There is a peculiar form of ignorance that announces itself with absolute confidence. This is a recurring theme of mine, as it appears to have permeated society today. In this case, it is the ignorance that knows nothing about the law, nothing about its history, nothing about the philosophy underlying criminal responsibility—and yet arrives at the courthouse steps with the certainty of a hanging judge.
The Lindsay Clancy case has produced precisely this species of argument.
Let us begin with what is not in dispute: Lindsay Clancy killed her three children. She did not deny doing so. The defense did not construct its case around some fanciful claim that another person committed the killings. The question was—and remains—a profoundly different one:
Was Lindsay Clancy criminally responsible for her actions at the moment she committed them?
That distinction is not some modern invention designed to excuse murderers. It is one of the oldest and most fundamental questions in criminal law.
The law has never regarded the physical act alone as necessarily sufficient to establish criminal guilt. The ancient principle of mens rea—the guilty mind—exists precisely because civilized legal systems recognized that there is a difference between an unlawful act committed by a person exercising rational judgment and an act committed by someone whose mind is so profoundly diseased that ordinary concepts of intention, understanding, and moral responsibility have broken down.
Indeed, the historical development of the insanity defense is considerably older than the outrage currently being displayed by people who appear to have discovered criminal law approximately five minutes ago.
English common law developed concepts of mental incapacity long before the modern phrase “not guilty by reason of insanity” existed. In the eighteenth century, courts employed crude standards such as the so-called “wild beast” test, asking whether the accused possessed the understanding of an ordinary person rather than that of an infant or animal. The law was primitive, but the underlying principle was recognizable: criminal punishment requires some meaningful capacity for understanding and responsibility.
Then came James Hadfield.
In 1800, Hadfield attempted to shoot King George III. He was suffering from severe delusions associated with a wartime head injury. The jury acquitted him on grounds of insanity, but the case immediately exposed the inadequacy of a system that could determine someone legally insane and then have no reliable mechanism for protecting either that person or the public. Parliament responded with the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1800, which established procedures for the detention of people acquitted because of insanity.
Notice something important here.
The existence of an insanity defense did not mean that society shrugged its shoulders and said, “Never mind.”
Quite the opposite.
It meant that society recognized two separate questions:
Did this person commit the act?
And:
Was this person sufficiently mentally capable of being held criminally responsible for the act?
Those are not the same question.
In 1843, the famous M’Naghten Rules further formalized the principle. The courts articulated a standard asking whether, because of a disease of the mind, the accused understood the nature and quality of the act—or understood that it was wrong. The Supreme Court has described the traditional M’Naghten formulation in essentially those terms.
This is not a loophole.
It is an acknowledgment that a human being is not merely a biological mechanism that commits an act and is then automatically eligible for punishment.
And the distinction survived for another reason that ought to be obvious to anyone capable of separating vengeance from justice.
Suppose a person suffers a catastrophic psychotic break and genuinely believes that an innocent person is a demon, an alien, an assassin, or some other imaginary threat. Suppose the person’s perception of reality has collapsed so completely that the individual cannot comprehend the moral or legal nature of the act being committed.
Do we punish that person?
Of course society must protect itself.
But the civilized question is whether punishment is the appropriate instrument for someone whose mind was incapable of understanding the reality upon which punishment depends.
That is why the insanity defense exists.
And no, it did not disappear because people became more sentimental.
After John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 for shooting President Ronald Reagan and others, the public reaction was enormous. Congress subsequently enacted the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, substantially narrowing the federal insanity defense.
Under current federal law, insanity is an affirmative defense. A defendant must establish by clear and convincing evidence that, because of a severe mental disease or defect, the defendant was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of the acts. The federal statute also eliminated the broader volitional component that had allowed an insanity defense based upon an inability to conform one’s conduct to the law.
And here is another inconvenient fact for the people shouting that “insanity means freedom”:
It doesn’t.
Under federal law, a person found not guilty solely by reason of insanity is subject to a commitment process, and release can require a finding that the person no longer presents the requisite danger.
Massachusetts likewise does not operate on the childish premise that an insanity acquittal means someone simply walks out of the courthouse, waves goodbye, and goes home for tea.
Massachusetts law provides specific procedures for hospitalization, examination and commitment following a finding of not guilty by reason of mental illness or mental defect. An initial commitment may last six months, with additional periods of commitment possible under statutory procedures.
Which brings us back to Lindsay Clancy.
Her trial ended in a mistrial after the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. According to reporting based on statements from jurors, 11 jurors favored a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity while one juror would not agree, despite reportedly acknowledging that he had doubts about Clancy’s sanity. Those are the jurors’ accounts of the deliberations, not an independent judicial finding, and the judge ultimately declared a mistrial.
The defense maintains that Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors argued that she was criminally responsible and understood what she was doing. The evidence and expert testimony were contested. That is precisely why there was a trial.
And this is where the argument becomes almost grotesquely simple.
Nobody is required to decide that killing children is acceptable to recognize that mental illness can profoundly affect criminal responsibility.
Those are separate propositions.
The children are dead.
Their deaths are horrific.
Their mother caused those deaths.
None of those facts automatically answers the legal question of what was happening inside her mind when she committed the acts.
Indeed, that is exactly why we have courts rather than mobs.
The people demanding that “insanity should never be a defense” are not arguing for a tougher version of the existing system. They are arguing for the abandonment of one of the principles that separates criminal justice from primitive vengeance.
They appear to believe that the purpose of a criminal trial is to determine who deserves to suffer.
It is not.
A criminal trial is supposed to determine what happened, whether the accused committed the prohibited act, whether the elements of the crime have been established, and whether the accused possessed the legally required capacity for criminal responsibility.
The distinction may be emotionally unbearable.
But law is not supposed to become less rational because the facts are unbearable.
And there is an especially ugly irony in demanding that a profoundly mentally ill person be placed in prison for life simply because the crime was horrifying. If the evidence establishes that a person’s mind was so catastrophically diseased that she could not appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions, then putting that person into a prison cell and calling it “justice” may satisfy an appetite for retribution while accomplishing very little else.
The alternative is not “letting her off.”
That is the childish caricature.
The alternative can be secure psychiatric confinement, treatment, medical supervision, and continuing protection of the public. Massachusetts law specifically provides mechanisms for such commitment and continued confinement when the statutory requirements are met.
And given Clancy’s catastrophic spinal injuries following her suicide attempt, any eventual disposition would necessarily involve extraordinarily complicated medical as well as psychiatric considerations. Current reporting says she remains in a psychiatric facility while the legal proceedings continue.
So perhaps the most astonishing thing in this entire affair is not that an insanity defense exists.
“The purpose of law is not to satisfy our most primitive impulses. That is what civilization was invented to overcome.”
– Civil Heresy
It is that people who know nothing about it are so certain that it should not.
They seem to imagine that recognizing insanity somehow diminishes the horror of the crime. It does not.
It recognizes something much more uncomfortable:
Human beings can become so mentally broken that the ordinary machinery of moral judgment no longer functions.
A civilized society does not have to choose between compassion and public safety. It can confine the dangerous, protect the innocent, provide treatment where treatment is possible, and still refuse to pretend that a profoundly psychotic mind is functioning like a rational one.
The purpose of law is not to satisfy our most primitive impulses.
That is what civilization was invented to overcome.
And if someone believes that every person who kills must necessarily be punished in exactly the same manner regardless of whether that person was sane, psychotic, delusional, unconscious, intellectually incapable of understanding the act, or completely detached from reality, then perhaps the person most in need of a refresher course in criminal responsibility is not the defendant.
It is the person demanding the verdict.
Because the truly insane proposition is that justice requires us to pretend that every human mind works the same way.
Why It Matters
Few legal principles are more emotionally difficult than the insanity defense. This essay explores why civilized legal systems have long distinguished between committing a criminal act and possessing the mental capacity necessary for criminal responsibility. Through the historical development of mens rea, English common law, the M’Naghten Rules, federal insanity reforms, and the Lindsay Clancy case, it argues that justice requires careful examination of both the act itself and the defendant’s mental state.
Key Takeaways
- The essay explains that criminal law has historically required both a prohibited act (actus reus) and a culpable mental state (mens rea) before imposing criminal responsibility.
- It traces the historical development of the insanity defense from English common law through the M’Naghten Rules and the federal Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984.
- The article emphasizes that an insanity verdict does not automatically result in release but may instead lead to secure psychiatric commitment.
- Using the Lindsay Clancy case as a contemporary example, it illustrates the distinction between acknowledging a tragic act and determining legal responsibility.
- The central argument is that justice requires distinguishing between vengeance and criminal responsibility when severe mental illness is involved.
Key Questions to Consider
Q1. What is mens rea?
Mensa rea, or “guilty mind,” refers to the mental state required for criminal responsibility and has been a fundamental principle of criminal law for centuries.
Q2. Why does the insanity defense exist?
The essay argues that criminal punishment depends not only on committing an act but also on possessing sufficient mental capacity to understand its nature or wrongfulness.
Q3. Does an insanity verdict mean someone goes free?
No. The essay explains that federal law and Massachusetts law both provide for hospitalization, psychiatric evaluation, and continued commitment when statutory requirements are met.
Q4. Why does the essay discuss the Lindsay Clancy case?
It uses the case to illustrate how courts distinguish between determining who committed an act and determining whether that person possessed the legal capacity for criminal responsibility.
Q5. What broader lesson does the essay offer?
The essay concludes that civilized justice depends upon carefully evaluating both conduct and mental responsibility, even when the underlying crime evokes intense public emotion.
If this essay challenged your understanding of criminal responsibility, mental illness, and the philosophy of justice, subscribe to receive future Civil Heresy essays exploring law, history, and the institutions that shape civilized society.
