Jackson attorney and radio talk show host Shaun Yurtkuran authored this guest column. His show, Both Sides of the Bench, airs at 11 AM on Saturdays on WYAB.
The internet decided what Lindsay Clancy, her husband and even the holdout juror
were supposed to be. The evidence was considerably less convenient.
I have spent a lot of time talking about the Lindsay Clancy case over the last few weeks.
Probably more time than I ever expected to spend talking about a murder trial in Massachusetts.
I’ve discussed it on my radio show. I’ve been interviewed about it by national media. I’ve argued
with people about it on Facebook, which is generally where good legal analysis goes to die. And
after watching the trial, the mistrial and especially the public reaction to both, I’m not sure the
most interesting thing about this case is Lindsay Clancy anymore. It may be us.
I spent roughly a decade as a prosecutor in Hinds County and have now been a criminal defense
lawyer for years. I’ve tried more murder cases than I can probably remember. One thing that
experience teaches you pretty quickly is that criminal cases are rarely as simple as people want
them to be. The Clancy case certainly isn’t. There is one thing about this case that really isn’t
disputed. Lindsay Clancy killed her three children. Her defense wasn’t that somebody else did it.
It wasn’t mistaken identity. Her lawyer didn’t stand in front of the jury and tell them the police
arrested the wrong person.
The defense was that Lindsay Clancy killed her children but was not criminally responsible for
doing it because she was legally insane at the time. Those are two very different things. Mental
illness and legal insanity are not synonymous. A person can suffer from severe mental illness and
still be criminally responsible for a crime. The legal question is what that illness did to the
person's ability to understand or control his or her conduct at the time of the crime.
That distinction matters particularly to those of us looking at this case from Mississippi because
Massachusetts and Mississippi don't apply the same test. Mississippi follows the M'Naghten rule.
Put very simply, the question here is whether the defendant understood the nature and quality of
what she was doing and knew that it was wrong.
Massachusetts gives a defendant another avenue. A person may lack criminal responsibility if,
because of mental disease or defect, she lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the
criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the requirements of law.
I realize I just lost about 87 percent of you. So here is the easier version.
In Mississippi, we're basically asking: Did you understand what you were doing and did you
know it was wrong? Massachusetts can also ask: Even if you knew it was wrong, did your
mental illness leave you without the substantial capacity to control yourself anyway?
For my fellow Gen Xers, I have been describing it as Norman Osborn arguing with the Green
Goblin in the mirror. There. I just explained the insanity defense using Spider-Man. My law
professors would be so proud.
But that difference in the law matters enormously in this case because the prosecution presented
evidence of planning. Clancy got her husband out of the house. There were searches. There were
actions before and after the killings that the prosecution argued demonstrated purpose and
awareness. The difficult question is whether that ends the insanity inquiry. It doesn't necessarily.
That is what makes this case genuinely interesting from a legal standpoint. Could someone plan
an act and appear purposeful while experiencing a psychosis severe enough to make her legally
incapable of criminal responsibility?
The defense had expert testimony supporting its position. The prosecution had evidence
supporting the opposite conclusion. Reasonable people can look at that evidence and disagree.
That's what trials are for. What trials are not supposed to be for is deciding what happened first
and then working backward until we find something that supports what we already wanted to
believe. Unfortunately, that has become a national pastime.
There has been an entire online universe built around this case. Thousands of people have
dissected Patrick Clancy's behavior, his marriage, his statements and seemingly every other
aspect of his life. Some have gone considerably further and suggested that he was somehow
responsible for the deaths of his children. There is a fairly significant problem with that theory.
Where is the evidence?
Lindsay Clancy's own defense wasn't that Patrick killed the children. Her lawyer's position was
that Lindsay did it while legally insane. He even begged people recently to drop the Patrick
Clancy conspiracies. If there were credible evidence that someone else killed your client’s
children, I promise you, as a criminal defense lawyer, that is considerably easier to explain to a
jury than the intricacies of Massachusetts insanity law. Yet somehow, we have reached a point
where internet speculation can become more persuasive to people than the evidence actually
presented in a courtroom.
I used to encounter a version of this when I was a prosecutor. People would come into our office
and tell us what “the street” said happened in a case. My response was usually: Can I subpoena
the street? I never figured out how. The internet has simply given “the street” broadband access.
But there is another part of the public reaction to this case that I think deserves some
examination, and I know this is going to make some people uncomfortable.
Imagine Lindsay Clancy was Bob Clancy. Bob is a father who strangled his three children with
exercise bands. But Bob served in Iraq and Afghanistan, came home with severe PTSD, and his
defense is that he was legally insane when he killed them.
Now ask yourself what the national conversation would look like.
Would Facebook be filled with people explaining that Bob was failed by the mental-health
system? Would there be thousands of posts about how society abandoned him? Would internet
detectives be investigating his wife and explaining why Bob was actually another victim in this
tragedy? Or would most of America be asking whether Massachusetts could borrow a gas
chamber? I don't know the answer. Neither does anyone else. But I think it's worth asking the
question.
Maybe you believe Lindsay Clancy was legally insane. There is actual evidence supporting that
position, and reasonable people can reach that conclusion. What I wonder is whether we'd be
having remotely the same cultural conversation if the parent who killed three children were their
father instead of their mother. I have a feeling Bob would have considerably fewer Facebook
groups.
Then the jury deliberated, couldn't reach a unanimous verdict and the case ended in a mistrial.
That brought us to another strange chapter. Suddenly people were angry at the holdout juror.
I understand being frustrated by a mistrial. I've stood in courtrooms waiting for juries to return
verdicts in murder cases. When that jury-room door closes, the lawyers lose control of the case.
Twelve people you barely knew a few days earlier suddenly have everything in their hands.
But unanimity means exactly what it sounds like. All twelve jurors have to agree. It doesn't mean
eleven jurors agree and the twelfth is required to surrender. If that were the rule, we wouldn't
require unanimous verdicts. We'd require eleven votes and save everybody some time.
We weren't in that jury room. We don't know what evidence the holdout juror found persuasive.
We don't know what testimony he questioned. We don't know why he wasn't convinced. And
refusing to abandon your own judgment because eleven other people disagree with you isn't
misconduct. It's literally the job.
Then I started seeing reactions to the fact that the holdout juror was a Black man. Apparently,
this surprised people. That reaction probably tells me more about how little people understand
jury selection than it does about this particular juror.
I spent years prosecuting murder cases in Hinds County, Mississippi. I tried cases in front of
overwhelmingly Black juries and sometimes all-Black juries. Those juries routinely convicted
Black defendants when they believed the State had proven its case. Why? Because Black people
are individual human beings. I realize this is groundbreaking stuff.
Being Black doesn't mean you vote not guilty. Being White doesn't mean you vote guilty. Being a
woman doesn't mean you automatically identify with Lindsay Clancy. Being a mother doesn't
mean you automatically accept a postpartum-psychosis defense. If race and sex reliably told
lawyers how somebody was going to vote, jury selection would take about fifteen minutes. I've
apparently wasted a significant portion of my career conducting voir dire.
The entire reason lawyers spend so much time selecting juries is that human beings are
complicated. We want to know about their experiences and how they view the world. We want to
know whether they can follow the law even when the law might lead somewhere they personally
don't like.
And after all of that, jurors will still surprise you. The reaction to this particular juror bothers me
because people are trying to reverse-engineer his vote from his race. We know he was Black. We
know he was the holdout. Those two facts don't tell us why he voted the way he did.
Maybe he didn’t believe the defense expert. Maybe he believed some part of the prosecution's
case. Maybe he interpreted the insanity instruction differently. Maybe there was one piece of
evidence that bothered him more than it bothered the other eleven people. I don't know. Neither
does Facebook. And that's okay. In fact, that uncertainty is a feature of the system, not a defect.
We put twelve people in a room precisely because we don't want one person deciding whether
the government has proven its case. We tell each juror to listen to the evidence, follow the
judge's instructions and reach his or her own decision.
Then, apparently, when one of them does that, everybody gets mad. If unanimity only matters
when all twelve jurors agree with us, then we don't really believe in unanimous verdicts.
And publicly attacking a holdout juror is particularly troubling when the case still must be tried
again. Lawyers are allowed to be frustrated. Families are certainly allowed to be devastated. But
there is a difference between criticizing a result and attacking a citizen because he refused to
surrender his own judgment.
In some ways, the reaction to that juror is a perfect ending to the first Clancy trial because it
reflects what has bothered me about the public conversation surrounding this case from the
beginning. We keep trying to make complicated people simple.
Lindsay is a mother who suffered from serious mental illness, so some people decided she must
have been legally insane. Others saw evidence of planning and decided that meant she couldn't
possibly have been insane. People thought Patrick behaved strangely, so an entire corner of the
internet decided maybe he was secretly responsible. Then a Black man became the holdout juror,
so people decided his race must somehow explain his vote.
We're taking pieces of information and turning them into conclusions. That's backwards.
Evidence is supposed to lead us to a conclusion. The conclusion isn't supposed to lead us to the
evidence.
I've spent more than two decades working in criminal courtrooms, first as a prosecutor and now
as a defense lawyer. I've sat with families who lost children. I've prosecuted people I believed
committed terrible crimes. I've represented people accused of terrible crimes. And I've learned
something from being on both sides of that courtroom. You can be absolutely convinced about
something and still be wrong.
That's why we have rules of evidence. That's why defendants have lawyers. That's why the
government carries the burden of proof. That's why judges instruct juries on the law. That's why
twelve citizens deliberate behind a closed door instead of checking Facebook to see which theory
has the most likes.
The Lindsay Clancy case will be tried again. Maybe the next jury will convict her. Maybe the
next jury will find her not criminally responsible. Maybe twelve more people will struggle with
the same question that divided this jury. I don't know what they'll do. But I know what they're
supposed to do. Listen to the evidence. Apply the law. And make the decision for themselves.
Criminal trials are supposed to be the place where shortcuts go to die.
44 comments:
Saint George Floyd, Saint Luigi Mangione and now Saint Lindsay Clancy all "victims"! Up is down, down is up. Dark is light, light is dark. Men are women, women are men, Black is white, white is black. Bad is good, good is bad. Satanic Programming 101 for the masses.
No mention of the allegation that he failed to respond on the jury questionnaire when asked about arrests, charges, or convictions? That's serious stuff.
Many of us see a bigger picture here that goes well beyond that of the Lindsay Clancy case. That case is just the latest foul display of a larger pattern.
There's a group of people who live among us, and we all know who they are, who choose evil over good. These are the people who were saddened that the assassin who tried to kill Trump in Pennsylvania was not a better marksman. They applauded the cold-blooded murder of an insurance executive walking down the street in New York and later praised the murderer as a hero while he stood trial. These are the people who went to social media to say sickening things as they cheered the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, and now those same people defend a woman who murdered her own children and their position is that such is perfectly fine if you are depressed.
These people accept murder as a noble and right solution for those who differ from them politically. If you live in Massachusetts, you saw the recent signing of a new law there that allows the killing of unborn children right up to birth, and as the governor signed it she was surrounded by sickening applause.
These vile people who walk among us are twisted. I can think of no other way to put it when you see what they support, and oppose.
No matter which side you favor or believe to be true, that was a really well thought out and written article.
"Lizzy Borden took an axe..."
but got off double hatchet murders of both parents, in Massachusetts 1893. Inspectors found no blood on her and did not find an operable axe. Plus she was stoned on morphine when interviewed at inquest. She walked following 90 minute deliberation by all male jury.
Please, 11:27! Save it for the Senior Men's Sunday School Class, or for a call-in to some late-night "Conservative" AM Radio show.
You're right. Most non-lawyers will never understand the applicable legal standards and why those standards are important. There is no way to explain "the law" to people who view the entire world through political lenses. This is not about democrats or republicans, but something far more important which those people refuse to understand.
Condoning, promoting and applauding the murder of innocents is as EVIL as the acts themselves. God help us.
@11:27
What a breathtaking display of moral certainty from someone who apparently believes an entire half of the country can be condemned as evil and twisted based on the worst thing somebody on that side allegedly said on social media.
But let’s test that magnificent moral standard for consistency.
Donald Trump, the man you presumably consider worthy of your political loyalty, celebrated Robert Mueller’s death. When Mueller died, Trump wrote, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Mueller was 81 years old, a decorated Vietnam veteran, former FBI director, and longtime public servant. Trump did not merely decline to mourn him. He celebrated his death.
So where exactly does that fit into your grand theory about people being twisted because they rejoice when someone they politically oppose dies?
And spare me the intellectually dishonest abortion rhetoric. You can oppose Massachusetts abortion law on moral grounds without deliberately describing it as a law that simply “allows the killing of unborn children right up to birth.” That is a political slogan, not an honest description of what the law does.
You want to talk about evil? Fine. Then start with a principle you can actually apply universally. Murder is wrong. Political violence is wrong. Celebrating someone’s death because you hate their politics is wrong. And dehumanizing millions of people because they vote differently from you is wrong.
That standard has to apply whether the dead person is Charlie Kirk, Robert Mueller, an insurance executive, Donald Trump, or someone you have never heard of.
If you genuinely believe what you wrote, then apply that standard consistently.
Because if your outrage only appears when the victim or target belongs to your political tribe, you are not defending morality.
You are defending your tribe and dressing it up as morality.
That is not righteousness.
That is hypocrisy.
Well said.
She’s guilty and should pay the price. She should be locked up for a long time, in prison or mental institution. Letting people off for various excuses is and always has been absurd.
the first thing the morons of the internet need to understand is that the legal definitions of murder vary from state to state.
You're killing me.
Sigh....this is so tiresome. The facts on cases like this were determined decades ago. In 1984, psychologist Stanton Samenow published "Inside the Criminal Mind" which is still the gold-standard of understanding and differentiating between these contrasting views of was it criminal thinking or mental illness.
One of his first and most important determinations was: How is it that there are many MILLIONS of people with legitimate mental/emotional disturbances that DON'T commit crimes? It's because they have a criminal mindset - forged in childhood - that they are special, that they are different, that they are unique. Clancy knew then, and she still knows now what she was doing. Her RAGE at becoming a mother and a wife, and realizing that it's not rainbows and teddy bears is what pushed her to kill the kids. She is more than aware that lots of women feel the same way as her, and want out. So it's framed as "psychosis"....how convenient that the psychosis only happened while she was murdering children...but at no other time? Samenow would have laughed all the way out the door if he'd been called to the stand to testify.
The second thing that internet morons need to understand is that the defendant will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair in a psychiatric institution, regardless of whether she is ultimately convicted or acquitted of murder in a criminal trial.
Boo hoo.
The defense lawyer attacking the holdout juror during the post mistrial press conference should face a bar complaint for unprofessional conduct. He is a embarrassment to the entire trial bar.
11:20 AM, and no mention of the fact that had the reverse occurred, had the lone juror actually been the only juror that voted not guilty, then the “jury questionnaire allegation” would have never ever, ever been brought up by the corrupt evil media.
AND, no mention of the fact that not only would the “jury questionnaire allegation” have never ever been an issue for the defense attorney and the feminists that want the right to murder helpless innocent children, this lone juror would now be their hero, with anyone calling him out regarding a questionnaire labeled as racist. This is in accordance with the evil leftism playbook.
Evil has completely taken over the Ununited States of America. The civil liberties of the Evildoers are more important that the civil liberties of even our helpless innocent children. God please help us!
And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. Isaiah 13:11
@11:57am - Two things: 1) Stop using AI to generate your responses, and 2)stop using false equivalencies. I'm sure we can both agree that celebrating death is abhorrent, but comparing the celebration of the natural passing of someone to the assassination/attempted assassination of a living person is far worse.
1:52 pm
Ezeke-Tarantino 25:17:
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men..." and concludes with, "...And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
@1:03. Read the Massachusetts law. She would have been committed for a 20 day mental health evaluation. After being treated in state custody for last three years, it’s merely a matter of time before a different judge finds her mentally competent and releases her from state custody. That she is paralyzed is a moot point.
11:57 I have to say, people like you are the absolute worst of what America produces. Absolutely despicable!
Irrespective of everything else you wrote, one of your comments was: "And spare me the intellectually dishonest abortion rhetoric. You can oppose Massachusetts abortion law on moral grounds without deliberately describing it as a law that simply “allows the killing of unborn children right up to birth.”......... So, help me to understand (and please talk slowly, so even I can understand): A pregnant woman, in her 40th week with a fully developed, viable human being in her womb, comes into a Massachusetts hospital, unsure of whether she wants to "keep the child" or not. So, her decision is: do I deliver this baby or abort it? If she chooses NOT to abort it, the child will be born as a living human. If she aborts it, the child will die in utero or die on the way out of the uterus or will die after being delivered, which I'm sure is probably allowed in MA. Please tell me exactly how that DOESN'T fit with your outrage over the previous poster's "allows the killing of unborn children right up to birth?" Please tell all of us how that isn't EXACTLY what would have taken place in this scenario? How can you live with that position? How can you not see that as a murder?
September 14, 2026 at 11:43 AM, you want the poster to save it because you have no decent, rational response?
Your whataboutism stinks as bad as your hypocrisy.
11:57, Surely you jest (and don't get offended by me calling you Shirley) thinking that someone like 11:27 can apply their standard consistently. These people with TDS (properly applied to those that are so deranged that the buy and believe anything and everything Trump utters or texts is true and 100% right. They cannot apply their standards consistently, other than when having to address some of the absolute absurdities of his actions by saying "well, Biden (or Barack) did it too so therefore......
Yes, murder is wrong. Celebrating someone else's death is wrong, I don't care who one is talking about. But folks like 1127 follow the Jim Jones cultist theory having drunk the kool-aid and aren't about to apply their standards of others to themselves or to The Don.
3:22, Removing the 24-week restriction on abortion means that if a fetus dies in the 3rd trimester, the pregnant woman no longer has to carry it to term.
I have no problem with that.
No doctor (who wants to keep his medical license) will find that aborting a healthy fetus, with no pregnancy complications for the mother, is a medically-necessary procedure.
You can come up with a hypothetical scenario under the new law that is abhorrent, but it just isn’t happening in real life.
Yep, the feminists and leftist criminal defense attorneys are A-OK with mothers murdering their helpless innocent children, then using the insanity defense.
But for some hard to figure reason we’ve just not heard anything at all from any of them opposing the “gay/trans panic” defense laws that have been enacted by 20 states.
So, if a man is tricked into sucking face with what he believes is a female, but ends up finding himself with a biological male’s junk in his hands, he can’t go crazy and kill the trans trickster, i.e. the protected class, then use the “panic” defense.
So the leftist moral code is:
It’s ok to use the insanity defense when mothers murder helpless innocent children, because the helpless innocent children aren’t a leftist protected class.
But it’s not ok to use the panic and go crazy defense when tricked into sexual foreplay with someone pretending to be female while actually being a male, because unlike the helpless innocent children, they ARE a leftist protected class?
Gotcha.
P.S. The insanity defense in almost all cases, is insane.
6:15, So you read a book written by a psychologist more than 40 years ago, and now you're an expert on the criminal mind, and on the law of criminal defense.
Apparently, you're also an expert on predatory transvestites, out in the wild preying on unsuspecting heterosexual men.
Here's a hint: look for the Adam's Apple.
"Saint George Floyd, Saint Luigi Mangione and now Saint Lindsay Clancy all "victims"! Up is down, down is up. Dark is light, light is dark. Men are women, women are men, Black is white, white is black. Bad is good, good is bad. Satanic Programming 101 for the masses."
September 14, 2026 at 11:13 AM
Ever hear of Bizarro World?
11:57, you are throwing rocks in a glass house.
Excellent September 14, 2026 at 11:27 AM.
Differences between republicans and democrats used to be over how to do good. Now it is between good, and abject evil.
Planned Parenthood has named her woman of the year.
I think maybe some Sovereign Citizens have wandered over from the neighboring post.
@11:13 am and 9:38 pm: I agree. Bizarro World. I had to explain to my 15 year old granddaughter. She thought the husband was guilty. I watch the young 30 year old mother defend post partum blues but totally forget the lady murdered her kids. This world is upside down when we defend what is wrong. We pick who we want to excuse their actions. What about the young 15 year old black kid that grew up in an abusive home and murders? He never had a chance yet we throw him in jail for his actions. That is why we used George Floyd as a role model. I will never understand this mentality. I will never serve on a Hinds county jury again!! I served on the Super Bowl murder in the Queens years ago and it ended in a hung jury. I learned from my fellow jury members that it is normal for 16 year olds to carry guns so his actions were excused. That should have been my wake up call. Crazy but true and very normal in Mississippi.
Postpartum psychosis has been recognized as a psychiatric disorder for since 1952. It affects 1-2 women in every 1000. 70% of the cases occur in women with bipolar disorder. It is very treatable and most women fully recover. Most women have doctors or family members which recognize there's a problem before there's a tragedy. Dry statistics don't usually find their way into " news" as they aren't " entertaining" and don't hold the attention of an audience. Every day, we look to the world more and more like a very uneducated/gullible country and worse we are removing psychological disorders as illnesses to lower health care costs. Indeed, we are electing people who clearly are mentally ill!
If and when she is found not guilty we will find her wheelchair in the trash can outside of the court room with the neck braces.
8:56 PM, no clue what book you’re referring to but one thing is as certain as death and taxes, you nor any of your evil leftist Democrat criminal defense attorney’s & other Democrat pals give a ____ about the helpless innocent children that die in your pro-crime, pro-criminal, catch & release cities your evil Democrat party controls, and now the new low, murdered by their own mother(s).
And you’re likely too narcissistic and “proud” (you probably call it “smart”) to see the complete evil it takes to have laws in 20 states (buying votes) for your leftist protected class, while at the same time failing to have similar laws for helpless innocent children.
Here’s a hint for you and your evil:
And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. Isaiah 13:11
GOT NEWS FOR YOU SHAWN,,,,,, 9:20 just did an exorcersisim on you.
Fortunately any future spawn will be able to outrun her.
I think I saw her training for the Boston Marathon.
9:20 am, Please turn the TV and the radio off. Disconnect yourself from politics for a while.
Go for a walk, or maybe take a yoga class. Go fishing.
I can practically feel your teeth grind through the Internet.
.....and Bipolar Disorder is the THE most often mis- or over-diagnosed condition in the DSM.....it's more often Borderline Personality Disorder with features and traits of Narcissism, and in this case Antisocial Personality Disorder.....She's a psychopath, and so is her husband if he is supporting her.
3:13 PM, so, you’re not just an evil Democrat
in favor of mothers being found not guilty of murdering their children,
in favor of extra special laws (vote buying) in 20 states for your leftist protected class
(while being against similar laws in all states protecting helpless innocent children) and
in favor of children (mostly poor minority, of course) continuing to be horrifically murdered and killed with stray bullets due to your pro-crime pro-criminal, catch & release Democrat policies,
you’re also some kind of super human with the ability to “feel” things “through the internet?”
P.S. you’re not one of those white liberals Malcom X warned us about that refuses to live in your own Democrat controlled crime infested cities like Jackson…..or send your babies to your own Democrat Public Schools, are you? Please confirm for us that you’re not a “crime for thee but not for me and my babies hypocrite,” living in the republican controlled suburbs.
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