Looks to me like hormones is what the defense is using.
Defense attorneys contend Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and should be found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
The defense is not saying “hormones caused the break.” That is a straw man.
What they are saying is that Lindsay Clancy was in a psychotic state—specifically postpartum psychosis on top of bipolar illness—and that that mental state is why she should not be held criminally responsible. Hormones are background biology after childbirth. They are not the legal claim and they are not the diagnosis.
Two different sentences
What people are sneering at:
“Her hormones made her kill the kids.”
What the defense actually put to the jury:
She had a mental disease (bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis). In that state she lost substantial capacity to appreciate that the act was wrong, or to control herself. Therefore she lacks criminal responsibility under Massachusetts law.
Those are not the same argument. The first is pop-science. The second is a capacity defense.
Hormones are a risk factor, not the cause they are pleading
After delivery, hormone levels crash. Sleep collapses. That window raises the risk of a rare psychiatric emergency in a small group of women, especially those with bipolar vulnerability. About 1–2 in 1,000 births. Almost every new mother has the same hormonal drop. Almost none become psychotic. Almost none kill anyone.
So if “hormones caused it” were the theory, it would explain millions of births and three deaths. It doesn’t. The defense’s actual mechanism is psychosis: broken reality testing, alleged command hallucination, no grasp of wrongfulness. Hormones, if mentioned at all, are only how that illness can get triggered in the postpartum period. Trigger ≠ the crime. Trigger ≠ the plea.
What they asked the jury to believe
Not: estrogen fell, therefore not guilty.
Yes: she was psychotic, so she did not have the mental capacity the criminal law requires.
You can accept or reject that psychiatric claim. Prosecutors did reject it. They said she planned, timed the husband’s absence, and still knew what she was doing. That is a fair fight. “It’s just hormones” is not that fight. It flattens a psychosis defense into “she had a baby, so chemistry did it.”
If you want one line: they are claiming a psychotic break, not a hormone excuse.
While I don’t really have an informed opinion on this matter, I appreciate you fair comments on it.
I don’t know all the details as I’ve never treated her, from what’s been published, there are obvious issues. I am not saying her medical team did anything incorrect but treatment was not effective and possibly made it worse.
Psychiatric meds are not always effective and many carry the dread black box warning. They can increase the risk for suicide and other harmful behavior.
We have a stigma about mental health and I will always fight to destroy that stigma when possible.
Could she have been faking? Sure but that doesn’t appear to be the case since it’s well documented. She should have been in inpatient treatment but stigma and cost prevent that. They knew she was having ideas if harming herself or others.
She did try to kill herself and is now paralyzed from the waist down, presumably permanently.
I realize now I need to read these details before commenting in the future.
Frankly she has been punished enough by the universe, if she even deserves punishment.
The vast inconveniences she will suffer for rest of her life will serve as a minute by minute reminder of what she did.
I’m in favor of her getting the treatment she needs. I don’t deem her to be a threat to anyone in her condition, and an insanity verdict in this case will not meaningfully encourage others to fake it.
Why I feel this one is little different. This seems to be well documented and she’s a cripple now. This isn’t a case of oh I got caught, let me hide my tracks.
Legally we can’t allow it but I don’t think she should be allowed to have children again.
From what I can tell, meds are hit and miss. What works for one person may make another worse. Trial and error.
You will see that is what they were doing. The main reason is that the theory behind most of the medicines is pure quackery.
With an eleven to one to for acquittal the outcome of a retrial is likely to be the same or a finding of noy gulity and a waste of time.
It’s worth pointing out that in the American judicial system a finding of not guilty just means that the evidence did not support a finding of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt .
A defendant can in fact be guilty but if the prosecution fails to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt I walk.
They’re going for a not guilty by reason of insanity. She admitted she did it, the defense says she did it but was insane because of postpartum psychosis (hormonal).
Jeffery Dahmer had documented mental problems too but was found not insane.
She should be locked up for the rest of her life.
Dahmer wasn’t insane. Insane is a legal term and not a medical term. Dahmer knew what he did was wrong. He was just a gay guy who liked to eat people, that isn’t insane.
I’ll take sentences I didn’t expect to read today for $2,000 Alex.
Pasted
Benjamin Cole, Oklahoma. He killed his 9-month-old daughter. He had a paranoid-schizophrenic diagnosis and was found to have a growing brain lesion. He was guilty and Oklahoma executed him in October 2022.
Reginald Brooks, Ohio. Days after his wife filed for divorce, he killed his three sons: 17, 15, and 11. He then left town. He had paranoid schizophrenia too. The court that sentenced him even said he was mentally ill before, during, and after the killings. Ohio executed him.
Richard Fairchild, Oklahoma. He killed his 3-year-old son. He had schizophrenia-spectrum, psychosis, delusions, and brain damage. He was executed in November 2022.
André Thomas, Texas. In 2004, in the middle of religious delusions, he killed his wife, their 4-year-old son, and 13-month-old daughter. He said God told him to do it. He has a long schizophrenia history, including hearing voices as a child. A jury heard the insanity defense and rejected it. He was sentenced to death.
Larry Robison, Texas. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He killed five people, including an 11-year-old boy. He ran an insanity defense. Texas executed him.
I’ll look up the official case records and reporting for each of these executions so the details are accurate.Here are the documented facts on each case, not advocacy summaries.
Benjamin Cole — Oklahoma
Crime: December 20, 2002, Rogers County. Cole, then in his late 30s, was playing a video game when 9-month-old Brianna Victoria Cole would not stop crying. He grabbed her by the ankles while she was on her stomach and forced her legs toward her head until she flipped. The medical examiner found her spine snapped in half and her abdominal aorta torn through from non-accidental stretching. He went back to the game and left her in the crib. He later confessed. He had a prior California child-abuse conviction involving his son.
Mental-health record: Defense later argued untreated schizophrenia, catatonia on death row, and a growing brain lesion. A 2022 independent evaluator reported he cooperated with testing and showed no substantial current signs of mental illness, intellectual impairment, or neurocognitive impairment. A district judge found him competent to be executed. The Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency 4–1. Family members of the victim said the illness claims were overstated.
Outcome: Convicted of first-degree murder; death sentence affirmed. Executed by lethal injection at Oklahoma State Penitentiary, McAlester, October 20, 2022, age 57. Pronounced dead 10:22 a.m. He gave a rambling two-minute prayer on the gurney. U.S. Supreme Court declined a stay.
Reginald Brooks — Ohio
Crime: March 6, 1982, East Cleveland. Two days after being served divorce papers, Brooks shot his three sons while they slept: Reginald Jr., 17; Vaughn, 15; and Niarchos, 11. He had bought the gun nine days earlier. After an earlier fight over schoolwork he had told the oldest son “you’re dead.” He then left town (bus toward Las Vegas). Their mother, Beverly Brooks, found the bodies when she returned from work. She has said he killed the boys to punish her for the divorce.
Mental-health record: Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The three-judge panel that sentenced him wrote that he “suffered from a mental illness—schizophrenia—before, during, and after commission of the [murders],” but that the illness did not leave him without substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or conform his conduct to the law. He was found competent to stand trial. Later courts found him competent to be executed. Prosecutors accepted the diagnosis but said it did not cause the murders. His wife rejected the illness-as-cause explanation.
Outcome: Convicted in 1983; death sentence affirmed through state and federal courts. Governor Kasich denied clemency. Executed November 15, 2011, Lucasville, age 66. No final statement. Family of the boys attended wearing shirts with the children’s photos.
Richard Fairchild — Oklahoma
Crime: November 13, 1993, Del City. Fairchild, an ex-Marine, beat 3-year-old Adam Broomhall (his girlfriend’s son) after the child wet the bed. Prosecutors said he held both sides of the boy against a hot furnace, then threw him into a table. Adam never regained consciousness and died that day. An assistant DA at the time called it the worst child-abuse case she had seen. Court records and later news accounts also describe punching and other blunt trauma.
Mental-health record: History of head trauma (boxing and military), childhood abuse, substance abuse, and later diagnoses including schizoaffective disorder / schizophrenia-spectrum illness with psychosis, delusions, and documented brain damage. Defense said the brain-damage evidence was never fully presented to the jury; one juror later said she would not have voted for death if she had known it. Prison records described him as floridly psychotic at times. The state said competence-to-be-executed is a low bar and that last-minute competency filings were delay. Clemency denied 4–1.
Outcome: Convicted of first-degree murder; death sentence. Executed November 17, 2022 (his 63rd birthday) at McAlester. Declared dead 10:24 a.m. Supreme Court and Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied last-minute stays.
André Thomas — Texas (not executed)
Crime: March 27, 2004, Sherman. Two days after a suicide attempt and ER visit in which staff described him as paranoid and “really mentally ill,” Thomas kicked in the door of his estranged wife Laura Boren’s apartment. He stabbed Laura, 4-year-old Andre Jr., and 13-month-old Leyha Hughes with three separate knives so their blood would not “cross-contaminate” and “allow the demons inside them to live.” He said God told him Laura was Jezebel, the boy was the Antichrist, and the infant was evil. He cut open Laura’s chest and removed what he thought was her heart (it was lung tissue) and took organs from the children. He turned himself in and said God wanted the killings. Days later in jail he gouged out his right eye, citing Matthew 5:29. Years later on death row he removed the left eye and ate it.
Mental-health record: Long history: voices from childhood, suicide attempts from age 10, family history of schizophrenia. Two court-appointed doctors found paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis at the time of the crime. Prosecutors accepted psychosis but argued it was voluntarily induced by cough medicine. The jury rejected the insanity defense. He has been housed in a Texas psychiatric prison unit for years; recent clinicians have said he remains actively psychotic and, in some evaluations, incompetent to be executed. An all-white jury included members who later said they opposed interracial marriage (Laura was white; Thomas is Black).
Outcome: Capital murder conviction and death sentence, 2005. Affirmed on appeal. He remains on death row / psychiatric custody. A 2023 execution date was set and did not go forward; competency litigation has continued. He has not been executed.
Larry Robison — Texas
Crime: August 10, 1982, Fort Worth / Lake Worth area. Robison killed five people: roommate Ricky (Bruce in some records) Gardner/Bryant — shot, stabbed, sexually mutilated, and decapitated — then next door Georgia Reed, her 11-year-old son Scott, Earline Barker, and Bruce Gardner. Victims were shot in the head and had their throats cut; Georgia Reed was also stabbed repeatedly. He said voices through clocks warned him about Apocalypse and that he had to free souls. He told police he did it to “find God.” He did not deny the killings.
Mental-health record: Diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic years before the crime. Parents sought treatment; he was discharged at 21 because he aged off their insurance and was not yet violent enough for state beds. Family history of schizophrenia. Defense experts said he was delusional and legally insane at the time. The state argued malingering and heavy drug use (marijuana, amphetamines, LSD, PCP). Juries at two trials rejected insanity. A later competency hearing found he understood why he was to be executed. He once described waiting for execution as like a child waiting for Santa, and asked to be killed on a full moon.
Outcome: First conviction reversed for jury-selection error; retried and again sentenced to death. Pope John Paul II, the EU, and NAMI sought clemency. Governor George W. Bush did not intervene. Executed January 21, 2000, Huntsville, age 42. No final statement.
Legal through-line across all five: U.S. law (Ford v. Wainwright and later cases) bars executing someone who does not understand they are being put to death and why. It does not bar executing someone who was mentally ill at the time of the crime if a jury rejects insanity and later courts find competence to be executed. Insanity in most of these states required that the illness left the defendant unable to know the act was wrong or unable to conform conduct to the law. Juries and reviewing courts repeatedly found that bar was not met, even where schizophrenia was conceded. André Thomas is the only one of the five still alive.
In the Lindsey Clancy case, you have women wearing pink, and saying this could be me, and starting GoFundMe’s for her. Last I heard it was over a million already collected. I wouldn’t have commented on this thread if it wasn’t for that stupidity making women look like fools. I sure wouldn’t leave any of my great grands with anyone that wears pink and said this could be me.
I also think the people who already knew she was having those thoughts and left her alone with children were stupid. I read she had been hospitalized once already over those thoughts. If she really wanted to kill herself, she could have hung herself with one of the straps she used on her children. It’s takes a few minutes to choke someone to death, and knowing the last thing those little ones saw was their own mothers face makes me sick.
She has to be held accountable.
The defense of legal insanity requires that the defendant was unable to know the difference between right and wrong.
The fact that Jeffrey Dahmer took actions that indicated he premeditated the murders and took defensive actions to avoid apprehension indicates that he knew right from wrong and was therefore not legally insane.
I hope this don’t become one of those tic tok trends.
Kailey Erhart — Mandan, North Dakota (2026)
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Allegedly attacked her 3 children (3 years, 1 year, 5 months)
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Two died; the 1‑year‑old survived
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No confirmed psychiatric diagnosis yet
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Charges: Two counts of murder, one attempted murder
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Status: In custody, undergoing psychiatric evaluation
What the prosecution argued
Prosecutors said Clancy deliberately created a window of time by sending Patrick on errands for:
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takeout food
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medication for their daughter
They argued she:
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researched how long the trip would take
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calculated the time she would be alone
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needed him gone to carry out the killings
This comes directly from closing arguments, where ADA Jennifer Sprague told jurors that Clancy looked up the distance and timing of the errands to ensure she had enough time.
I am in agreement with you.