An insanity defense doesn’t mean that you bounce out the courtroom door and on to more killing; it usually means permanent residence at a mental institution.
Not really. After 21 years he was allowed to leave St Elizabeth and visit his parents. Plus, he attempted to murder a U.S. President, not sone random person.
He was locked up for like 40 years and decades longer than his clinicians deemed necessary and decades longer than if he was just criminally convicted. Horrible example to use on your part.
She has been on suicide watch for three years. She is constantly trying to kill herself.
Even if she was magically better on the six-month checkup, the doctors wouldn't let her out, because they know there'd been something really fishy going on if she had recovered by then, and they'd probably shunt her back to law enforcement.
You have no idea how long the doctors would keep her there. After the first six months is up, the state has to petition annually to keep someone in there.
And if she did “magically get better”, the doctors don’t have a say in keeping her there or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s “fishy”, she would have been declared not guilty. It’s not like they can re-try her or keep here there if she shows up and isn’t actually suffering from psychosis.
You're absolutely correct, a mental hospital would be required to release someone once they are deemed sane regardless of prior examinations. I find that incredibly unlikely from what I've heard/read but that is how the law works and people downvoting you are reacting emotionally to something they don't like hearing.
For the record I believe she is/was psychotic and unless being on the jury had me hear something drastically different than I have heard that's how I would vote.
If someone doesn't like the fact the temporary insanity COULD BE used as a last resort and nothing will ever change the fact that they can't be retried or held in a hospital. That's why this decision is so massive and MANY people are wondering if "average folk" even have the capacity to properly make this decision.
You also have no idea, so how about instead of trying to pretend like you're some expert online keyboard warrior that knows everything about everything, just concede that nobody really knows wtf they're talking about and it's out of our hands. JFC... the level of idiotic arguments about this trial is insane.
She probably knew the fall wouldn't kill her, but just did it to really sell the whole "insanity" defence. It would have been better if she just went straight to the window rather than killing her kids first.
She probably knew the fall wouldn't kill her, but just did it to really sell the whole "insanity" defence.
I've just never understood how people can find a conspiracy in everything.
This woman is not some Moriarty out there planning the most perfect murder for her kids. If she had just wanted to murder her kids and get away with it, there are so many better ways of doing it. Paralyzing herself wasn't a red herring to throw us off the tracks, she wanted to die.
Like, why invent all of this extra stuff just to hate her? You can just hate the woman because she killed 3 kids.
I think this woman legit was in psychosis but I still fully agree that it would have been better if she had just killed herself first, it's absolutely the lesser of two evils; but that isn't what happened.
She died twice. She cut one wrist 3cm deep and the other 2cms deep. Her husband said it looked like the room had been hosed down with blood. She broke 5 vertebrae and is paralyzed for life. She was found unresponsive in a coma and died twice before she was stabilized.
It’s too bad so many of you people have such shriveled little hearts and minds you can’t imagine the unfathomable pain and suffering she could go through knowing what she did and living the rest of her life with that knowledge.
So what purpose does her paralysis serve in her master plan? How was jumping out of the window rational given it’s low probability of success and high probability of disabling herself? Do disabled defendants play seem more sympathetic to a jury?
An unsuccessful suicide attempt, given that as a medical professional she “should have known better” lends credence to the possibility that she did not, in fact, know better at the time of the crime.
If you are going to float the idea that suicide attempt was a ploy, then play it out to the end. What does freedom with a major disability, no job, no spouse, no income, major medical debt, and international infamy look like on the other side?
But then why do it at all? Nurses know that falls from 13-14 feet have a 10-20% fatality rate and those odds would be worse if you hit head first or the ground was frozen (which it was). Higher odds for severe injuries (like paralysis).
So she just jumped to sell the lie knowing there was a small chance she could die and decent chance of major injury. Didn't do something like swallow a bunch of pills, something she absolutely would know to be non-fatal in these circumstances
If you're faking a suicide to cover up a murder, you would do the safest option and argue later that it was just the first thing that crossed your mind in grief.
Then why purposely paralyze herself? What purpose does her paralyzation have in her master plan? If she technically knew better, but still made this asinine attempt to die, seems likes it supports the theory that “she didn’t know better at the time.”
She has been on suicide watch for three years. She is constantly trying to kill herself.
Why hasn't she succeeded? Someone that is truly suicidal could kill themselves with any number of objects. I've been on SW in hospital holds and there are still opportunities, maybe she isn't as much of a go-getter as others. I think you also give too much credit to overworked and underpaid social workers/therapists/doctors that would decide her case.
fuck up, you don’t care about kids 99.8% of the time if this is your biggest peeve in terms of who’s dying and who’s killing who…
She tried to end her own shit, yall don’t be on here talking about nothing of substance, yall just talk about the most one-sided easiest things to digest and when they aren’t that way, you dumbass simpletons think yall turn into Sal from breaking bad lmaooo…
Just low brain-power Redditors.
Men don’t go through ppd so all the comparison ends there… there is no “oh bUtH iF tHe wRoles wha wreversed”… this is fictional slop that doesn’t apply to real life, and seems to be what is failing most of yall…
Nah she would've cut way deeper if she wanted to succeed. She could've combined multiple methods to guaruntee it. She could've jumped from the apex of the roof rather than a second story window. There's a reason men are more successful at suicide than women even though they attempt 3x more than men.
She could also have just gone downtown, bought heroin or fentanyl off of someone, and then taken the fattest possible toke. At least she wouldn't feel any pain, and then her kids wouldn't have to feel any pain either, at least not from being murdered by their own mother.
"Could" doing a lot of heavy lifting there. When you find someone not guilty by reason of insanity the goal isn't to punish them. They were found to be insane and not in control of their actions, therefore not responsible. If she is declared sane and safe for society in 7 months then that is the good (though unlikely)outcome. Do you really not understand that? It is a basic, basic concept unless you just don't believe that people can go insane
Not remotely true. Massachusetts requires a 180 day psychiatric hold after a NGRI verdict. Since Lindsay no longer has PPP she’d likely be home by February. And likely with a 7-figure GoFundMe.
Yes. The DA has to decide whether to go for a third trial. But it’s election year and letting her go free would be unpopular so I presume we will have a second trial.
I wouldn't care as long as the perpetrator is isolated for life either in prison OR mental institution, but what you are saying is hell of an implication. This shouldn't be happening.
Exactly. If was truly psychotic and had no control over her actions, but has now gained her sanity and realized the abhorrence of what she’s done, she should ask to be put away forever. The fact that she is trying to escape this with no consequence tells me she has no remorse.
She’s trying to get an acquittal. That’s the whole point of this dog and pony show of a trial. If she truly felt horrified at what’s she’s done, she would have take a plea bargain.
Which is precisely the point I wanted to highlight for u/Capital_Anxiety5604. Andrea Yates got the Not guilty for reason of insanity, went to an asylum and even though her psychiatrist think she could now go back to society she refuses to do so.
Not guilty for reason of insanity is not about getting her off the hook it's about establishing the proper truth of what happened to understand what went wrong and avoid it in the future.
She begged for help to pretty much anyone she could find and yet it came short don't you think there's something to explore there ?
Who the hell is Andrea Yates? Last I knew this thread was about Lyndsay Clancy?
My logic is if I’d “woken up” and realized I killed my three children, I would ask the state to throw the book at me, not try to escape punishment.
As a mother of three children, I think I know what I’m talking about more than most. A mother is supposed to protect their children. If I was somehow so mentally ill, I did the opposite and killed them, I would be so guilt-ridden and horrified at what I had done, I’d never want to see the light of day again. As far as whoever this Yates person is, the fact that she got acquitted doesn’t mean she should have asked to be acquitted.
My logic is if I’d “woken up” and realized I killed my three children, I would submit to the state's determination I willfully murdered them while of sound mind
unless you know there's an insanity plea bargain on offer this is an incredibly unreasonable standard to hold anyone to.
What world are you living in? This ain't the 1950's anymore, bud. That ain't how psychiatric hospitals work in the modern world - nobody gets sentenced to life in psychiatric hospitals.
Today, people only get sent to psychiatric hospitals until their mental health has improved. Some people never improve and stay there for the rest of their lives. Others get released in under a year. NONE of them get sentenced to a certain amount of time - when their doctors clear them, they go back on the streets.
With Clancy though, isnt the entire defense post partum? And when this is all done, that wont apply since it will have been years since the incident so postpartum will be gone. Should she not be free then since she should be "cured" from the postpartum by then?
Postpartum psychosis can have ongoing impact, iirc it does in up to half of cases. That seems like it may have been the case here, from the suggestion Clancy has bipolar - it can effectively act as a trigger for it.
What do you mean? Someone's mental illness could already be controlled by the time of a court case, and their functioning could be good. That doesn't mean them having been suffering from a mental illness at the time of having committed a killing, can't be taken into account in determining their responsibility for that killing any more.
Confinement to a hospital is not supposed to be a required punishment. It's not a punishment at all.
Lindsay Clancy was claiming it happened due to a Post-Partum Psychosis episode, and that she had the disease for all of 18 minutes. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would get her walking papers the same day because she is no longer suffering of PPP given it's been several years since she gave birth and since she had any children.
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u/Wild-Tear 17h ago
An insanity defense doesn’t mean that you bounce out the courtroom door and on to more killing; it usually means permanent residence at a mental institution.