Tom Stalnaker

Whether Lindsay Clancy meets Massachusetts' legal definition of insanity is the least interesting part of this case to me. By far the most interesting, and disturbing, part is how people have reacted to it. I understand that criminal responsibility matters legally, and that an insanity finding doesn't automatically mean someone goes free. MA allows continued psychiatric confinement when the legal requirements are met. Personally, her mental state may change how I think she should be treated, it doesn't change how long I think she should remain confined after killing three children. Society needs protection whether someone knowingly does something horrific or is mentally unwell enough to do it without understanding it. I'm not going to relitigate every detail of her mental state here. That's not the point of this post. The point is the line between understanding someone and excusing what they've done. You can have empathy for anyone. Understanding the circumstances that led someone to do something terrible is human and natural. You can recognize their suffering without condoning what they did. But with some of the reaction to this case, compassion became identification, identification became advocacy, and advocacy became exoneration. There are people who identify so strongly with her that they appear to have decided upon her innocence first and then worked backwards on the facts of the case. To be clear, wanting her to receive treatment or a fair trial isn't what I'm criticizing. Neither is believing, based on the evidence, that she wasn't criminally responsible. That's different from deciding she couldn't possibly have done it and inventing another story. Further, when people say “the system failed her”... which system? And how? She saw multiple mental health professionals. Patrick worked from home, and the family had hired a nanny in the months before the killings. This wasn't a situation where nobody was trying to help. Does that prove her treatment was adequate? No. Both Lindsay and Patrick have filed lawsuits alleging failures in her medical care, including problems with diagnosis or medication. Those claims are disputed and should be evaluated on the evidence. But that's exactly where the discussion needs to get specific. What did the system do wrong? What intervention was missing? What policy or treatment change do you believe could have prevented the deaths, and why? For the people whose answer is always that she wasn't supported enough: at what point does she receive enough support that you're willing to consider her own responsibility? The amount of support isn't a test of someone's mental capacity. But “she needed more support” isn't an answer to every question about responsibility either. I'm asking whether there is anything that would change your conclusion, or whether the blame will always move to someone else. Even establishing that somebody else failed her wouldn't automatically settle the question of her responsibility. Those aren't mutually exclusive. An explanation is not an excuse. Offering an excuse is not the same as establishing that someone wasn't responsible. And compassion is not exoneration. Mental illness does not automatically mean the absence of agency. Illness and responsibility can occupy the same human being at the same time. Whether, and to what extent, they did here is something to establish from evidence, not identification. And then there are the people claiming Patrick killed the children, despite Lindsay admitting that she strangled them. Her defense is about her mental state, not that Patrick did it. Even her own lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said on September 9, discussing the conspiracy theories about Patrick: “She knew that it was just terrible what he was going through.” So some people are constructing a version of events that the woman they're defending isn't even claiming. How does someone get so invested in sympathizing with her that they’re willing to accuse the father who lost his three children, without evidence? I find that morally repugnant. Sympathy for her does not entitle one to rewrite what happened or invent guilt for someone else. And yes, most of the people I'm seeing do this are women. That makes me question how much of this is compassion for mental illness, and how much is identifying with her so strongly that acknowledging what she did becomes uncomfortable. Supporting women cannot mean refusing to acknowledge what a particular woman did. And identifying with someone's experience cannot become a reason to apply a different standard to them. If women truly want respect and equality, then they need to adopt another thing men learn early in their life: responsibility for their actions. Consider the reverse. A father kills his three children. His defense argues that he was experiencing psychosis and the same degree of impaired understanding or control alleged here. Would you extend the same compassion? Would you be as determined to defend him? Would you entertain baseless theories that his wife did it, despite his own admission? These are genuine questions. If your answer changes depending on whether it's a mother or a father, then ask yourself what principle you're actually defending. Let me go ahead and give my answer, that there is precisely zero chance a man would have ever received that kind of support for the atrocities he committed. Regardless of how good or bad a husband & father Patrick was, he is a victim too. He lost all three of his children. And acknowledging that Lindsay may have suffered terribly does not change the basic moral reality of what happened here. The 3 kids: Cora, Dawson & Callan are the ones whose lives were taken. Their mother strangled them. One by one. The last thing they saw was their mother's twisted face choking them before they fell unconscious. That fact isn't in dispute, whatever the eventual legal conclusion about her responsibility. I find it disturbing how easily the discussion can become about everyone except them. You can understand someone without condoning what they've done. You can care about mental illness without making excuses for baseless accusations against somebody else. And you can feel compassion for Lindsay without turning her into the central victim of what happened, nay what she did, to her children. I cannot condone what Lindsay did. It’s a repugnant and evil act. It’s antithetical to the very nature of motherhood & parenthood. And I am appalled at the way society is responding to this. The children should not become a footnote in the story of the person who killed them.