A lawyer friend once said to me that she deliberately tries not to pay too much attention to the American legal system because sometimes it simply makes no sense whatsoever. Even if Charles Dickens hadn’t famously given us the phrase “the law is an ass”, the absurdity that emerges from some courtrooms these days can only be described as, well, asinine.
Take, for example, the case of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother and former nurse who killed her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan, in January 2023. The killings themselves were not disputed. The issue was whether Clancy was legally criminally responsible at the time.
Her defence argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors countered that, despite significant psychiatric problems, she understood what she was doing and acted deliberately. After more than 80 witnesses, 300 exhibits, and roughly 37 hours of deliberation over seven days, the jury could not reach unanimity. A mistrial was declared on September 4.
Let me first establish that I am not commenting on whether Lindsay Clancy was legally insane. I wasn’t sitting in the courtroom, didn’t hear the witnesses, and I am certainly not qualified to diagnose postpartum psychosis. So this is not really about Lindsay Clancy, but rather, about us as a society.
WHAT ARE WE LEARNING FROM THIS?
I agree with my lawyer friend that you have to take everything coming out of America these days with a pinch of salt. And, if it concerns the American justice system, take about a pound. But America matters because its cultural debates eventually migrate into our television programmes, universities, social-media feeds and public psyche. In other words, America sneezes and Jamaica catches a cold. Or COVID.
What concerns me, therefore, is the possibility that the enormous sympathy surrounding this case reinforces a distinctly gendered idea that, when women do terrible things, society instinctively searches for some excuse such as trauma, hormones, PMS, perimenopause, pregnancy, or some external force to explain the behaviour. We can now add postpartum psychosis to that alphabet soup of apologies. Conversely, when men do terrible things, our response is considerably simpler. Monster. Murderer. Satan himself.
Clancy’s supporters have been extraordinarily passionate. A GoFundMe established for her reportedly raised more than US$1 million, while hundreds of pink-clad women lined up outside the courthouse to show their support. Despite the spectacle, the entire situation is tragic. Three babies are dead and a family has been ripped apart.
WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?
Let’s be clear. There is nothing inherently wrong with compassion or the willingness to forgive. What interests me, though, is how selectively society likes to distribute it. Consider, for instance, Randy Santos who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia after he murdered four homeless men while they slept. Earlier this year, a jury rejected his insanity defence and convicted him of first degree murder. In 2012, Robert Moormann pursued an insanity defence after killing and dismembering his adoptive mother. The jury deliberated for about two hours before convicting him of first degree murder and sending him to death row.
And then there is the granddaddy of them all, Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered, dismembered and cannibalised his victims. Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane to 15 murders. If killing people, cutting them up and eating parts of them to prevent them from leaving you doesn’t at least get you into the “something is seriously wrong with this guy” club, I don’t know what does. Nevertheless, after only five hours of deliberation, a Wisconsin jury found Dahmer legally sane. He received 15 consecutive life sentences before another prisoner later permanently shortened that arrangement.
THE DANGER OF GENDERED EXCUSES
Which brings us to Ms Clancy whose lawyers told a courtroom that, despite having four psychiatrists, a nanny, and a stay-at-home husband, the poor thing snapped under the pressure of raising three children. All nine female and two male members of the jury sympathised with her, but the other male on the panel saw otherwise. The outpouring of support for Clancy, and the castigation of that lone dissenter, demonstrates just how willing society is to find sophisticated vocabulary to explain or excuse when a woman struggles emotionally. But, when men struggle, that vocabulary becomes remarkably concise: Man up. Suck it up. Don’t be a beta.
We are so willing to expand our understanding of female psychology and female behaviour, yet we insist on absolute personal responsibility and accountability for men. This has led to a growing resentment among men that society has created an elaborate architecture of empathy around women while providing no equivalent space for us. If we are evolving in our understanding of trauma, biology and mental illness, why are men selectively left out? Why don’t I get to blame a sudden surge of testosterone when I come home from a bad day at the office and kick the cat?
A VICTORY THAT COULD BECOME A DEFEAT
But there is another more insidious irony here. For generations, women fought against the stereotype that hormones and emotion made them too irrational to run companies, command militaries, sit on courts, lead countries or even vote. So we should be extremely careful about quickly embracing arguments that female biological processes can override personal agency. Should employers begin asking whether a woman’s hormonal state affects her fitness for high-stakes decision-making? Should a mother lose custody of her children simply because she has suffered postpartum depression?
Obviously not. But, if society gives Clancy a pass because “her hormones made her do it”, somebody will eventually take that logic somewhere women absolutely do not want it to go.
And, right on cue, as I was finishing this column, America yet again supplied another deeply disturbing footnote. News just broke that an Illinois mother who prosecutors say had become “very invested” in the Lindsay Clancy case has just been charged with first-degree murder after allegedly strangling her two-year-old son, claiming that voices told her the boy was the devil. Her lawyer says she was experiencing a psychotic episode.
I give up.
Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and a crisis communications consultant. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett
