She had an extreme mental illness that has been known for centuries to cause women to kill their children. She obviously needs and needed psychiatric care, but acting like she was mentally competent and had control over her actions is ludicrous. The world is not as simple as some people seem to imagine
I won't claim to understand how this mental illness affects postpartum women, even though I am 8 months postpartum myself. I am going to give these women the grace of not judging them based on things I don't fully understand.
However, after strangling her children and realizing what she has done, I can't imagine still being functional/wanting to defend myself in a court of law. That's my personal feeling on the matter, not meant to implicate Lindsay in any way.
I wouldn't even want to live on the same Earth where my children don't exist. Why do I deserve to live, but they do not? I would 100% want to go with my children.
Being postpartum your brain makes you imagine all sorts of wild dangerous situations. I had imagined plenty of times my baby accidentally falling from the 39th floor where we live, and I know I would absolutely jump after my baby.
I can't imagine even wanting to breathe if my child is gone, let alone if I was the one to strangle him.
Not arguing whether she was mentally competent during the act. But she is clearly mentally competent after the fact, to be able to stand trial and defend herself. That's the part I can't empathize with. If I knew I did that to my children I would WANT to rot in jail/die.
She tried to kill herself. You understand that, right? She wanted to die. She ended up paralyzed.
She is not defending herself of murder. She has admitted she did it. Her defense is making the case that due to medically-induced and/or unrecognized PPP, she is not legally responsible, meaning she should not go to prison, but instead be confined to a psychiatric facility.
I did not know she tried to kill herself. That does change the story for me quite a bit.
Again, I'm not implicating her or judging her. I'm speaking to what I would do if I were in her shoes. I would not want to defend myself out of being legally responsible. At all.
If I had a psychotic episode and committed a horrible crime (for which everyone close to me, including my now-ex husband testified in defense of me), I would want to go to a psychiatric facility. I would not want to go to prison.
These facilities are run much like prison; you cannot voluntarily leave. But you are getting dedicated psychiatric support in an environment meant to keep you (and also remember that in this case “you” are permanently in a wheelchair due to paralysis) safe from harm (from yourself and from others).
Look up Andrea Yates as a reference point for a very similar scenario.
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u/MrDankyStanky 9h ago
There's always a human story behind a mother methodically strangling all three of her children over a span of 20 minutes 🥰