Lindsay Clancy Was Not Just Insane, She Was Made Insane

     Not being legally responsible for one’s actions because of insanity – temporarily or permanently – has been an acceptable defense in courts since Greek and Roman times. It became more formally accepted as an accepted legal defense after the 1843 trial of Scottish woodcutter Daniel M’Naghten. He murdered the English Prime Minister’s private secretary because of “delusions of persecution” that had deprived him of “all restraint over his actions.” He thought the Tories were out to get him.

     Now known as the M’Naghten Rule, the insanity defense has been applied in this country in order to distinguish willful from inadvertent criminality and to offer the accused a more merciful means of removal from society than execution. Those acquitted are sent to mental asylums, not prisons or death rows.

     Lindsay Clancy’s case adds a new element to the insanity defense. It contains the underlying narrative that she was not simply insane at the time she murdered her three children and tried to kill herself, but she had actually been made insane by others. The gross misapplication of psychotropic medication and the sin of omission from not offering any true help by the psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses treating her suggest an indictment of others’ responsibility for her insanity not seen in other uses of this defense.

     If the jury votes to acquit her because of these circumstances, a new legal precedent could be established in this country which would allow others to escape any Draconian retribution when their “insanity” has so directly been caused by these other agencies: psychiatric drugs and psychiatric malpractice.

     If the jury accepts the defense counsel’s presentation of proof that Clancy’s insanity was caused by these two factors, the door might be opened for justice to be appropriately applied to the true culprits behind too many of America’s mass shootings during these last few decades.

     Yes, during the same time period that prescriptions for these psychotropic medications have
increased so exponentially in this country.