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Criminal Law

How Would You Have Applied Massachusetts Law in the Lindsay Clancy Trial?

Eugene Volokh | 9.5.2026 8:01 AM

[A.] I know lots of people have opinions about the Lindsay Clancy trial, and I wanted to pass along the Massachusetts standard criminal jury instructions for such matters. (I can't be certain that this is the instruction that was actually given in the case, but it's the recommended instruction for such cases, so I assume the actual instruction wasn't far off.) If you have followed the factual allegations in the case, please post a comment and indicate how you would have voted if you were a juror, based on your knowledge (even if limited) of the factual allegations, and why you would have so voted.

Please keep in mind two important things:

[1.] Once evidence triggering the defense is raised, the government must disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. To draw an analogy from how people talk about the reasonable doubt standard as to other guilt/innocence questions, Massachusetts takes the view that it is better that 10 non-insane people are wrongly acquitted than that one insane person is wrongly convicted.

This is not the uniform rule in the U.S.; for instance, in federal cases, the law is almost the opposite—the defendant must prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence. Indeed, my quick research suggests that this is the rule only in a minority of states. But the law in Massachusetts on this is as settled.

[2.] The substantive rule is that a defendant is not criminally responsible if

(a) he or she "suffer[ed] from a mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged offense" (with no further definition of the terms, at least as part of the standard instruction) and

(b) either

(i) the defendant lacked "the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of their conduct" or

(ii) the defendant lacked "the substantial capacity … to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law." (From what I understand of the Clancy defense, it is that she suffered from a mental disease and lacked the substantial capacity to refrain from killing her children—or at least there's a reasonable possibility that this was so.)

This substantive standard is likewise not a uniform view throughout the country; many other states follow different approaches. According to a Paul Robinson et al. study from 2015, about 1/3 of the states take the same substantive approach as Massachusetts does.

[B.] Please focus in your comment on how you would apply Massachusetts law, not whether you think the law should be changed (either as to the burden and quantum of proof, or as to the substantive definition of when the defendant isn't legally responsible).

Also, please focus on how you think this standard should apply in this case to this person. The question isn't the prevalence of postpartum psychosis as........

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