Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial was thrust into the national spotlight after she took the lives of her three precious children in their Duxbury, Massachusetts home in January 2023.
The only thing standing between Clancy — who admitted to killing her children — and an acquittal by reason of insanity was one lone juror, one person who represented what’s left of justice, common sense, a heart, and sanity in our culture. He held the line and represents what’s left of a just and moral society.
Three jurors have now gone on TV to talk about Clancy’s case, and one actually said the lone male holdout “had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
Little do they know how much they’re helping the prosecution’s case. The fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children was not some inconvenient detail he needed to “get off.” It was the central part of the case.
Digging into this murder trial has made my stomach churn. As a mother with children around the same ages as Clancy’s were when she allegedly murdered them, this case shakes me to my core.
Culture has made Clancy the victim instead of her children
Somewhere along the way, Clancy’s children shifted from being the prime victims in this case to Clancy gaining the sole victim card.
What hardly any of these mothers talk about are the actual victims: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. Her children had to experience the very person who gave them life take it away in the very place they should have felt safest.
What I believe lies at the root of this twisted support is a culture centered on self-absorption, where an adult’s pain and mental state erase the violent harm they have inflicted on others.
Compassion has become distorted when it is placed at Clancy’s feet rather than the children she strangled to death. Where is the compassion for them? What if a man had committed these killings? What if she strangled puppies instead of her own children? What if it were your children instead of hers? Would these same women be crying in solidarity with Clancy or demanding justice?
The viral “Same, Lindsay” movement transformed Clancy from the woman who killed three children into a symbol of overwhelmed motherhood, while Cora, Dawson, and Callan were pushed to the margins.
Mental illness and criminal responsibility are not the same thing
Even in my own social media circles, I’ve watched women rush to absolve Clancy of moral responsibility because of her mental health, but that’s not the same thing as being legally insane.
Five days before the killings, Clancy was Googling terms like “hallucinations” and “psychosis,” yet the doctors treating her before the killings did not observe psychosis. If she was self-aware enough to Google those terms, why didn’t she tell her husband, doctor, nanny, or anyone else that she thought she was dangerous?
Timothy Jones Jr. claimed schizophrenia, brain injury, depression, and voices telling him his children would be better off in heaven. His jury still rejected insanity and convicted him. Christina Riggs killed her two children and argued severe mental illness. Her jury rejected that defense, too.
Those cases show that mental illness does not automatically erase criminal responsibility.
Clancy also sent her husband out, checked the drive time, and killed the children while he was gone. Yet, 10 jurors were reportedly ready to find her not criminally responsible.
That shows just how far gone our culture has become. We’ve confused compassion with exoneration and mental illness with insanity. Someone can be deeply mentally ill and still know right from wrong.
The mistrial should not turn postpartum suffering into a blanket excuse for violence
The insanity defense is not supposed to mean motherhood was unbearably hard. Therefore, Clancy cannot be held responsible. But that is essentially how droves of women online have distorted the case.
Women have filmed themselves crying on bathroom floors beside wandering toddlers, screaming into cameras, throwing ice cubes, and declaring “same.” They are communicating something darker: motherhood is agonizing, we understand how you could reach this point and kill your children slowly and methodically.
There is an enormous moral difference between admitting motherhood can bring out the worst in you and publicly identifying with a woman who strangled all her children. There is something deeply morally warped about mothers publicly same-ing with an alleged mass murderer.
Life has gotten too easy, our standards too posh, and now anything truly hard, including raising children, is treated as unbearable. Women used to raise far larger families with a fraction of the conveniences we have today. Even in the 1950s, women averaged well over three children without grocery delivery services, endless childcare products, or other modern labor-saving technology.
Clancy had support from her husband and family, childcare help, financial means, extensive medical care, and time away from her job as a labor and delivery nurse. She had access to more help than countless mothers throughout history ever did.
Being a mother is one of the most rewarding, purposeful, and beautiful things I have ever done, but it is far from easy. Nothing worthwhile is. My children have tested me like nothing else, but they are also the biggest source of my growth and joy.
When my 3-year-old son faces a challenge, I remind him, “We can do hard things.” Motherhood requires the same mindset. It is messy, tiring, inconvenient, and exhausting, but worth every ounce of it.
THE LINDSAY CLANCY TRIAL JUST EXPOSED A MAJOR PRO-LIFE BLIND SPOT
I have been postpartum twice, and I know that season can be extremely hard. But depression is not automatically psychosis. Exhaustion is not psychosis. Feeling overwhelmed by motherhood is nowhere close to legal insanity.
Mothers who are struggling need support, community, treatment, and sometimes serious intervention. But they also need a culture willing to tell them that suffering does not erase responsibility, self-control still matters, and the children entrusted to them are not disposable simply because motherhood is hard.
Caroline Woods is the founder of Woods Strategies and a wife and mother residing in Rapid City, South Dakota.