Trigger Warning
Dear Reader,
Perhaps you noticed, as I did, the flood of commentary that followed the controversial mistrial declared in the Lindsay Clancy case. Among the deluge, Sara McRae’s piece entitled The Lindsay Clancy Trial: Women Are Revealing Truth was a particularly interesting read. Therein, McRae said: “Something is wrong here. We’re not moving on until we understand it.”
The Clancy trial observers, represented by McRae’s statement, are right. Something is wrong here, not merely with Ms. Clancy’s mental state in the times in question. There has to be something wrong with American legal and medical systems that contributed to, or even provoked, the kind of self-destructive madness exhibited by Ms. Clancy. But what is it?
When layers upon layers of wrong are heaped upon each other, it can be difficult to discern what can be done to help a situation. Apart from the possibility of supernatural grace in such cases of human-made horribles provided by an all-loving God, the lives Ms. Clancy (or her psychosis) destroyed (including her own) are probably destroyed forever. The primary concern now is not for Ms. Clancy as she exists today, or for the eventual salvation of her soul, but with Ms. Clancy in the time leading up to the events that brought her and her so-called “loved” ones to ruin.
Is it even possible to secure other families from ever having to bear this kind of trauma, decimation, and death? Perhaps. Ms. Clancy’s trial at least gestures toward some possibilities for reform. But before these options can be discussed in earnest, acknowledgement must be made for the way Ms. Clancy’s attempted self-obliteration upended several modern visions of utopia for the United States.
For example, investigating and prosecuting future crime as in the movie Minority Report likely would not have stopped a Lindsay Clancy. According to her ex-husband and other witnesses, she appeared to be a loving mother right up until the end. Moreover, the government officials and professionals who might have been tasked with helping such a mother avoid this kind of fate could not, or did not, do so; even with sufficient notice and opportunity to intervene.
I will not pretend to understand the potential or likely effects of Ms. Clancy’s prescription drug intake, but it is enough to know that many licensed professionals provided Ms. Clancy “help” in the form of prescription drugs. She may have self-sabotaged, or subverted this “help,” but what could Ms. Clancy’s role in ruining medical help mean, but that the so-called “help” of modern medicine did not help Ms. Clancy. How many others, like Ms. Clancy, are destined to meet their end under the watchful eye of the helpers?
As noted by Ms. McRae’s summary, the Clancy story smacks of The Handsmaid’s Tale in this respect. All of the State officials and State licensed professionals appear to expect the public to absolve them of all wrongdoing without evidence. The Court itself seems to expect the public to assume it is doing the best that it can with an outlier, rather than taking Ms. Clancy’s actions as evidence that something horrific might lurk deeper in the constitutional psyche of America itself.
According to Ms. Clancy’s ex-husband, on the stand, Ms. Clancy particularly struggled with leaving her newborns in the care of others while she went back to work as a healthcare provider. America’s unjust expectation that new mothers (and fathers) go directly from giving birth back into the workforce could be a necessary condition precedent to Ms. Clancy’s fate. Though the facts of Ms. Clancy’s case should not be over-simplified, it is worth taking a beat to appreciate the possibility that there are comparably simple solutions that might help others avoid a similar cataclysm.
What if providing paid parental leave to all parents could have avoided Ms. Clancy’s eventual fall into madness? Wouldn’t it be worth it to provide this and other similar parental benefits, even if it only avoided this one single case from happening? Isn’t it incumbent on all Americans to investigate whether providing such benefits to new mothers and fathers could or might avoid another situation like Ms. Clancy’s from ever occurring to another child or family?
It is clear that the judges, lawyers, medical professionals, and the entire societal rubric that presaged Ms. Clancy’s horrifying acts and her subsequent trial are designed to keep perpetuating the status quo. Pursuing individuals as though they are the sole cause of American horrors actually subverts discussion about good and just methods of systematic prevention. Abiding the same system will likely produce the same results — in support of this argument below I will enter into evidence the case of Assia Wevill (depicted above).
The current legal and medical regimes expect the public to conclude that because Ms. Clancy is an outlier, the system must work for everyone except outliers. But they offer no evidence for this conclusion. In the face of such a tragedy, nobody seems to be required to provide any evidence as to the fact that this system is working for most Americans. Rather, the State employs lawyers to make expensive appeals to public emotions to “prove” that guilt lies on the shoulders of Ms. Clancy alone.
On the topic of guilt, it seems that Los Angeles defense attorney Vanessa Place tried to convict her fellows of the same guilt that produces even the most unspeakable crimes. Her controversial (but wonderful) book The Guilt Project begins and ends with the ancient maxim of Terence: I am human, nothing human is alien to me. Accordingly, Place wondered whether seeing oneself as a participant in systems that produce even the most heinous crimes could inspire more options for useful criminal law reform.
Nevertheless, several observers echo the government’s sentiment that Ms. Clancy is guilty, and that her criminal guilt is the only relevant issue here. Perhaps Ms. Clancy’s conscience should have secured her family and herself, and its failure to do so was solely Ms. Clancy’s fault. Maybe the system need only prosecute bad apples, which will exist in every system of society and government, and that is the best we can do.
Even if this were so, should society bank the lives of children similarly situated to Ms. Clancy’s on the criminal justice system alone? Are governments and professions incapable of addressing harms they cause? Are they only capable of punishing or treating individuals under their care for their errors as though bad behavior exists in a vacuum, and only provide remedies after permanent damage is done?
In the story of Sylvia Plath, it seems the answers to each of these questions is “yes.” Little-to-nothing was done to correct the injustices underlying Plath’s suicide in intervening years. Her alleged abuser and husband Ted Hughes inherited her extremely profitable image and written works. He was entrusted by law with the power to speak for Plath, and he unjustly enriched himself by this power.
Yet, even still, we have her words to help us to wonder about the nature of mental health issues in England and America:
And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. - Sylvia Plath, Ariel
Prior to Plath’s death, Hughes had an affair with Assia Wevill that lasted several years after Plath committed suicide. Then the unthinkable repeated itself, only worse: when Wevill committed suicide she also murdered Hughes’ daughter Shura (Alexandra). In sharp contradistinction, Plath had protected her children when she made her final act as Hughes’ wife.
Many theories persist about Wevill’s death being a copycat of Plath’s. Wevill may have jealously desired to win the same kind of acclaim Plath seemed to have achieved in death. However, Wevill’s adultery and the taking of the life of her daughter seemed to ruin any potential fame Wevill might have received as a writer by taking her own life, while also making a stark distinction between Wevill’s final act and Plath’s.
Despite some meaningful distinctions between Wevill and Plath, something was wrong in the Hughes household that came to symbolize a common sentiment in all the English speaking world having to do with the role of women in family life. Yet, it seemed that little was done to resolve it in the last several decades. Then, the tragedy repeated when Ms. Clancy unleashed a horror allegedly because voices told her to keep her children safe by killing them.
Like Ms. Clancy, Plath and Wevill are easier than most cases of mental health and suicide to discuss, because of their publicity. However, the horrors symbolized by these tragic women may be symptoms of some kind of metaphorical cancer lodged deep in American society. It is, therefore, incumbent upon American society to investigate its own health, to find out the causes of Ms. Clancy’s fateful acts, so that future children and families will not have to face similar horrors.
The spirit of the American people is undoubtedly individualistic, and rightfully so. However, the American system may rely too heavily upon personal responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. Retributive systems of justice have their uses, but do not contain the tools needed to address the wrongs reviewed in the Clancy trial, because the responsibility for the well being of Ms. Clancy’s children and her family is not hers alone. The problem is not only, or even primarily, what society should do with Ms. Clancy now that she has committed unspeakable acts, but what could have been done to avoid those acts ever happening in the first place.
The system we have does not seem to provide a way to discuss or investigate much more than what to do with a wrongdoer like Ms. Clancy after their destructive acts are completed. It seems those interested in holding a wider discussion about complex issues involving mental health catastrophes have to keep the discourse alive over the internet, without significant institutional assistance. It does not help that those interested in maximizing convictions and prison populations tend to dumb everything down by making the discussion seem like a zero-sum game.
But this discussion is not about excusing Ms. Clancy’s actions. It is about whether the system that gives us a binary of convict-or-acquit is the right or only system that should handle cases like the Clancy matter. What other forms of justice could exist, especially in cases involving severe mental health issues? Can justice coexist with a more compassionate approach to cases involving self-destructive acts apparently caused by mental health crises?
Whatever might be the answers to the many questions posed here, there is something clearly hideous about the government’s pursuit of criminal punishment for Ms. Clancy, because Ms. Clancy seems to have desired her own complete and utter destruction. If the government succeeds in punishing her further, the State will be granting her more of what she wants — self-harm. In the wake of Ms. Clancy’s failed attempt to give herself and all who might have loved her a death penalty, the government is ready to argue Ms. Clancy should be further ruined as though harming her further would deter future acts of self-harm.
The whole criminal process simply does not seem to speak to the sort of grave and disturbing harms Ms. Clancy caused, because the entire criminal process appears to presume motives of self-gratification at least. Visiting retribution upon wrongdoers like Ms. Clancy would not likely deter future similar acts of self-retribution. No one can feel good about committing the acts Ms. Clancy committed, whether under a psychosis or not, and therefore the enterprise of prosecuting ordinary criminal trials in that case is misguided at best.
And yet, as the law currently exists, there was apparently no other option. And, worse, the State of Massachusetts put on an entire trial that likely caused more unjust damage to innocent bystanders, including Ms. Clancy’s ex-husband, than it furthered justice. Where the facts are almost entirely agreed to turn upon issues of severe mental health psychoses allegedly causing absolute forms of self-harm, there must be another way forward. We simply have not discovered it yet.
Yours Cordially,
Joshua J. Schroeder, Esq.