The jury is now deliberating in the five-week trial of Lindsay Clancy, the “loving mother” (to quote her former nanny) who brought her three young children down to the basement of her home and strangled each of them to death, one at a time, slowly, horrifically, painfully.
Laws are inadequate in a case like this. Human judgment is inadequate. It is impossible to reason with the unthinkable.
Such a case becomes instead a lightning rod for people’s deepest feelings about motherhood, womanhood and, perhaps unconsciously, their own life circumstances.
But if you’re wondering what the law actually says about Clancy’s case, well, let me cut to the punch line: Because the case is being tried in Massachusetts state court, the law offers surprisingly little help in arriving at a just response to what Clancy did.
In fact, due to peculiarities of Massachusetts law, the Clancy jury is almost certain to come out the wrong way—no matter what the jurors decide.
The initial problem—and it’s a big one—is that Massachusetts law is weird when it comes to cases in which the defendant pleads insanity. In most of the country—and in federal prosecutions as well—when criminal defendants plead insanity, it’s up to them to prove it. But in Massachusetts, the state has to prove that Clancy was not insane, and it must do so beyond a reasonable doubt.
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