The defense in the Lindsay Clancy trial has never argued that she didn't kill her three children.

Not once. Her own attorney, Kevin Reddington, stood up in his opening statement and told the jury Lindsay is aware she killed her children and isn't trying to deny it. In his closing arguments, he said she is not guilty of the killing "because she was suffering from a disease or defect."

That's the defense. She did it, but she isn't criminally responsible for it. Postpartum psychosis, a voice in her head, and an inability to know right from wrong are to blame. Call it the insanity defense, if you will, because that's effectively what it is.

And yet I hear from people regularly who refuse to accept that. They say Reddington was just paraphrasing the prosecution. They say the defense never acknowledged she killed Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Some of them have gone so far as to build an alternative story that, of course, blames her husband, Patrick.

But the trial record contradicts all of this.

The only thing they can technically hang their hat on is that a formal, written stipulation the defense offered before trial — where she admitted her involvement in the deaths in exchange for splitting the trial in two — never got filed.

But the entire case has been built on that set of facts anyway. The defense put experts on the stand to evaluate whether she was psychotic when she strangled the children. You don't do that if your position is that she didn't kill them.

It's like banging your head against the wall trying to reach some of these people.

So why do regular people deny facts the defendant's own lawyer accepted?

Part of it is simple ignorance of how our legal system works — and I don't mean that as an insult. Every defendant should have the presumption of innocence. But when she admitted to killing your children, the presumption of innocence meant we presume that she had a psychotic episode that led to their deaths, not that she didn’t actually kill them. For those of us who have an incredibly hard time buying that rationale, we find immediate problems with it. Her defense isn't that she didn't kill her children. It's that she isn't criminally responsible for doing so. But some people can't hold those two things in their heads at the same time.

Part of it is what's called cognitive dissonance. She was described as a loving mother. She was a nurse. She took care of people. And some cannot fit that picture next to the picture of her killing all three of her kids, so they discard anything that doesn't fit into a nice, neat little box.

And part of it, I'm convinced, is that people see themselves in Lindsay. Some of these folks — and it's almost all women, by the way — have had bad experiences with men, and if they side against the woman here, they believe it somehow contradicts their own personal story. Others think, "I had a moment as a parent where I lost my cool. What if I'd flipped a switch?" So it's just easier to ignore the evidence and reality.

I've seen the same thing with abortion. A friend told me once he'd never have an abortion, but he wouldn't want to tell another person what to do in that predicament.

So we talked it through. Should you be able to kill the child the moment they're born? The answer is obviously — I hope — no. So what magically changed five seconds before they were born?

My friend came around. But a lot of people never do, because deep down they think, "I got lucky. I don't want to hold someone else to a standard I could have easily failed myself had I or my girlfriend gotten pregnant.”

This is the logical conclusion of where we go when we dehumanize babies in the womb. The next stop is dehumanizing them after they're born, if the mother decides she doesn't want them at that stage either.

There's also something beneath the surface here and I've said it before. There are a lot of people in this country, mostly on the political left, who believe we are not responsible for our own actions.

Instead, they believe, we are all collectively responsible for the choices individuals make, because, of course, society failed them and forced them to make that bad choice. According to this upside-down way of thinking, we're all somehow morally responsible for what others do — but not for ourselves.

Hogwash.

This is antithetical to reason and common sense. It is the opposite of how God views our culpability. We are responsible for the things we do or don't do. We are responsible for our sins.

Yes, the consequences of sin fall on a lot of people who didn't commit it. But that is a far cry from saying you are personally responsible for someone else's decisions.

Personal responsibility is a foundational principle of conservatism. You have to have it in a free society. If you don't, you'll have absolute and utter chaos and pure anarchy. That's what you get when people convince you they're responsible for nothing.

Someone once said one of the signs of becoming an adult is being able to entertain an idea without accepting it. I can listen to the wildest theories about this case. I can hear them out. But I don't have to accept them. Yet the people I'm describing can't even stand to listen to what I'm saying.

That's the difference between adults and children. And the adults have to take control again — politically, and in the media, science, technology, entertainment, and the other pillars of society that we've handed over to people who feel first and think never.

We need to speak the truth in love, my friends, and stop treating a temper tantrum like a reasonable way to run a society.

Conservative, not bitter.
Todd

Oxygen — The full timeline of January 24, 2023, from a routine doctor's appointment that morning to Patrick Clancy's 911 call that evening.

Court TV — Back in April, the defense offered to formally admit her "involvement in the underlying conduct resulting in the death of the three children" if the judge would split the trial in two. He didn't.

Fox News — The narrower stipulation she did enter, in her own voice, on August 4: chain of custody for the blood, bodily fluids, exercise bands, and DNA evidence.

Court TV — Reddington's opening statement: "Lindsay Clancy is aware that she killed her children and is not trying to deny that."

CBS Boston — His closing: "not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease or defect." The five verdict options are laid out here too.

CBS Boston — The prosecution's rebuttal psychiatrist testified she told him she said "go to God" as she killed each child.

NBC News — Tuesday's deadlock note and Judge William Sullivan's answer: keep going.

CBS Boston — Day five of deliberations, and a woman arrested outside the courthouse for allegedly filming the jurors as they left.

The jury in Plymouth has five choices on the verdict form: not guilty, not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter.

In this particular case, a not guilty verdict violates everything we know about reason and common sense. So why is that option on there at all?

Because it has to be. The state must prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and a jury always has the right to say the state didn't meet its burden. A judge can't take that box off the form.

But there is no logical way to get there in this case. Lindsay Clancy's own lawyer conceded she killed the children. Nobody argued someone else did. Nobody argued it was an accident. Nobody argued they died of some other cause.

The only path to not guilty that fits the evidence at all is the second box — not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. The problem is that option doesn't fit in this particular case either.

Now, a lawyer's opening and closing arguments aren't evidence. Fair enough. But when the defense doesn't even try to contest the facts the prosecution presents, and stipulates to the forensic ones on top of it, it's nearly impossible for a reasonable jury to reject the state's case.

I sat on a jury once. It was a case involving the tragic death of a five-year-old boy, and I remember the defense attorney asking me during jury selection: if you're not sure based on the evidence whether my client is guilty, how would you vote?

I said it he would have to be not guilty. That's what the presumption of innocence means. The state has to prove the defendant's guilt. If it's anything short of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” you must, as a juror, vote not guilty.

What's different in this case is that the defense never claimed she didn't kill her children. In fact, their entire case started with the premise that she did.

In that way, it's like a self-defense case, where a defendant may be on trial for killing another person, but the defense acknowledges they did it and focuses on explaining why the killing was justified — and therefore not murder.

The problem is, in this case, there's no justifiable reason to kill your three innocent children. We're left with only a psychotic episode that, at best, excuses you from a heinous act because you were somehow being talked to by voices and couldn't determine right from wrong.

But insanity not only isn't a justification here, it's not even remotely close to a reasonable excuse.

After four days and more than 17 hours, the jury told Judge William Sullivan on Tuesday they were stuck. But he sent them back to figure it out again today.

Whatever the verdict — whether they follow the evidence presented at trial or not — they're not discussing whether she actually killed her children. They're deciding whether they buy the argument that she isn't criminally responsible for killing them because of a psychotic episode.

Think what you will of me, my friends, but there's no way I could ever accept that.

This is the clip where I lay out the defense's actual argument in one sentence: she isn't criminally responsible because a voice in her head told her to do it. That's it. That's the whole case.

Share this one with somebody who still thinks the defense is claiming she didn't do it. It's under 30 seconds and is very straightforward.

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