Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said she wants to see Lindsay Clancy, the woman who went on trial for fatally strangling her three young children, publicly executed as a “warning to women everywhere.”
The congresswoman called for the death penalty after Clancy’s court proceedings resulted in a mistrial earlier this month due to one sole juror who blocked the defendant from being acquitted.
“She killed her kids,” Mace told TMZ on Monday. “She deserves nothing less. Three kids are dead.”
Asked what a public execution would look like in the modern world, Mace said, “It could be by firearm. It could be an electric chair. I don’t really care.” She added that a public display of the death penalty in Clancy’s case “should be a warning to women everywhere” that “you don’t kill your kids.”
Clancy could be heading toward another trial or a plea deal after the judge declared a mistrial over a hung jury on Sept. 4. The murder case went viral on social media and became extremely divisive among Americans because Clancy’s defense was that she shouldn’t be held liable for killing her children due to her impaired mental state from postpartum psychosis.
Following the jury deliberations, Clancy’s defense attorney asked President Donald Trump for a pardon. The federal pardon wouldn’t work, however, as the former mother of three children faces state charges in Massachusetts.
Mace criticized the lawyer for publicly requesting a presidential pardon when it would not affect the state case.
“I’m not even a lawyer. I didn’t go to law school. It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure that out,” she said. “It was just a publicity stunt. I think it’s nasty. It’s ugly. He wants sympathy for his client being in a wheelchair. Her children are dead. She should be dead, too.”
In response to the attorney’s plea, Trump pointed out that he can’t pardon state crimes while expressing sadness for the whole situation.
“It’s a very sad situation,” Trump said. “I certainly heard that. But look, it’s very sad. There is no winner there. There’s no win, no matter what you do. Three children are dead. I don’t know.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AFTER MISTRIAL IN THE LINDSAY CLANCY MURDER CASE
Mace recently introduced a bill to fully restore the death penalty in Washington, D.C., for first-degree murder, terrorism, first-degree child sexual abuse, and other “heinous” crimes, as she called them. She supports the death penalty for anyone who harms children, whether that be through murder or rape.
“Child rapists, too, add them to the list of public executions,” the Republican lawmaker said. “Look at the crime we have in this country. If people can get away with murdering children, what else can they do?”