Friday, September 4, 2026 (mistrial declared after the jury deadlocked 11-1).Thehindu
Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts. On January 24, 2023, she strangled her three children—Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months)—with exercise bands at their home, then attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window (leaving her paralyzed from the waist down). She did not dispute killing them but argued she was not criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis.Courthousenews
After a multi-week trial in Plymouth Superior Court, the jury of 12 (nine women and three men) deliberated for about seven days (over 38 hours). Eleven jurors favored finding her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility (insanity), with one holdout preventing a unanimous verdict. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial. Prosecutors then had to decide whether to retry the case.
THE DAY AMERICA DIED
Bye Bye, American Pie
EVIL...DEPICTED
Lindsay Clancy was a labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts—a woman whose profession was literally about helping bring children into this world.
On January 24, 2023, she strangled her three children: Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months.
Three children.
Her children.
And almost immediately, alongside the horror came the explanations.
Postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis. Medication. Mental illness. Voices. Diminished responsibility.
And perhaps some—or even all—of those things were real.
But here is where I struggle.
At what point does our understandable desire to explain EVIL begin to sound like our willingness to excuse EVIL?
I am not qualified to crawl inside Lindsay Clancy's mind. Neither are most of the people arguing about her.
But I KNOW this:
Three little children are dead.
There is a tendency in our culture to search so desperately for the reason behind the unthinkable that somewhere along the way the explanation begins competing with the victims.
Understanding matters.
Mental illness matters.
Compassion matters.
But so do Cora, Dawson and Callan.
Maybe EVIL doesn't always arrive looking like EVIL.
Maybe sometimes it arrives through a perfectly ordinary front door, inside a perfectly ordinary home, carried by someone everyone believed incapable of it.
And maybe one of the most uncomfortable questions we can ask is this:
If we can explain everything...have we reached the point where we can excuse anything?
But so do Cora, Dawson and Callan.
Maybe EVIL doesn't always arrive looking like EVIL.
Maybe sometimes it arrives through a perfectly ordinary front door, inside a perfectly ordinary home, carried by someone everyone believed incapable of it.
And maybe one of the most uncomfortable questions we can ask is this:
If we can explain everything...have we reached the point where we can excuse anything?
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