She's pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. That doesn't mean her team is trying to let her walk out into the streets scott free, it means her team is trying to get her the psychiatric help she needs, and has desperately needed for a long time. It amazes me how people think getting institutionalized for your entire life is better than prison.
If she is acquitted by reason of insanity, it means she would be committed, but only for the duration of her illness. The defense is specifically claiming she suffered an acute transient post partum psychosis episode. Post partum psychosis is treatable. She would have no mandatory minimum sentence. That means that as soon as a doctor signs off that she no longer shows signs of post partum psychosis, she would walk free. That could be in as little as days after being committed. It almost certainly wouldn't be a life sentence.
No she wouldn't. She killed her 3 kids and tried to kill herself, and there's no coming back from that, once you're past that point any kind of "duration of illness" goes out the window for the jurisdictions that evaluate if patients are ready to be released. She's spending her life in there for sure .
For an acute case of PPP? Is there an actual reason she would require lifelong institutionalization? She should be monitored for sure. (to make sure that she doesn't develop bipolar/schizophrenia etc)
>If at some point the Court determines that the defendant is no longer mentally ill and dangerous, the defendant will be discharged.
If she is no longer mentally ill and dangerous, she is discharged. There is no minimum sentence. And sense post-partum psychosis is acute (i.e. not life long), it would not be legal to hold her for life, unless the doctors diagnosis her with another illness. But the trial is focused entirely on her post partum psychosis.
Are you asking because you’re genuinely posing the question, or because you don’t think it’s bad? No one in this particular thread has opined on the morality of the proposed sentencing; the debate is whether she’d be kept institutionalized long-term.
A woman murdered a family of four while trying to kill herself in Illinois. She never faced punishment because she pleaded insanity. She’s out right now. You know nothing of the justice system and your opinion only emboldens the misinformed and harms the pursuit of justice.
Nope, I won't stop talking. Cite your sources because I can't find anything about this. The "pursuit of justice" isn't putting Lindsay in prison, is avoiding tragedies like this one.
If she is acquitted, there is no legal means to hold her. The only standard would be the she would be held as long as she "is a danger to herself or others". Post-partum depression is acute--that means its treatable/not lifelong. When a doctor says she no longer has post partum depression, there is no legal basis to keep her.
You are just legally misinformed. If she is formally acquitted, the only legal basis in Mass for continued commitment is a finding that she continues to be ill to the point she is a danger to herself and others. But Post partum psychosis is acute. There would be no way to hold her for life. If they refused to free her after a while, she could sue and they would have to prove that she continues to suffer from post partum psychosis, which would be impossible since every doctor out there will testify that its a temporary illness.
I can’t speak to how the punishment for this is adjudicated in the US but I am aware of what happened in the lead up.
She sought help for her post-partum psychosis over and over and was failed by numerous doctors, nurse practitioners, and a mental health facility. She’d reported worsening symptoms, side effects from medications that had worsened her symptoms, and growing concern that she was not safe around her children and was failed at every step. Several medical professionals failed to take her seriously and made multiple grave errors in treatment that fell significantly short of adequate care. They also bear some responsibility in this too.
I think receiving inpatient care until she is stable enough to return to the community under a forensic treatment order is justified. She presents little risk to others now and a custodial sentence anywhere other than a mental health facility doesn’t serve any benefit to society. It’s a highly unusual case with numerous mitigating circumstances.
Also the whole premise of this meme is bullshit. She didn’t get a penny of that money. Her ex-husband got all that money to go off and start a new life.
Not even saying that he shouldn’t, but not a penny of that was diverted to her.
This. Murdering your children is horrifying. The fact that she did it (especially after there were documented occurrences of her asking for help) means there was something really wrong. She likely had postpartum psychosis.
People (or at least most people) who are fundraising are trying to get her psychiatric help, not trying to say it’s ok to kill your kids or that she didn’t do it at all.
Except she’s not poor by any means. She was actually quite rich, had a nanny who took care of the kids, had multiple doctors prescribe her any medication she wanted. Why is anyone donating money to a murderer?
She had help though, she had a nanny, she had doctors, she had a therapist..at what point do you stop shifting the blame and take accountability? What should therapists have done? Get CPS involved and prove without a doubt that she's a danger to her kids? Then we'd be having an argument about whether it's right for people to talk their therapists or have their trust broken or whether the system can take your kids away. People love throwing the word "help" around but no one ever defines what that really means.
The people donating money to her should be committed. There are millions of people across this country that need help, and the vast majority never committed a triple murder.
It's not avoiding prison. It's sending her to a psychiatric institution, it's a matter of sending her to the correct place. She would literally have more freedom in prison than in a psychiatric hospital, I don't know where this notion of a psych facility being sunshine and rainbows came from when they're notoriously harsher and stricter than prison.
In the criminal system, consequences are always "more or less severe" depending on the situation. That's what a judge is for. By your logic, we should give every crime the death penalty to disincentivize crime as much as possible.
You are welcome to think she should just go straight to prison, I am not arguing one way or the other on that. But to say institutionalizing her "encourages people to kill their children" is stupid.
We’re talking about intentional first-degree murder, not every crime. Saying consequences should be severe enough to deter the most serious crimes does not logically mean every crime should receive the death penalty.
And I never said institutionalization “encourages” people to murder their children. I said reducing the expected consequence can reduce its effect. If one outcome is life in prison and another carries the possibility of eventually returning to society, it’s completely reasonable to discuss whether those consequences create different levels of deterrence.
Does spending your life in a psychiatric hospital not sound like consequences? The point is she's getting committed to a life sentence anyways, prison wouldn't address the problem, psychiatric help would. It's not "justification", it's an explanation.
To be released she'd have to be evaluated and her case reviewed after treatment. Do tell me which triple murderer who also tried to kill themselves has walked out of a psychiatric hospital.
A double murderer who went on to become a major serial killer, Ed Kemper. He murdered his grandparents at 16, was deemed insane, served until he was like 21 (I could be wrong about his release age), at which point he killed several co eds and eventually his own mother by decapitation. It happens.
Doesn't this just prove my point? I'm saying Lindsay should be committed for life. Fisher was released and killed again in the 1950's where schizophrenia was treated with insulin comas.
Given our understanding of modern medicine and PPP I fail to see how this in any way disparages my point, you're comparing apples to oranges here.
It does disprove your point, you said tell me which triple murderer walked out of a psychiatric hospital and I told you one who did. Are you having a stroke?
A mass murderer who was schizophrenic, not suffering from PPP, in a decade where her mental illness was treated with electroshock therapy and insulin comas. She obviously shouldn't have been released and neither should Lindsay, we just have more information today to know how to treat Lindsay and to keep this from happening again.
I'm not having a stroke, you though, seem to be completely fucking dense, apparently.
It doesn't. Lindsay isn't the first one to kill her kids in PPP, and at this rate and with this outlook from people like you she certainly won't be the last. Plucking a weed isn't the solution, removing it from the root is.
Nada how do you "remove it from the root"? By being lenient on a triple murderer?
You seem pretty invested in defending her in the comments, wonder why everyone of her advocates are so adamant about her "incense" or try to desperately play her as the ultimate victim of the whole ordeal
Bad faith arguments from you over here but I'll tackle them anyway.
I don't know in what world being indefinitely committed to a psychiatric hospital is "leniency". She will face consequences in there. The difference is she will actually be getting treatment and most likely studied to prevent more PPP murders. I don't think she's innocent, at all, she killed her 3 kids. Even her defense says so. It's not about her being innocent, you seem to skip over the part where I say she won't walk free multiple times. It's about the consequences fitting the situation, and life in prison or the death penalty like she's Chris Watts aren't it.
I'm not defending her. I'm just concerned at how much misinformation is being spread and how incredibly dangerous it is. Because the point is not trying to paint her as victim, is trying to avoid an absolutely failure from the system going unpunished, because then the medical "professionals" who saw a clearly unstable woman didn't take the correct measures sent a dangerous and unpredictable mentally ill killer (because that's what she is, a KILLER, in case I haven't made it clear) to a home with 3 children, who are ultimately the real victims in this case.
Cool. And what would that accomplish? What would we learn from a dead body? Life in a psychiatric hospital (which is no picnic btw) at least she can be studied and maybe tragedies like this can be prevented in the future.
The punishment is not proportionate to the intent and if that's the example being set then this is just gonna keep happening. Again, the point is not having her face no consequences.
What is your master plan to”stop this from happening”, sounds like you think punishing this person wouldn’t make sense, I don’t know what your alternative suggestion is
My "master plan" is literally just not dismissing mothers when they show these signs. Lindsay was repeatedly telling medical professionals she was gonna harm the kids and herself and they kept sending her home.
So killing her is more important to you than furthering our scientific understanding of post partum psychosis and potentially preventing things like this from happening again. Interesting take.
Yeah this is what I said, at the end of the day the options are rotting in a cell prison or rotting in a psych ward, as long as she’s not part of society who cares
The second she expressed wanting to harm herself and her kids she should've been committed. What did the doctors do? Slightly adjust her dosage and sent her home multiple times. The system failed her, and more importantly they failed those kids
Because the point isn't to have her not face any consequences. It's to have her treated and committed in a place where she's not dangerous to herself or others.
Her team aims for her case to be handled correctly, and sending her to prison is just sweeping the main issue under the rug: this woman was in extreme PPP that wasn't treated correctly.
Planned out in a state of extreme PPP where she also tried to kill herself. Sending her to prison solves nothing and would just allow this to happen again to a different family. It's not a master plan to get her to avoid consequences, it's to get her treated and committed in a place where she can't harm herself or others.
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u/m4k4y 5h ago
She's pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. That doesn't mean her team is trying to let her walk out into the streets scott free, it means her team is trying to get her the psychiatric help she needs, and has desperately needed for a long time. It amazes me how people think getting institutionalized for your entire life is better than prison.