On Friday, September 4, Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial ended in a mistrial after seven days of deliberations. In the week that followed, jurors began publicly discussing what happened inside the jury room. By September 11, interviews about the lone holdout and reports digging into his personal history were spreading across social media. The jury reportedly stood eleven to one, with eleven jurors prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility and one refusing to do so. Clancy admitted to killing five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan. The legal question was whether her mental condition made her criminally responsible for their deaths.
My position is this: I believe Lindsay Clancy is guilty. Psychosis or not, three babies are dead because she strangled them. I have written about postpartum mental illness from a deeply personal place. I know how badly motherhood, trauma, and postpartum hormones can affect a woman’s mind. However, I have never wanted to harm my children. I also understand that my experience cannot diagnose Clancy or disprove psychosis, but I do not believe postpartum psychosis automatically removes responsibility for every decision a person makes.
The prosecution presented evidence it believed demonstrated planning rather than a sudden break from reality. Clancy sent her husband out of the house, strangled each child with exercise bands, and then jumped from a second-story window. The defense argued that severe mental illness controlled her actions. After hearing weeks of testimony, one juror still would not vote that she lacked criminal responsibility. That was his right and his responsibility as a juror. He was not required to surrender his judgment because eleven other people disagreed.
During an interview with Gayle King, juror Paula Devlin revealed that the holdout was a Black man and the only Black person on the panel. King responded, “I have to sit with that for just a second.” Whether she intended it that way or not, the moment placed immediate emphasis on his race. The public had not heard from this man or learned how he interpreted the evidence, yet his Blackness became part of the explanation for why he would not give Clancy the verdict others believed she deserved.
What followed began to resemble modern yellow journalism. Not because every reported detail was necessarily false, but because allegations, financial hardship, and opinions about his character were gathered and arranged into a public case against him. NBC10 Boston reported that he had previously faced domestic-violence allegations, had a dismissed assault charge, and was subject to an active restraining order involving a relative while serving on the jury. Those allegations are serious, and if he lied on his juror questionnaire, that should be properly investigated by the court. However, his questionnaire is not public, so the media cannot currently confirm how he answered it. His eviction case and unpaid rent were also reported, although neither tells us whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her children. This is where race cannot be ignored. An imperfect Black man stood between a sympathetic white woman and the verdict eleven other jurors wanted. Lindsay Clancy was the defendant, yet the holdout juror was publicly investigated as though he had committed the crime that brought everyone into that courtroom. The trial did not produce a verdict against Clancy, so the media began constructing one against him. This is ’merica.
My concern also extends beyond this particular verdict. We live in a country where women were assured that Roe v. Wade was settled law until the Supreme Court overturned it. A patriarchal government has already demonstrated its willingness to use laws, medicine, and the courts to exercise control over women’s wombs. Who is to say lawmakers will not use a case like this to create the next debate over women’s autonomy?
Today, the question is whether women should have the right to end a pregnancy. Tomorrow, the question could become whether certain women should be permitted to keep their children after giving birth. Should a postpartum diagnosis automatically make a mother a possible danger? Should hospitals be allowed to delay sending babies home with mothers who report depression, intrusive thoughts, or emotional instability? Will women become afraid to tell doctors they are struggling because honesty could trigger surveillance, an investigation, or the loss of custody?
Black women, poor women, disabled women, and mothers already involved with Medicaid, housing assistance, or child-welfare systems would likely feel that scrutiny first. Those systems already have access to intimate parts of women’s lives. It would not take much for “protecting children” to become another justification for monitoring mothers, questioning their competence and separating families.
This does not mean postpartum psychosis should be ignored or that mothers should be denied help. It means one horrific case cannot be allowed to transform every postpartum woman with a mental-health condition into a suspected child killer. Clancy must be judged according to the evidence surrounding her actions. The holdout juror must be judged according to whether he followed the law, not whether strangers approve of his background, his finances, or his refusal to agree with eleven other people.
A mistrial is not an acquittal. Clancy did not walk free. She remains in custody at Tewksbury State Hospital while prosecutors determine whether to retry her, pursue lesser charges, or negotiate another resolution. Three children are dead. That fact must remain at the center of this case, and the Black juror who refused to absolve their mother should not become the greater scandal.