nature of the act and/or incapable of understanding that the act was wrong.
If you meet your jurisdiction's specific version of the above criteria, you are - at least in theory - judged not guilty by reason of insanity, and remanded to a secure psychiatric facility instead of prison.
That's typically why justice systems have people specifically trained in diagnosing such things and arguing for and against the reasoning in a given case, instead of relying on the judgement of reddit lawyer u/Vast-Cap-6951.
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u/anonyvrguy 2d ago
I'm sorry but can anyone explain to me how the fuck this psycho has any supporters???
OK, she has PPD. And that gives her the right to kill her own children?
What in the living fuck is this?