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Throughout the four weeks that I have spent following Lindsay Clancy's trial and the online response, I have heard observers speculate that she is a monster. I have heard them speculate that she is a victim. That she is a loving mother and a criminal mastermind. I have heard that she is a psychopath. That she made her psychiatrist fall in love with her. I have viewed security-footage stills from a CVS, which online commenters swore was game-changing, and which they marked up with arrows and circles. Only no matter how many times I looked, I couldn't tell what those arrows and circles were supposed to mean.
I have heard people speculate that an intruder killed Lindsay Clancy's children. I have heard people speculate Patrick did it, then pushed his wife out the window, then she got amnesia, then became gaslit into believing she is the guilty one.
She is the guilty one — she has never denied that her children died at her hands. The question is whether she's legally guilty. The question is whether Lindsay, who had been struggling mightily with mental health issues after the birth of her third child, who was suffering from insomnia, and who had been prescribed multiple antidepressants and sleep aids that she did not feel were working, was undergoing a psychotic break at the time of the deaths.
The defense implied she was overmedicated and failed by clinicians who should have realized she was a danger to herself and others. They said she lacked the capacity to understand that what she was doing was wrong and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
The prosecution's argument is that, while Lindsay might have been suffering, on the night of the deaths, she was still able to understand that killing her children was both wrong and criminal. But she wanted to end her own mental suffering, so she proceeded with a course of action that required both haste and planning.
"What types of decisions had to be made to effectuate the strangulation of the children?" one prosecutor asked a psychologist on the stand earlier this week.
"There are many ongoing decisions that have to be made to accomplish a killing like this in 18-20 minutes," the psychologist said. "For example: Why the basement? Who among the children goes first? What do you say to the kids to keep them from panicking?"
Is there significance in the fact that Lindsay may have crushed the pills before swallowing them? What to make of the fact that the restaurant Lindsay suggested was one the Clancys didn't typically frequent? Or that she'd timed out the route before sending Patrick to pick up the food?
Maybe nothing. Maybe there is no significance. But when a complicated case is presented on YouTube, suddenly everyone believes it's something, that they have cracked the whole thing open, in ways that doctors, investigators, lawyers and Lindsay herself could not.
This case was blood in the water for every would-be armchair detective, circling and ready to divvy up the misery. The horror became a project, the grief became must-see TV; if you watched on YouTube, as I did, testimony about the effects of Wellbutrin, for example, might be periodically interrupted by ads for bunch-free underwear or industrial-strength packing materials.
While watching the live stream, I wondered a lot about the trial's camera operator. For most of the court proceedings, the lens remained focused on whomever was testifying, a series of experts and family acquaintances. But sometimes the camera would pan to Lindsay.
As if the operator knew that viewers wouldn't want to simply evaluate expert testimony, but witness Lindsay's reaction and then evaluate that, too. She normally sat expressionless and still, brown hair held in place with a headband and curled around her shoulders. Who can guess what was going on in her mind? I don't know if, in a situation like that, you force yourself to be present for the horror, or you attempt to escape by trying to remember all the transition metals on the periodic table. All the European capitals. Something like that.
At one point, while a medical expert described examining the lifeless body of Cora Clancy, Lindsay's shoulders began to heave up and down as she sobbed. "I can't do this," she wailed.
Lindsay's face was largely blocked from view as the court hastily adjourned for a recess, but we could still hear her crying, "I can't do this; I can't do this," until the camera panned to the place it always did during breaks, to the blue Massachusetts seal on the courtroom wall.
Have I gotten it wrong? Left something out? If you are one of the spectators who has been following this trial, your answer is almost certainly yes, I did not properly interpret the circles and arrows, I left out the most important thing. Something to do with Patrick's involvement as a husband, maybe, or with Lindsay's career as a labor and delivery nurse, or with the difference between hearing voices and having intrusive thoughts.
We want to really nail this down. To have it all make sense and learn the secret of what compelled Lindsay to kill her children.
If you believe Lindsay should be found guilty, it might be because this is the most hideous act you can imagine, and you think that a mother's love should be able to supersede any alleged voices in your head.
If you believe she should be found not guilty, it might be because you want to believe that if a good mother — and Lindsay was by all accounts a good mother — kills her children, then she must have been insane while doing it.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub after her husband persuaded her to have another baby — despite doctors' warnings that another pregnancy would be ruinous to her mental health. She was initially found guilty until the case was thrown out; in a new trial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Susan Smith pushed a car containing her two sons into a lake, and then blamed it on a fictitious hijacker. She was not unwell, just unimaginable.
But almost everyone seems to agree that Lindsay Clancy was desperately, desperately sick. At various points, we learned in the trial, specialists who treated or interviewed Lindsay speculated that she might have had major depressive disorder. Or adjustment disorder with anxiety and depression. Bipolar disorder. Bipolar 2. Postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis.
Postpartum stress disorder.
A courtroom is not the right place for this, I found myself thinking more than once. Which is ridiculous because the courtroom is the only place we have for this. But our legal system is adversarial, so jurors have to choose one option or the other: either she was a failed by the medical system, or she was a monster.
It seemed to me, though, that Lindsay was often helped by many professionals to the best of their ability. She had outpatient treatment. Inpatient. She was referred for talk therapy. She was prescribed medications, some of which she was afraid to take because of the side effects. The family was close with Lindsay's parents, and they offered help. The family was close with Patrick's parents, and they offered help.
Lindsay was begging for help. Everyone tried to help. But there are vast chasms of the mind that we still do not understand, that we try to fit into our personal concepts of "motherly instinct," and that we then expect a court to figure out.
We can't nail it down. It's not going to make sense. That is the secret.
I'm going to tell you something that nearly every mother has said when we have discussed this case at the swimming pool, or on the sidewalk after pickup or in a group chat that originally started because of Dolly Parton. The thing that almost every mother has said is, I would be dead by now.
As in, Lindsay did not ultimately end her own life when she ended her children's, but how did she not try again later? How does she continue to wake up every morning?
One mental health expert testified that Lindsay was now "future oriented," which we were left to assume is an official psychological term referring to the ability to envision and plan ahead, but which I heard and thought, what future is there? What future would she want there to be?
"She did nothing wrong in her life," her attorney said in closing arguments. "She was a nurse, a daughter, a wife and a darn good mother," who ended up in a nightmare "because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care." "She was depressed," the prosecutor said in her closing arguments. "She was exhausted. She was done. She didn't want to try anymore, she felt damaged. Those kids were her protective factor. They were keeping her from ending her misery. And so she had to remove the protective factor."
I have been watching this trial for days. I have been nauseated by it at night. Sometimes when I can't sleep I tiptoe in to look at my sleeping daughter, who is the same age that Cora Clancy was when she died, thinking about what I would do if someone hurt her. And then thinking about if that person was me.
I sit there on the edge of the bed, and after weeks of doing nothing but hearing people try to convince me of Lindsay Clancy's guilt or innocence, I find myself having a difficult time caring about the outcome. Because I have a difficult time picturing caring about the outcome even if I were Lindsay Clancy.
Instead, I wonder if I'd be thinking: Punish me. Don't punish me. Send me to prison. Send me to the hospital. Send me home. It does not matter to me. None of it matters to me. Give me my children. Give me back January 23. Punish me or don't, but there is nothing you can do that is worse than the hell I created and where I live every day.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• Every era gets the 'Odyssey' it deserves
• Parenting in the world of 'Million Dollar Nannies'
• RFK Jr. is now handling snakes. What does this mean?
• The Oscars are a lost cause
• I think I know why everyone's lost their minds over Taylor and Travis
• 02/23/23: Don Lemon returned with an apology in a can
• 06/02/22: The trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was too much and not enough
• 03/30/22: The misguided chivalry of Will Smith
• 02/03/21: AOC compares the talking points of her GOP colleagues to the tactics of an abuser
• 11/10/20: The end of Trumpism? Yeah, keep dreaming
• 11/09/20: America's confused obsession with Mary Kay Letourneau
• 07/09/20: The debate over schools reopening isn't about education. It's about how parents are quietly losing their minds
• 07/06/20: Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly turned an intuitive female bond into a tool for abuse
• 06/10/20: The world is messy and hard to control. Take help, and give it, where you can
• 05/21/20: Knock, knock: Who's there? Answering the door is no joke during pandemic
• 04/15/20: Don't wave away frivolous pleasures. Those are also 'essential' in hard times
• 03/20/20: Pandemic, panic and toilet paper mathematics
• 01/13/20: Meghan Markle just flipped the princess fantasy on its big crowned head
• 01/08/20: In court, powerful men have a lot to gain by looking helpless
• 10/18/19: Does Mayor Pete sound assertive or ... shrill?
This time, it's not just female candidates beset by archetypes and associations
• 09/18/19: The messiness and meaning of Caroline Calloway
• 08/29/19: Andrew Luck, ultimate male?
• 08/12/19: Epstein did not deserve to keep his 'allegedlys'
• 08/02/19: The Dems' 2020 'Wife Guys'
• 01/09/19: R. Kelly, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK: How pretending to be bad boys helped them get away with being bad men