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On Friday, the judge in the Lindsay Clancy case declared a mistrial after a week of jury deadlock. Clancy is charged with murdering her three children in what prosecutors say was a cold-blooded killing, and in what she says was a fit of psychosis after months spent seeking help and being put on a long list of drugs for her declining mental health. One juror was the holdout, refusing to vote for acquittal. He reportedly recognized that there was reasonable doubt as to her responsibility for her crime, but would not apply the appropriate legal standard.

The disarray and unsettledness that characterizes the end of this trial is unsatisfying but also in line with the whole of the Clancy saga. The story is a tragic one: Three innocent children dead, a family in shambles. And it’s also been a galvanizing one, as women the nation over have spoken out in Clancy’s defense, noting their own postpartum struggles; many have shown up at her trial to support her, clad in pink. And there has of course been a backlash, albeit a smaller one, of people who insist that a mother who kills her children must simply be evil, no other explanation necessary (or even possible).

It’s hard to know what was in the mind of the lone holdout juror, the one who wanted to find Clancy guilty of being in her right mind when she killed her children even as he realized the prosecution has not proven its case. I can certainly speculate: Some people want a simple story of good and evil. Some people need a punitive outcome to a horrific event, no matter actual fault or responsibility. Some people just want women punished.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a sharp gender divide in opinion on the Clancy case (and something of a political divide, too, though a far less pronounced one). The people demanding Clancy go to prison are overwhelmingly conservative men. Women, and........

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