The jury’s choices in Lindsay Clancy’s homicide trial
This hinges on the postpartum psychosis defence – her authorized staff argued that Clancy hallucinated a voice after giving start to her youngest baby that advised her to kill the youngsters.
Knowledgeable witnesses advised the court docket how extreme this sickness may be, and relations testified about Clancy’s mind-set.
Below Massachusetts legislation, there isn’t a burden on Clancy to show her psychological sickness and that she lacked prison accountability.
Quite, it’s on the prosecution to show past affordable doubt that she was criminally accountable when she killed her youngsters, prison defence lawyer Elyse Hershon advised the BBC.
They’ll do that by both proving past affordable doubt that she did not undergo from a psychological sickness on the time or that, whereas she had a psychological sickness, she nonetheless managed her actions and knew they had been flawed.
A not responsible verdict would imply Clancy went free however that’s thought-about extremely unlikely. More likely is a not responsible by purpose of madness, which might end in Clancy being detained at a hospital.
“The case actually comes all the way down to the place she goes to serve the remainder of her life; the defence thinks it must be a psychiatric facility, the prosecution thinks it must be in a state jail,” Hershon stated.
