Complicated?

I’m just a male who by nature cannot speak from experience about the affliction in question. That said, the Clancy murder case in Massachusetts involving 3 dead children and a mother apparently suffering from post-partum depression has been front and center the past few days.

There’s a hung jury now, and much of the commentary I’ve heard focuses on the need to understand PPD better than it’s been understood to this point. What doesn’t sit well with me—and, yes, this is without the benefit of hearing courtroom testimony—is the nagging thought that this mother and/or her defense team are cunning enough to get sentiment behind her, use post-partum depression as the reasonable doubt that will absolve her of any criminal wrong-doing. Because she just wasn’t herself…

I assume motives and character and potential duration of the psychosis were addressed during testimony and apparently did not emerge as issues, with the possible exception of one juror, when it came to trying to reach a verdict. It is difficult for me to accept the possibility that this condition was so all-consuming and affectively obstructive that the mother was unable to recognize or process the gravity and depravity of what she was doing.

She strangled her three children ranging in age from 8 months to five years, and her defense team apparently convinced all but one juror that their client was psychologically, emotionally, and in all other ways incapable of comprehending the abominable nature and consequences of what she wrought. And thus, should not receive jail time for her actions.

There’s a certain reasonableness to that, but it still feels a bit too convenient. And now that Clancy’s lawyer has asked Donald Trump to pardon her, I’m a bit more skeptical.