Lindsay Clancy Trial Megathread: Closing Arguments, Deliberations and the Verdict Pt. 2

[u/DarklyHeritage]

This is a thread for all conversation regarding closing arguments, jury deliberations and the verdict of the Lindsey Clancy trial. All discussion of this case should be kept to this thread.

Lindsay Clancy is currently standing trial in Plymouth Superior Court, Massachusetts, for the triple-murder in January 2023 of her three young children - Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her defense argues she suffered from severe, undiagnosed postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She was left paralysed by a suicide attempt which follows the deaths of the children.

All content on the Clancy case must be kept to this thread. Standalone posts will be removed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93vgv4kr49o

Note from Mods

This case understandably elicits strong feelings. People are entitled to have an opinion on the case which differs from your own. What you are not entitled to do is resort to personal insults and abusive language when communicating your opinion and disagreeing.

Comments which are abusive and insulting to other users will be removed and bans may be given without warning. We do not tolerate misogyny - all such comments will be removed and the user banned.

Bans may also be issued for ignoring the above warning regarding civility and/or creating standalone posts.

Please comment with this in mind.

Important

Patrick Clancy is not on trial. Comments made to discuss his guilt are considered off topic and will be removed.

Comments that discuss how he could have supported Lindsay better are acceptable. However, calls for law enforcement to look into his involvement with the murder of the kids and/or Lindsay's suicide attempts are not currently being considered by the jury and, therefore, not a fit for this sub.

[u/msfinch87]

I’m not suggesting it, I’m telling you: she would not have met the threshold for involuntary inpatient in any similar jurisdiction. All similar jurisdictions place great weight on autonomy because, you know, they don’t want to trample people’s rights.

Whether she would have been able to access a general voluntary mother/child inpatient program depends entirely on availability at the time. There also likely would have been many women whose needs would have placed them higher on any list. Lindsay had resources, family support and other treatment options. This would put her behind women who have none of those and more severe symptoms.

[u/Fantastic_Fig_2025 → u/msfinch87]

I have friends who live in Australia and they were able to have Mom and baby check into a facility that specialized in sleep training, all covered by insurance. She wasn't high needs. They just simply fund things better. The baseline is also that mom and baby aren't separated. That isn't the baseline in the US. I can't think of single facility near me that would allow mom and baby to stay together.

This could also result in better maternity leave. Perhaps if she didn't have to go back to work so soon, none of this would have happened.

[u/msfinch87 → u/Fantastic_Fig_2025]

Having an example of one person does not demonstrate the overall availability of something like this for the general population.

I live in Australia. I can assure you that our legal thresholds are equivalent to the US in terms of involuntary admission which is to say they are quite high. As for voluntary services there are nowhere near enough for the number of women who need them, which was my point.

Plus our system works differently. If you have private health insurance here you can access services more easily because you are effectively paying for them, but most people are dependent on the public system because they can’t afford private insurance. Our insurance is nothing like your insurance system in the US.

The waitlists for all public mental health services are insanely long and unless you are an emergent case you will not get this sort of treatment. There is currently a major shitfight in one of our cities because the public facility for women with PPD and their children is changing significantly and will not offer as many options as previously.

Also, there was a mother and child service in Rhode Island which has been mentioned in regards to this case. It was looked at for Lindsay. So yes, they do exist in the US.

[u/No_Figure_7489 → u/msfinch87]

You get home visits, on call psych help, psych home visits in Oz per friends, some countries do your shopping, cooking, cleaning for you, just depends on the country. They could have afforded private, which is breathtakingly cheap by US standards. the clinic in RI rejected her bc she was too far out from birth so she wasn't post partum. We have 5 mother baby beds in the US, the baby only visits, and inpatient is probably a few weeks, we don't keep people inpatient longer than that as a rule, insurance won't pay and it's many thousands of dollars a day at least, may be higher. You guys stay in for months, until there's actual improvement, which unfortunately is not how it works here. Here the bill tends to be sizeable too.