Two women, two mothers accused of killing their children, and the same fate?
This is the question hanging over the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the nurse who killed her three children aged five, three, and eight months, a case that has become the conscience of the U.S.
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Yates, who drowned her five children, received a life sentence, but the trial was repeated and she was found not guilty
The jury already deliberated for two days this week in the Plymouth (Massachusetts) court and will do so again starting this Monday. While the prosecution requested a conviction for the triple murder, the defense argues that Clancy is not responsible because she suffered from postpartum depression and, despite repeatedly seeking help, was not attended to.
Clancy’s account of what happened has occasionally changed in small details over the past three years. But she has never altered the key aspects of her version.
On January 24, 2023, she suggested ordering takeout for dinner and, while her husband went to pick it up, she heard a voice ordering her to kill her children and then commit suicide.
She strangled the children with exercise bands. Then she went upstairs, ingested a variety of pills, cut her neck with a knife, and jumped out a window. She remained motionless. She now uses a wheelchair.
She admits to the act, but denies guilt because she was completely deranged.
Her case has revived that of Andrea Yates, another nurse who a quarter of a century ago killed her five children. She drowned them in a bathtub in June 2001 in Houston. Her husband was at work. The children ranged in age from six months to seven years.
Yates was found guilty of murder in 2002 with a death penalty request, although the jury sentenced her to life imprisonment. Later, in a new trial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and transferred to a state psychiatric hospital.
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There was great public rejection of Yates, despite her history of mental illness
Whether or not there is agreement on the final verdict, the two cases have received very different consideration, perhaps showing a different social perception in the same type of case regarding depression that arises after childbirth.
Outside the Plymouth court, numerous women gather during the hearing to express their support for Clancy and demand her acquittal given her mental state.
Although some remember that three children died, many personalities and columnists show compassion and understanding towards this woman.
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Clancy’s case “is, fundamentally, a story about who is listened to, who is believed and taken seriously, and who is not,” wrote Jessica Winter in The New Yorker .
In contrast, the public rejection of Yates’ actions, despite her history of mental illness, was palpable. “There is no doubt about it,” Jack Vaeth, psychiatrist and director of the Advanced Center for Treatment of Resistant Depression at the University of Maryland, told USAToday . He stated that in Yates’ trial the consensus was that she had to take responsibility for her actions. “Without a doubt, this time there is much more empathy and the focus is on a system that does not work,” he said.
A CNN headline from March 2002, quoting a psychiatrist’s testimony: “Yates could have recovered on her own.” Another columnist, Rob Jones of The State Press , wrote: “If it depended on many people, there would be no trial, only an execution.”
“We no longer automatically think that people with mental health problems are simply not strong enough, that they are faking or pretending to be sick, as we might have thought 20 or 30 years ago,” said Michelle Oberman, a law specialist who studies cases of mothers who kill, in an article.
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