LA DA in CalPo: Clancy Would Have Been Guilty Here

The debate over the mistrial and the deliberation of the 12 jurors in the Lindsay Clancy child-murder trial continues to rage. While there seems to be a lot of media scrutiny of the lone holdout juror who stood by his principles and would not be hectored into changing his guilty vote into one for acquittal, what seems clear is that the law in Massachusetts, where the murders–and the trial–took place set the stage for the controversy. And the outcome probably wouldn’t have happened the same way here in LA.

Nathan Hochman, LA County DA, wrote a great piece for the California Post last week, weighing in on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial–that ended in a mistrial and an explosion of opinions, nuclear on both sides. Hochman’s analysis was clear and detailed–and convincing in the California Post:

Men­tal ill­ness and legal insan­ity may sound like the same thing, but they are not. A per­son can suf­fer from a severe psy­chi­at­ric dis­order — even one involving hal­lu­cin­a­tions or delu­sions — and still be leg­ally respons­ible for a crime.

“In Mas­sachu­setts, a per­son is not crim­in­ally respons­ible if, because of a men­tal dis­ease or defect, she could not know right from wrong, or could not obey the law.

That gave Clancy’s law­yers two poten­tial argu­ments. First, they could argue that post­partum psy­chosis pre­ven­ted her from appre­ci­at­ing that killing her chil­dren was wrong, because she delu­sion­ally believed she was pro­tect­ing them, or send­ing them to heaven.

Second, they could argue that even if some part of her under­stood that the killings were wrong, a com­mand hal­lu­cin­a­tion meant she could not con­trol her con­duct.

Cali­for­nia does not recog­nize that second argu­ment. Under Cali­for­nia law, a defend­ant is leg­ally insane only if a men­tal dis­ease or defect made her incap­able of under­stand­ing her actions, or know­ing that they were mor­ally or leg­ally wrong. An uncon­trol­lable impulse isn’t enough.

Cali­for­nia also places the bur­den on the defend­ant to per­suade jur­ors that it is more likely than not that she was leg­ally insane. Pro­sec­utors do not have to prove san­ity bey­ond a reas­on­able doubt.

The res­ult is a demand­ing rule: A defend­ant may be ill, hal­lu­cin­at­ing or delu­sional, and still be found leg­ally sane in Cali­for­nia if jur­ors con­clude that she under­stood what she was doing and knew it was wrong.

Her Cali­for­nia defense would have depended on prov­ing that post­partum psy­chosis made her incap­able of know­ing that killing the chil­dren was wrong”.

There is a much different standard than the one employed in Massachusetts.  And Hochman summed it up this way: “Once con­victed by that Cali­for­nia stand­ard, Clancy’s men­tal ill­ness could determ­ine whether she would be com­mit­ted to a state hos­pital or sen­tenced to life in prison. But it would not lead to her acquit­tal.That res­ult might strike some as harsh, but it reflects the nar­row pur­pose of the insan­ity defense. It is not a find­ing that someone was sick. It is a legal con­clu­sion that men­tal dis­ease rendered that per­son incap­able of under­stand­ing the nature or wrong­ful­ness of the act.”

Read this and you’ll be ready for the next time the Lindsay Clancy trial comes up in conversation. or when the re-trial is set.