The bar is not 100 percent certainty, its beyond a reasonable doubt I thought.
Is the juror saying there's doubt that's she is involved in the slayings, or that she is guilty of the particular crimes the state is charging her with?
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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The doubt is in whether she was in control of herself when she killed the children. They are saying that even with testimony that she was aware of what she was doing, the jury DOUBTED that. They were not convinced that she was sane (enough), and her defense was a lie.
At this point, she is essentially free, until they decide to prosecute again. If the lone holdout had voted with the jury, at least she would have been locked up in a hospital.
“At the end of the day, there was so much doubt,” the woman said. “The prosecution didn’t have a figurative smoking gun. There was not a single moment throughout the presentation of that case where you could say ‘Yup, 100% I’m certain she did it’ or that she didn’t do it. There was too much gray area.”
"At the end of the day, to not follow that reasonable doubt and to acknowledge that it's there, you morally and legally cannot convict somebody for that. And that was therefore a violation of her constitutional rights," the juror said. "Essentially, that is what we were there as a jury to do is to uphold that Constitution and give someone a fair trial of their peers. And I don't necessarily think she was getting that with that juror. It's not simply because of the fact that he had an opposing view or this person felt like she was guilty. It was the inability to back that up with any logic."
I haven't followed the case that closely, but that statement seems concerning. I was under the impression this was using an affirmative defense. The prosecution didn't have to prove anything other than she wasn't crazy in that exact moment. This stament makes me think the jury instructions were absurdly terrible, or this juror straight up ignored them.
Even her own defense admitted she did it.
Maybe the doubt was she did it under psychosis? That's a charitable interpretation of the juror's statement.
Maybe the doubt was she did it under psychosis? That’s a charitable interpretation of the juror’s statement.
That's what I thought, too. TBH, I had to read that article 3 or 4 times before I could make any sense out of it. With a 11-1 hung jury, I just assumed that 11 people thought she was guilty and 1 thought she was innocent. Turns out, it's the opposite! Public opinion had already convicted her, but her defense must've had a great case.
The juror who spoke to WBZ-TV said at first, she believed Clancy should be found guilty and was criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
"And maybe I still believe that in a certain way. I think that this is a woman who was not mentally healthy. She was someone who was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis," the juror said. "I really just felt like she was so deep in it that she couldn't see her way out."
Turns out, it’s the opposite! Public opinion had already convicted her, but her defense must’ve had a great case.
I've honestly only seen conservative circles completely condemning her. Almost all of the women I've seen talking about this case understood what postpartum psychosis really means.
I’ve been following the case on 9gag - (If you’re not familiar with the site I would NOT recommend a visit) which has been both depressing and eye opening. It’s all pitchforks, gallows and the stake, “WaHMeN tOo EmoTiONaL”… but none of them really seem to understand what the jury were asked.
But, in 9gaggers defence: if you never leave your basement, are terminally online, hyper misogynistic, obsessed with being of White / European descent, only having online acquaintances and the only FeMaLe you ever see is mommy when she drops off your chicken tendies you’d probably join the groupthink too.
I'm kind of impressed they follow the news.
similar to above I folllwed it in Kiwifarms
know thine enemy
Okay hold up.
So it is my understanding that this trial wasn't to establish guilt--nobody disputes the children were killed by her hand--but whether she was "insane."
The ugly part of that is, "insane" is a legal term and not a medical one. Was she mentally ill such that she can't be held legally responsible for her actions?
My personal opinion is mostly no; I'll call her decision to have a third child incorrect; she apparently failed to do an honest risk assessment there and made a faulty GO decision, though a lot of holes in the swiss cheese model are labeled "systemic failure from the medical/psychological community."
What's odd to me is how many people are pissing their toupees over a mistrial.
You should look into the case more before you come to any conclusions. Postpartum depression and psychosis are not necessarily predictable and mothers are not at fault for experiencing either.
Psychosis where you black out and kill your loved ones is pretty fucking terrifying. I wonder if she even remembers doing it. Or what she was thinking when she did it.
It is my understanding that she contacted a doctor, a nurse and a crisis hotline on multiple occasions expressing concern for her deteriorating mental condition, at one point telling that nurse she was afraid "something terrible was going to happen" but answered no to "do you think you're going to hurt yourself or your children?"
So the question I would have for the woman who shortly thereafter murdered three children and jumped out a window paralyzing herself from the chest down: what kind of "something terrible" was she afraid of if not hurting herself or her children? Star Trek: Strange New Worlds getting renewed for another season?
We're talking about a woman who called the doctor back saying "I think these medications are making me worse" and made more than one call to a crisis hotline, and yet made no effective move to secure the safety of her children. I want some lesser conviction and sentence, something like involuntary manslaughter, time served, and bar her from unsupervised contact with minors. I want to hit the doctors and nurses and crisis hotline workers, and the insurance companies holding their leashes, a LOT harder.
If postpartum psychosis is so unpredictable, maybe women who have recently given birth shouldn't be allowed unsupervised access to minors before a thorough psych exam. Sounds like something we need to routinely screen for and provide services to prevent tragedies rather than dumping newborns on women with a "Probably don't twist its neck but lol you do you."
What the FUCK are we doing here?
Or maybe just have doctors who listen to the women who come to them for help? She didn't need a psyche screen, she knew something was up.
As for the "whether you will hurt yourself or others" question, it's loaded. In my experience with psychosis, if you actually admit to it they threaten to have you arrested, so you try to convince yourself you can keep it together until you find help. No, that's not a hyperbole. It's well known in mental health circles that you never admit to it because doctors, even ones who practice in mental health, are assholes. I have gone to the doctor convinced I would hurt someone if I didn't get help, I even asked to be held in a facility, and they threatened to call the cops, but sent me on my way when I retracted it.
Screening all new mothers would mean we had well funded, well trained medical establishment. If we had that we wouldn't need the screening in the first place because people who need help could actually get it.
Furthermore, the people most likely to kill and abuse their partners and children are men, and I don't see any suggestions that all men need a psychological screening.
Furthermore, the people most likely to kill and abuse their partners and children are men, and I don’t see any suggestions that all men need a psychological screening.
It should be noted that women are much more likely to kill children in their first year of life. With the seriousness of postpartum mental health issues maybe we really shouldn't be leaving mothers alone with their children? I mean this in multiple ways, including that recent parents should have far more support including visits by a nurse or midwife, social services, etc. to make sure parents know what to do and have what they need to do it. Our society leaves people to fend for themselves far too often.
We should improve prenatal and postpartum care before suggesting something like the government have a babysitter assigned to each mother after birth. How absurd to treat every mother like a child incapable of caring for an infant.
Do you have the stats on that? I can't find anything to support it.
Reading the wikipedia article of the case, she apparently expressed thoughts of harming her children to her husband and mother in December, but declined to be separated from them. Before and after that, she was allowed to refuse or terminate inpatient treatment, so she was deemed mentally competent to make her own decisions, and yet she failed to secure the children from what she believed was a dangerous environment. I'll hold both parents legally responsible for that. That's not a murder charge, that's something like child endangerment. It doesn't take a doctor's orders to have your parents take the kids for a little while because you're afraid something bad might happen.
The medical community also needs some consequences, and some changes. Their current move set is pretty limited, they 1. hand the patient their car keys and their pistol and tell them to go get 'em tiger, 2. Prescribe the brand name medication your exam room is wallpapered in ads for, 3. Wait for them to hurt someone and throw them in the hospital's brig.
Yes, she could have done plenty to save the kids and herself if her brain were working properly, which it was not. You're ascribing a level of logic and critical thinking to someone who was warning everyone around her that she wasn't capable of either.
If she was mentally ill enough to where she couldn't be held responsible for her actions, why was she allowed to refuse or check herself out of at least two inpatient care programs?
So she's sane enough to be let out of the hospital into her own custody but not sane enough to be held criminally responsible for murdering three children.
That's... that's what we're discussing. That the medical establishment failed her.
Yeah no. What we're discussing is the reluctance or refusal to hold women accountable for violent crime.
hold women accountable for violent crime.
Why are you taking one woman, Lyndsey Clancy, and extrapolating that out to all women?
Because court proceedings establish legal precedent to be applied in the future.
This isn't the first time a mother has murdered her children due to postpartum psychosis.
Yates's first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, testified that she urged her and Rusty not to have any more children, as it would "guarantee future psychotic depression." They conceived their fifth and final child approximately seven weeks after her discharge.[11] Yates stopped taking Haldol in March 2000 and gave birth to her daughter, Mary, eight months later on November 30, 2000.[12]
Yates seemed to be coping well until the death of her father on March 12, 2001. She then stopped taking medication, mutilated herself, read the Bible feverishly, and stopped feeding Mary.[9] She became so incapacitated that she required immediate hospitalization. On April 1, 2001, Yates came under the care of Dr. Mohammed Saeed; she was treated and released. On May 3, 2001, she degenerated back into a "near catatonic" state and filled the bathtub in the middle of the day; she would later confess to police that she had planned to drown the children that day but had decided against doing it then. Yates was hospitalized the next day after a scheduled doctor visit; her psychiatrist determined she was probably suicidal and assumed she had filled the tub to drown herself.[12][1]
At the time of the murders, the Yates family was living in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake City. Yates continued under Dr. Saeed's care until June 20, 2001, when Rusty left for work, leaving her alone to watch the children against Dr. Saeed's instructions to supervise her around the clock.[13] Rusty's mother, Dora Yates, had been scheduled to arrive an hour later to take over for Andrea. In the space of that hour, Andrea Yates drowned all five children.[14]
..
According to trial testimony in 2006, Dr. Saeed had advised Rusty Yates not to leave his wife unattended. However, Rusty began leaving her alone with the children in the weeks leading up to the drownings for short periods of time, apparently believing it would improve her independence, despite her doctors' instructions.[13] Rusty had announced at a family gathering the weekend before the drownings that he had decided to leave Yates home alone for an hour each morning and evening, so that she would not become totally dependent on him and his mother for her maternal responsibilities.[26]
I'm not even sure if I understand why you think punishing 1 woman is equivalent to punishing all women who commit violent crimes.
No no no, we're discussing why a person might not be criminally liable for their actions on the basis of an altered mental state.
When wasn't she in that altered mental state?
You expect me to answer a question about something that's *not public knowledge? That's something that would have been discussed during the trial and isn't related to any of my points.
The trial was to ascertain if she was in that state when she killed her kids and tried to kill herself.
Oh you clearly haven't looked into this case much at all. Lyndsey was well documented as a caring and attentive mother.
If she was mentally ill enough to where she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions, why was she allowed to refuse or check herself out of at least two inpatient care programs?
That is literally why she is on trial. That's why her doctors were called to testify. You seem to think psychosis only happens at certain times or can be predictable or something which is very far from the truth.
How is it unpredictable when she herself foresaw it? Lindsay Clancy said she thought she was going to hurt herself and/or her children. So everyone including herself decided to leave her unsupervised with her children. She killed them and paralyzed herself. Yeah, who could have fucking guessed that was gonna happen?
Lindsay Clancy said she thought she was going to hurt herself and/or her children.
But she didn't want to hurt herself or her children. She was losing control of herself. She reached out for help to everyone in her circles. She told everyone she was losing grasp on reality.
So the question for the trial - Was Lyndsey Clancy in her right mind when she killed her children?
That's clearly a divisive question that even a jury made up of her peers couldn't completely agree on, though 11 of the 12 believe that there was enough reasonable doubt of that.
You might want to read up on psychosis to better understand that someone suffering from psychosis is not in control of themselves.
This specific hearing is about whether she was in her right mind during the fifteen or so minutes she was strangling her toddlers to death one by one, cutting herself and jumping out a window.
It's likely she'll be found insane for that. MY POINT IS she wasn't psychotic for eight solid months. There's plenty of criminal negligence here to do around.
She took amazing care of her children before the murders.
If postpartum psychosis is so unpredictable, maybe women who have recently given birth shouldn’t be allowed unsupervised access to minors before a thorough psych exam. Sounds like something we need to routinely screen for and provide services to prevent tragedies rather than dumping newborns on women with a “Probably don’t twist its neck but lol you do you.”
I'm so glad we have Dr. Captain Aggravated here to educate us on how to treat women after they give birth. Whatever would we have done without your expertise in this subject?