We have more than possible psychosis going on here in our culture.
The prosecution was “harsh.”
Kevin Reddington, Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer, on the other hand, “was entertaining, which was good, because we needed some of that.”
These were some of the comments that aired in an interview with three jurors in the Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy murder case that appeared last night on the local Boston NBC affiliate’s Commonwealth Confidential.
The three women jurors, appearing in a backyard, we are told are now “friends for life.” We learn that the jury exchanged tense words — even “name-calling” — during the six weeks of the trial, but also shared hugs and “self-care” along the way.
Look, I’d like to say being chosen for something like this would be my civic duty, but it sounds like a nightmare. It would also be hard to express such a sentiment when the case involves three dead children — killed by their mother.
At the same time, these three jurors are not their own best advocates. They do make clear that the judge was absolutely right in declaring a mistrial, but maybe not for the reason they contend.
The women blame it all on one man, a juror who had issues with “reasonable doubt.” At one point, he’s accused of inconsistency — the jury foreman (yes, I still do that) says she was “excited” when she thought they were all coming to an agreement that Clancy was “not guilty” so she could get the help she needed.
The most memorable line of the interview, though — unfortunately — was when another juror declared that this juror’s “arrogance” meant “he had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
I’d like to think even Lindsay Clancy hasn’t gotten over that fact.
The best comment I saw overnight was along the lines of: Raise your son to be the kind of man who can’t get over the fact that a mother viciously killed her children.
Lindsay Clancy jurors are speaking out, and listen to the female jurors' complaints about the one holdout male juror:
"He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay visciously killed her children."
This man's legend grows by the day. pic.twitter.com/XnCbcnkCIA
— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) September 8, 2026
Honestly, though, maybe the worst part of the interview was when they started fan-girling Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer. They were indistinguishable from the women who have been posting videos on social media and appearing outside the courtroom in pink as advocates for Lindsay Clancy, saying that, in murdering her children, she is somehow representative of their struggles as mothers.
It should be said that during the longer interview that aired — in contrast to some of the outtakes that are flooding social media — the women also talk about how awful it was to listen to the father’s 911 call as he discovered what happened. At first he thought he was calling about his wife, who tried to kill herself. It was only while on the phone with the dispatcher that he discovered why she’d made that attempt. It was, in fact, “horrific” to listen to — I kinda hope the only human response is to pray to God those children were miraculously spared some of the torture that was inflicted on them.
I’ve written about the case here. I do believe some of the overwrought emotional displays have to do with a lot more than the real, underappreciated cross of postpartum depression. Women do deserve better care and it does seem malpractice that Clancy was on as many medications as she was.
I think some of the frenzy — and fury — around this case has to do with other challenges and pain — including, in no small way, our abortion culture. And the fact that not for the first time, abortion advocates have taken the side of the mother who killed her children certainly doesn’t hurt that case.
I also want to point to Sally Satel’s piece in the Free Press. Sally is a psychiatrist — an actual M.D. — and she argues Clancy should not be found guilty, that she was clearly driven by psychosis.
I don’t know what the answer is. I respect Sally.
She also writes, by the way:
Hindsight is clear-eyed, and I am a bit hesitant to criticize her clinicians, who truly seemed to want to help. That said, someone in charge needed to know if Clancy’s condition was resistant to the medications (her illness just was not responding) and if her medications caused intolerable side effects. This is difficult to do without knowledge of all the treatments she received; after all, clinicians need to know whether it might have been time to move to lithium or even electroshock. Escalating treatment is warranted because, if postpartum psychosis is treated well, the patient has an excellent chance of getting better.
My last point about prognosis is important because some experts are now worried that the media coverage, as well as civil malpractice actions filed by Clancy and her husband, are making clinicians reluctant to treat high-risk patients. They need to keep in mind, however, that the vast majority of women with postpartum psychosis do not commit filicide like Lindsay Clancy, and that, as I indicated, not only is postpartum psychosis rare, the response to treatment is usually good.
I’m grateful I wasn’t on the jury. And I haven’t even watched enough Law & Order over the years to pretend to be a lawyer. I do know we have more than possible psychosis going on here in our culture though. It’s sick — deadly — and the only medication I’m aware of for this is a virtue intensive.