Lindsay Clancy will likely be retried. Can America's mothers handle it?
Prosecutors announced Nov. 2 that they intend to retry Lindsay Clancy, 36, who strangled her three children – Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months – with exercise bands in 2023 in the basement of their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
During the first trial, Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington argued she wasn't criminally responsible for the killings because she suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder and a psychotic break brought on by postpartum psychosis. Her ghoulish, weekslong trial finally ended in a mistrial Sept. 4, after a lone holdout refused to join the other 11 jurors in acquitting her.
Before any retrial, Judge William Sullivan must rule on several motions.
Reddington has moved to dismiss the murder charges entirely on double jeopardy grounds and wants the holdout juror investigated.
Prosecutors haven’t said what charges Clancy will face the second time around.
Clancy's televised trial became national news because it had all the macabre components of a true-crime documentary – only it was real, and horrifying. But the most jarring part was the way it whipped mothers across the country into a frenzy. Only they didn't rally for justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan.
They showed up on the courthouse steps and on social media to offer sympathy for Clancy and her postpartum mental health struggles, as if Clancy – paralyzed since her suicide attempt and now using a wheelchair – were a victim and martyr of modern motherhood, with no agency in her decisions.
I can only imagine what a retrial will unleash, especially with Reddington laser-focused on the juror who wouldn't side with the majority. Either way, Clancy's children deserve justice.
Women's reactions to Clancy's trial were nauseating
Throughout the trial, I was astounded by the public’s visceral defense of Clancy, particularly among some women and mothers.
I’m almost certain that a man accused of strangling his children with exercise bands would be branded a traitor to masculinity and vilified for his crimes. Clancy, meanwhile, received copious empathy from women who used the gory trial as a jumping-off point to discuss the horrors of postpartum illness, especially postpartum psychosis, which is rare.
Her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, has since remarried and is expecting a child with his new wife. When he testified, women on social media conjured up a conspiracy theory that he killed the children and tried to kill their mother.
Reddington has called those theories "horrific," but his argument in September that there wasn't enough evidence that Clancy killed her children only reinforces this baseless theory. If she didn't kill Cora, Dawson and Callan, who did?
Meanwhile, when expert witnesses described in horrifying detail how the children died, it barely registered, and all but one juror seemed to gloss over just how gruesome their deaths were.
Who's speaking up for Cora, Dawson and Callan?
The mainstream news media and social media share the blame. The trial had all the makings of a ratings draw and offered a break from midterm elections coverage, but that’s no excuse to put mental health ahead of justice.
In September, I joined a panel on "CBS Mornings" about the trial and postpartum illness. Of the four women, I was the only one who seemed intent on justice.
On the Sept. 10 episode of "The Oprah Podcast," on which I was also a guest, Oprah Winfrey opened with a moment of silence for the children, saying each of their names. But of the guests who spoke about postpartum illness, only one other columnist and a young woman in the audience shared my view that we can value justice and compassion for mothers at the same time.
A YouGov poll taken just days after the mistrial found that 46% of Americans thought Clancy should have been found guilty of murder. Only 21% favored not guilty by reason of insanity.
Yet on social media and on both shows, hosts and fellow guests treated my view, the most popular one, as a fringe position. I had hoped that the mistrial might renew a conversation about justice and the value of innocent human life, but mental health kept its grip until the story faded.
Watching women succumb to toxic groupthink, valuing empathy for Clancy and her illness over sympathy for the children she killed and a demand for justice, was horrifying. It shows how deeply moral relativism has taken hold in our society. A retrial will likely provoke even stronger reactions as Clancy, a courtroom and the country relive every brutal detail of the children’s deaths. But Clancy’s children deserve justice. Perhaps a retrial and a fresh media frenzy will allow for sharper focus and a chance to see this awful event with more moral courage and clarity.
But what if it doesn’t?
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Prosecutors plan to retry Clancy. Can a jury get it right? | Opinion
