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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Involuntary intoxication will never fly as a defense. Prosecution will put the husband on the stand and ask if she was acting strange or intoxicated or out of it when he left her alone with THREE young children including an infant. I think we all know what his answer has to be. [/quote]

You misunderstand the legal definitions here. Involuntary intoxication doesn’t mean high or impaired like by alcohol or other similar substances. It means that she was subject to the effects of the drugs prescribed which in some cases can be suicidality and homicidal thoughts. Those effects would not necessarily be obvious to her husband as the effects of alcoholic or other high-inducing drugs would be. But it is still intoxicating in the way that those drugs can be.

This might be confusing for you and apologies if I’m not helping to clarify but I assure you it is a concept that all the criminal lawyers and judges will grasp and for which there is a sound legal basis in statute and case law.[/quote]

As an attempt at further elucidation - if you were force fed copious amounts of alcohol or other intoxicating drug against your will, and that intoxication led you to attack someone or commit another crime, you would have a defense in the law because your intoxication was involuntary. You didn’t plan or seek to get drunk or high. Likewise because she was fed all these drugs by physicians she trusted, she didn’t take them of her own initiative but in reliance on medical advice and expertise. That they caused her to experience suicidal and homicidal thoughts is a side effect of the drugs which she didn’t seek and thus she has this defense under the law. That isn’t to say it’s an automatic pass but a jury could certainly be convinced by it if they hear from experts etc. as to the validity of her claims. The defense only needs to convince one skeptical juror to hang the jury, convince a few and you might get yourself an acquittal. So this defense gives the defendant leverage in moving forward to possibly negotiate her case. The critical factor will be the mental health assessments of the state and defense - [b]if the state’s expert believes she lacked mens rea she may be able to be committed to mental health facility indefinitely in lieu of facing trial and potentially prison.[/b] It will be a fascinating case to watch but of course for the Clancys it is all just hell.  [/quote]
This is not accurate. She will stand trial unless she pleads guilty, is found incompetent to stand trial, or the state drops the charges. If her argument is that it was over-medication that made her insane, then once the over-medication is fixed, she should not be found incompetent to stand trial. [/quote]

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