Why are people more sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy than Andrea Yates? (Child death mentioned)

[Anonymous]

There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

[Anonymous]

So now we know she intentionally plotted and planned to kill the kids.
It wasn't psychosis. Let that be a lesson learned to not really around someone so quickly just because they fit your image of ideal.
So why?
I'd put money on their being marital problems.

She probably found out her husband was cheating or planning to leave and this was her vengeance.
Picture perfect relationship it wasn't
It's happened before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

Bingo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So now we know she intentionally plotted and planned to kill the kids.
It wasn't psychosis. Let that be a lesson learned to not really around someone so quickly just because they fit your image of ideal.
So why?
I'd put money on their being marital problems.

She probably found out her husband was cheating or planning to leave and this was her vengeance.
Picture perfect relationship it wasn't
It's happened before.

I agree the prosecution needs to find motive here. If there’s something there - an affair, a pending divorce, etc. - they’ll have an easier time convincing a jury.

I know a lot of people think the act of mapping out the distance to the restaurant shows intent but I personally do stuff like that all the time! Like I do this if I’m hungry and I want to know how long it’ll be before I’ll be able to eat, lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had NOT made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

That should have said not made national news.

If you are looking at research, the term used is filicide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So now we know she intentionally plotted and planned to kill the kids.
It wasn't psychosis. Let that be a lesson learned to not really around someone so quickly just because they fit your image of ideal.
So why?
I'd put money on their being marital problems.

She probably found out her husband was cheating or planning to leave and this was her vengeance.
Picture perfect relationship it wasn't
It's happened before.

Any psychiatrists want to weigh in?
Does psychosis have to be spur of the moment decision making? I believe psychosis and a psychotic break are two different things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like two things can be true here: She indeed committed a horrible terrible crime. Unthinkable. Horrific.
She could also have been unaware of what she was doing and psychotic.
Why can't both things exist?

Would you have the same opinion if it were, say, your nanny and your kids? After all, anyone can become psychotic and unaware of what they’re doing right?

Yes, this is exactly how we must view this. Lindsay was 8 months postpartum, she could’ve been working as an RN, what if it were your kids that she murdered? Would you be saying “oh but she had a moment of psychosis, I understand, I can totally relate to her” no, if it were your children, you wouldn’t be saying this. You’d want her dead or put behind bars to suffer for the rest of her life.

Except the person whose kids actually were murdered (Patrick Clancy) has forgiven her.

This was before he knew the details - like how she set him up to look for a hard to find medicine and drive to a far away restaurant, etc. Not to mention realizing he was on the phone with her while she was in the middle of strangling his children. We have no idea how he feels now and he could easily be a prosecution witness by the time this goes to trial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now we know she intentionally plotted and planned to kill the kids.
It wasn't psychosis. Let that be a lesson learned to not really around someone so quickly just because they fit your image of ideal.
So why?
I'd put money on their being marital problems.

She probably found out her husband was cheating or planning to leave and this was her vengeance.
Picture perfect relationship it wasn't
It's happened before.

Any psychiatrists want to weigh in?
Does psychosis have to be spur of the moment decision making? I believe psychosis and a psychotic break are two different things.

It has been answered over and over again in this thread, with links to experts explaining the facts. NO, psychosis does not prevent a person from methodical planning - a simple Google of psychosis, the hallmarks of the condition and an explanation of how a psychotic person can look perfectly normal and engage in insane behavior moments later is readily available with examples of many cases.

We keep beating the same dead horse here because a whole bunch of people with zero personal experience and very little knowledge of mental illness are weighing in as experts and rejecting outright the actual opinions of experts who have studied psychosis extensively.

Ordering food and mapping the route to the restaurant is a crime tens of millions of Americans engage in regularly. When you think about, some of the evidence the state is trying to marshal as proof of her premeditation is laughable. People are not recognizing that they are seeing slivers of evidence presented in the worst possible light. The jury will see a whole picture, and when they refuse to convict her on the charges they’ll be vilified by all the armchair experts who are clogging up this thread with ignorance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kevin Reddington is one of the most elite trial attorneys in the country with a great record defending his clients. As a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney myself, I can attest that what people on this board think about his performance is irrelevant in the face of his record of success. He connects with juries and persuades them with the better story. I remain convinced this woman won’t be convicted as charged.

https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2023/02/08/duxbury-lindsay-clancys-attorney-kevin-reddington-history-high-profile-clients/69880508007/

Many of the clients listed in that article either plead guilty or were found guilty. None of the listed clients seem like upstanding citizens with bad luck.

This defense attorney won an acquittal for a woman who killed her partner while he slept, successfully arguing a battered woman defense - this is an outstanding outcome.

Your comment merely reveals how little you know about the workings of the criminal system. Winning acquittals in cases with the most egregious facts is not really the expected objective- it’s great if it happens, but the defense attorney’s goal is often to hang a jury or convince them to settle for lesser included charges which preserve their client’s opportunity for release and returning to a life outside incarceration at some point. That’s true even when you may believe wholeheartedly that your client is actually innocent - the worst cases because it’s soul crushing to see our system wrongfully convict innocent people and leave victims without actual justice.

Defense attorneys know that the vast majority of their clients will be guilty and culpable to some degree with mitigating factors considered. Their oath is to defend the Constitution with zealous advocacy on behalf of individuals at the mercy of the state. They hold the sacred role of keeping the state to account for acting within the law and protecting the rights of all citizens, including the accused.

Anyone who knows the criminal justice system knows that the greatest defense attorneys are not measured by the number of acquittals they’ve won, but by how they’ve leveraged their skill and integrity to get the most justice for their clients within a system everyone knows is deeply flawed and in some places broken.

This woman was not abused as far as we know and, by all accounts, lived a pretty damn charmed life. Don’t even compare this to a battered woman syndrome defense. Just don’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like two things can be true here: She indeed committed a horrible terrible crime. Unthinkable. Horrific.
She could also have been unaware of what she was doing and psychotic.
Why can't both things exist?

Would you have the same opinion if it were, say, your nanny and your kids? After all, anyone can become psychotic and unaware of what they’re doing right?

NP here and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think people would not be so forgiving of a nanny. But moms are supposed to love their babies so much and not do this, so we’re tying ourselves in knots to justify it because we (not me in particular, but some on this board) identify with her as a mother in a way we couldn’t identify with a nanny.

But the truth is, some moms do horrible things to their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now we know she intentionally plotted and planned to kill the kids.
It wasn't psychosis. Let that be a lesson learned to not really around someone so quickly just because they fit your image of ideal.
So why?
I'd put money on their being marital problems.

She probably found out her husband was cheating or planning to leave and this was her vengeance.
Picture perfect relationship it wasn't
It's happened before.

Any psychiatrists want to weigh in?
Does psychosis have to be spur of the moment decision making? I believe psychosis and a psychotic break are two different things.

It has been answered over and over again in this thread, with links to experts explaining the facts. NO, psychosis does not prevent a person from methodical planning - a simple Google of psychosis, the hallmarks of the condition and an explanation of how a psychotic person can look perfectly normal and engage in insane behavior moments later is readily available with examples of many cases.

We keep beating the same dead horse here because a whole bunch of people with zero personal experience and very little knowledge of mental illness are weighing in as experts and rejecting outright the actual opinions of experts who have studied psychosis extensively.

Ordering food and mapping the route to the restaurant is a crime tens of millions of Americans engage in regularly. When you think about, some of the evidence the state is trying to marshal as proof of her premeditation is laughable. People are not recognizing that they are seeing slivers of evidence presented in the worst possible light. The jury will see a whole picture, and when they refuse to convict her on the charges they’ll be vilified by all the armchair experts who are clogging up this thread with ignorance.

If she gets off then Bryan Kohberger should get off too. There is evidence of him having the same kinds of feelings - flat, just want to feel something, etc. Anyone who suffered childhood abuse and is mentally ill should get off too. Guess what, that is just about every single person who commits murder. Her own doctors said that she only had generalized anxiety disorder yet you think you know more about her and her condition than her own psychiatrists. You are laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kevin Reddington is one of the most elite trial attorneys in the country with a great record defending his clients. As a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney myself, I can attest that what people on this board think about his performance is irrelevant in the face of his record of success. He connects with juries and persuades them with the better story. I remain convinced this woman won’t be convicted as charged.

https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2023/02/08/duxbury-lindsay-clancys-attorney-kevin-reddington-history-high-profile-clients/69880508007/

Many of the clients listed in that article either plead guilty or were found guilty. None of the listed clients seem like upstanding citizens with bad luck.

This defense attorney won an acquittal for a woman who killed her partner while he slept, successfully arguing a battered woman defense - this is an outstanding outcome.

Your comment merely reveals how little you know about the workings of the criminal system. Winning acquittals in cases with the most egregious facts is not really the expected objective- it’s great if it happens, but the defense attorney’s goal is often to hang a jury or convince them to settle for lesser included charges which preserve their client’s opportunity for release and returning to a life outside incarceration at some point. That’s true even when you may believe wholeheartedly that your client is actually innocent - the worst cases because it’s soul crushing to see our system wrongfully convict innocent people and leave victims without actual justice.

Defense attorneys know that the vast majority of their clients will be guilty and culpable to some degree with mitigating factors considered. Their oath is to defend the Constitution with zealous advocacy on behalf of individuals at the mercy of the state. They hold the sacred role of keeping the state to account for acting within the law and protecting the rights of all citizens, including the accused.

Anyone who knows the criminal justice system knows that the greatest defense attorneys are not measured by the number of acquittals they’ve won, but by how they’ve leveraged their skill and integrity to get the most justice for their clients within a system everyone knows is deeply flawed and in some places broken.

This woman was not abused as far as we know and, by all accounts, lived a pretty damn charmed life. Don’t even compare this to a battered woman syndrome defense. Just don’t.

I didn’t. And you are a self righteous moron. Women with post partum depression devolving into psychosis who kill their children are victims of mental illness, just as much as abused women are victims of an abuser. Neither woman had control of her fate. Actually, battered women at least have an opportunity to leave - you can’t leave your own head.

And before you come back at me with some vile crap, I want you to know that my earliest childhood memory ~3 years old is being trapped in my play pen screaming in terror as I watch my father beat and rape my mother on the floor right next to me. 3 years old. I endured repeats of the performance for years afterward, too. I became a DV advocate as an adult, then spent years as a prosecutor putting abusers and molesters in prison. There is NOTHING you can educate me about when it comes to domestic violence. I would kindly suggest you just shut up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea that this woman is somehow overprivileged because she had that much inpatient psychiatric treatment is a sign of the very slippery slope this thread and our society are both on.

Jesus.

Not necessarily that she was over privileged, but there was ample time for her to receive a diagnosis os PPD/PPP. She displayed no concerning behaviors with her husband, which is why he felt secure leaving her home alone with the children. She has generalized anxiety disorder, I believe she’s lying about hearing a voice. I think PPP is a convenient excuse, if only all murderers could claim psychosis. It’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible to prove she was psychotic during the murders. Comparing this to the Andrea Yates’s case is apples and oranges, the only thing in common is both were mothers who killed their kids. That’s it. PPP is a real thing, but Lindsay Clancy wasn’t suffering from it imo. The med list was quite stunning and certainly led to some unpleasant drug interactions I am sure.

This is just not how mental illness works. It is not a fixed state that persists over time such that any X number of people looking at that person over X interval would all have seen the same thing.

If she only had GAD, what was she doing on all of those medications, in your theory of the case?

Hmmm, all those meds *could* be prescribed for GAD/depression/insomnia, I think the physicians began throwing anything at her because she kept claiming that nothing was working, which on Lindsay’s part, seems misinformed, uneducated and hasty at best and attention seeking and reeking of a personality disorder at worst. Maybe she was misdiagnosed, maybe she did have PPP but if she lied to physicians or if she hid/masked symptoms, which she must have, because there is no documentation of her having psychosis, that’s on her, the physicians aren’t mind readers. Mental healthcare can only provide as much as you allow it, meaning one must be completely honest and open with their true feelings to receive an accurate diagnosis.

That is not how psychiatric medication works. It’s an iterative process. Any responsible mental health provider, on hearing that that none of that array of benzodiazepines, specifically, was not working for anxiety or sleep, would be stopping to reconsider the diagnosis, not just adding Seroquel and hoping for the best. I think she got a half-assed eval and she probably hid some stuff and they assumed that because she is a health care provider, she was a reliable reporter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kevin Reddington is one of the most elite trial attorneys in the country with a great record defending his clients. As a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney myself, I can attest that what people on this board think about his performance is irrelevant in the face of his record of success. He connects with juries and persuades them with the better story. I remain convinced this woman won’t be convicted as charged.

https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2023/02/08/duxbury-lindsay-clancys-attorney-kevin-reddington-history-high-profile-clients/69880508007/

Many of the clients listed in that article either plead guilty or were found guilty. None of the listed clients seem like upstanding citizens with bad luck.

This defense attorney won an acquittal for a woman who killed her partner while he slept, successfully arguing a battered woman defense - this is an outstanding outcome.

Your comment merely reveals how little you know about the workings of the criminal system. Winning acquittals in cases with the most egregious facts is not really the expected objective- it’s great if it happens, but the defense attorney’s goal is often to hang a jury or convince them to settle for lesser included charges which preserve their client’s opportunity for release and returning to a life outside incarceration at some point. That’s true even when you may believe wholeheartedly that your client is actually innocent - the worst cases because it’s soul crushing to see our system wrongfully convict innocent people and leave victims without actual justice.

Defense attorneys know that the vast majority of their clients will be guilty and culpable to some degree with mitigating factors considered. Their oath is to defend the Constitution with zealous advocacy on behalf of individuals at the mercy of the state. They hold the sacred role of keeping the state to account for acting within the law and protecting the rights of all citizens, including the accused.

Anyone who knows the criminal justice system knows that the greatest defense attorneys are not measured by the number of acquittals they’ve won, but by how they’ve leveraged their skill and integrity to get the most justice for their clients within a system everyone knows is deeply flawed and in some places broken.

This woman was not abused as far as we know and, by all accounts, lived a pretty damn charmed life. Don’t even compare this to a battered woman syndrome defense. Just don’t.

OMG. No one is saying she was abused. PP is pointing out that, contrary to prior assertions here, this lawyer knows what he is about.