A dindu goes berserk in a crowded public place and starts shooting over scuffed shoes. His medical record will surely show a history of psychiatric problems and inadequate care from an overburded system. Is he not criminally responsible?

If Clancy isn't criminally responsible then 90% of the incarcerated people in Mass aren't responsible either.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116691)

To cite Reddington's closing argument, how did we go from this to this? Wherein holds up a photo of the happy family and then holds up a photo of the crime scene.

What makes Lindsay sympathetic as a defendant is that by all accounts and through a mountain of testimony, she was a nice normal person beloved by everyone around her. The dindu with mental illness has been bashing people's heads in since elementary school. Lindsay wasn't. She was a totally normal person and loving mother who went through a massive personality change having to do with the realignment of neurochemicals in the postpartum period and their interaction with the prescriptions such as giving a bipolar person SSRIs that specifically exacerbated her condition.

If Judge Judy snapped at her advanced age and went on a killing spree no one would think she was herself. No one would think well this model citizen with a lifetime of public service would just turn on a dime and become somebody else. Turns out that's what happened with Lindsay. It wasn't necessarily a decision process that was all thought out and she knew what she was doing. The argument is that she had a delusional, psychotic break with reality from the person she was before, there were no warning signs, she was commendable her whole life up to a point where the chemical balance went off the rails. That's the difference.

Believe whatever you want to believe but the defense argument resonates with 50-75% of people who learn about the trial. She still might be guilty but I don't think the next jury, or any jury, will throw out the defense argument completely. It's strong because it's strong.

Every defendant who can invoke the insanity plea, does. Most do not get 11/12 jurors to buy it. I encourage you to look into the evidence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116711)

Or is she back to being sane?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116745)

The only example during trial that came out that she may have been crazy before is that after she gave birth the second time she got depressed for a while too but she exercised a lot and that seemed to cure it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116801)

The problem for convictionmos is that once you actually sit through the entire defense case, which I'm sure you haven't, you realize just how much she was reaching out for help over things going awry and just how little anyone was out there to help her. But yeah go all internet tough guy. Reddington shredded the prosecution experts on mental health. There's a reason he is beating his chest because there is no jury in Plymouth County who is going to unanimously convict her. The DA is a huge pussy if he doesn't retry her for murder 1 again. He is going to get his bussy blown out all over again. No shot.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116873)

Exactly. So why is he criminally responsible why Clancy isn't? The three paragraphs you wrote about the Clancy case have nothing to so with it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50117320)

Little crime is committed is cold blood deliberately. In most cases someone flips out and acts erratically, with far less forethought than Clancy. Austin Metcalf for example. If that occurred in Mass and he had the same psychiatrist experts as Clancy testify he could not control his impulses, he should go free if Clancy goes free.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50117504)

The law is meant to be applied equally and fairly, although it's impossible to do it perfectly, that is the goal. If law we adopt in this case was applied that way, as all laws should be, it would render 90% of criminals not guilty.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50117787)

Me: but it's not

U: durrrrr dunning krueger!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50118017)

HAtp keeps quibbling with whether that may happen (of course not), or procedural burdens, which is beside the point. The point is whether this *should* be the standard. And if one thinks so, they'd also have to be OK with the majority of erratic, violent crime committed by people with diagnosable psychiatric problems not considered crimes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50118143)

Let's talk about the actual evidence. The question is about whether, because of a mental disease or defect that she lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing or to conform her conduct to law. The doctors actually treating her closest in time repeatedly observed depression and anxiety but no psychosis. McLean discharged her as a low safety risk without psychotic features. Her treating psychiatrist saw her the day before the killings. She denied suicidal and homicidal ideation and the psychiatrist observed no psychosis or mania.

Then look at the conduct immediately surrounding the killings. She searched the restaurant, checked the drive time on Apple Maps, called the pharmacy, arranged the takeout, and sent her husband on two errands, creating a period when she would be alone with the children. She then killed three children sequentially.

She had also previously concealed thoughts of harming the children from medical providers because she was afraid they would be taken away. Her own defense expert acknowledged that. That is evidence that she understood the significance and wrongfulness of those thoughts and rationally anticipated their consequences.

And the alleged command hallucination, which was the central and most important evidence for NGRI, appeared after the fact. She never reported an external voice to her treating providers before the killings. Her later accounts differed about when it began, and the prosecution expert testified that the claimed pattern of one continuous voice appearing during this episode and then disappearing was atypical.

She obviously made up the psychosis shit, but even if she were psychotic it still wouldn't matter. The only thing that matters is that she appreciated the wrongfulness and that she wasn't forced by her symptoms and the evidence shows both of those. You claim there was a ton of exculpatory evidence, but I didn't see shit. The only evidence there was is pointing toward the fact that she understood what she was doing and could have resisted and done otherwise, even if she did have psychosis (she most definitely is making it up).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50118617)

I think she was nuts, I think she had totally lost the plot mentally. I think she was given horrible psychiatric care. She was definitely hiding the severity of her symptoms from the shrinks but not from her husband and mother. They definitely should have had her committed. We all know Patrick is a complete pussy.

I definitely could have been convinced of manslaughter or murder 2. I don't believe she entirely knew what she was doing was wrong. You poked someone good holes in the defense case but it you applied yourself in equal measure at poking holes in the prosecution case it falls apart too. About 2/3rds of what the state said in opening was completely disproven, hence reasonable doubt. I think retrial is fair at this point. The state should get one more bite at the apple. As many have pointed out they need to start the next trial with their closing from this one. They started weak and finished strong. They need to start over from the end and build that case. They had a really bad opening. So it would be interesting to see if the points you're making come out earlier in the trial and not at the very end.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50118823)

Massachusetts actually sets a demanding causal test. A mental disease or defect must cause the person to lack substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the act, or to conform her conduct to the law. The two capacities are alternatives, so she does not have to lack both. And “appreciate” means a meaningful understanding of the legal or moral significance, rather than merely being able to state abstractly that murder is illegal.

If you are trying to argue that the command hallucination made her unable to resist (again we are granting here she actually had a command hallucination) that is a much weaker argument than “a psychotic delusion made her unable to appreciate wrongfulness.” If someone hears “kill them” from a voice and proceeds to kill them, the hallucination explains the presence of a motive or pressure, but does not by itself establish incapacity. Ordinary people also experience extraordinarily strong motives, emotions, threats, addictions, compulsions, and impulses while remaining legally responsible. And that was part of gunnernattt's earlier point about "who else would you have to let off if you apply this same principle", without having to have gone that deep into it. The point is that people are really strongly compelled to commit murder for various reasons that are arguably much stronger and more difficult to resist than what a "command hallucination" might be, and we never let them off. If “unable to resist” means literally that no psychologically possible exercise of agency could have produced resistance, then I am not sure forensic psychiatry can establish that proposition with anything approaching ordinary evidentiary standards. We cannot rerun the person under identical internal conditions while changing only the decision. So that prong is off the table. It's a losing argument if you look at it objectively.

I'll be short with the wrongfulness prong, even though I know I said that was the stronger possibility, I just am sick of writing. It basically goes like this: the defense has evidence that her reasons were psychotically distorted, but that is different from evidence that she could not appreciate wrongfulness. Hearing a command or believing the children were “better off” dead can explain why she killed them while still being fully compatible with knowing that killing them was morally and legally wrong. There is a missing bridge from the idea that she had delusional reasons for doing it, and that she couldn't meaningfully understand that doing it was wrong.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50119139)

You still don't seem like you've gone through the entirety of the defense case which really began during the prosecution when defense counsel began poking holes in it. Your zeroing in on one aspect of the psychiatric expert testimony. Yes it's important but it's within a much larger context.

You can downplay the defense case all you want or accuse me of being overly impartial or whatever you were getting at. But there's a reason 11/12 voted NGRI. The defense case was compelling and for more reasons than Dr. Zeizel and Dr. Resnick. You're entitled to believe she knew the wrongfulness of her actions. Whatever. A juror may consider whatever testimony they want. Defendants plead insanity all the time. You're not on to some super secret reasoning no one's thought of what if all defendants are crazy. Any that can, do we've been over this.

At any rate lots of people think Lindsay is guilty. Even more people don't. You're in the minority opinion of every poll that's ever been done on this. And that's fine. You're just a guy on the internet, I'm just a guy on the internet. But I'm telling you a lot of legal analysts and pundits who followed the trial believed that NGRI acquittal was the most likely outcome if not hung. And they came to that conclude based on the facts and evidence in the trial.

I hate to say it but you don't sound like someone who actually watched the trial. You sound like you read a blog with some talking points. I've admitted you do make some good points about holes in the defense case but you haven't looked into the holes in the prosecution case at all. You accuse me of being overly impartial. Ok let's all just take the view that she's a bad evil woman and we'll fill in the facts from there. You're not starting at the starting point you're just either looking at one aspect of a 7 week trial under a microscope or you're making bold claims about a trial you only seem to know half of. Tun Sie was sie wollen. I'll be happy to address any plot holes in the defense case but you really should be more prepared to address the holes in the state's case but you'd have to actually start from the beginning with an open mind to both sides before you get so ultra specific. It's totally OK if you think the whole trial boils down to the command hallucination testimony. But different jurors have different experiences. Everyone brings a different point of view to that jury room.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50120133)

But yeah if you want to boil that all down to her docs never thought she had psychosis and you think she knew what she was doing was wrong then fine write it all off. I will leave you with a quote from the Commonwealth's final witness when defense counsel read off a quote from the state's opening argument in a similar vein to your summary of Lindsay's mental condition. "That statement downplays what Lindsay went through." No further questions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50120394)

There can be enormous doubt about how sick she was, whether her doctors failed her, whether she was psychotic, etc., while still being no reasonable doubt that she understood killing the children was wrong and retained substantial capacity not to do it.

And I don't know why you keep citing the jury count as though it resolves the underlying question. To me whats important is whether she is actually responsible, not whether some other people think she is.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50120724)

But I agree that retrial is appropriate here. We will see what unfolds. If the prosecution start the next case with the closing from this one it may be different. We will just have to see what the trial will look like with a more competent prosecution. Maybe they can hammer home some of your points better than they did. But obviously 11 people did not weight your arguments as heavily as the other evidence, which they're 100% allowed to do.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50120989)

Crazy part is my dad died at Spaulding Hospital Cambridge and we are coming for them *big time*.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116861)

In any event, when I found out the MA legal position I realized why the prosecution was fucked from day 1.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116895)

This is also likely what the defense attorney was arguing during deliberations on the 1 holdout juror not "following the jury instructions."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116923)

I personally would not have taken this case for any amount of money.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116846)

We all have a little Gell-Mann when it comes to topics outside of our wheelhouse. Remember all the times I got pwnd on tort law and M&A shit? We all have blind spots. I have no idea why I grasp criminal law easily but don't have a clue about C Corps inter alia.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116646)

In Massachusetts? Wouldn't bet on it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116860)

how about arguing against the point I just made

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116913)

Just lock her up in a mental health jail for life. Who cares about the semantics this is hte obvious outcome.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5900727&forum_id=2#50116707)