Miranda Devine: TikTok feminists hijacked Lindsay Clancy’s trial — their circus act risks adding injustice to the suffering her kids endured

· New York Post

If there is one case in which the jury should have been sequestered while they deliberated, it’s the trial of Lindsay Clancy, which Thursday is entering its sixth day of deliberations.

The tragedy of the Massachusetts nurse who strangled her three children has gripped the nation, and deep divisions rage online about whether she is a victim or a murderous sociopath.

Did she know what she was doing was wrong on that winter night of Jan. 24, 2023, when she took each child down to the basement and killed them, as prosecutors argue, or did she have no control over her actions because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, as the defense claims.

After twice telling Judge William Sullivan they were deadlocked, the jury of nine women and three men was sent back to deliberate some more on Wednesday afternoon. But the signs pointed to a mistrial.

You can only imagine the strain inside that jury room as they wrestle with the decision that all of America seems to have thoughts on.

But they should be wrestling in a vacuum, with only each other and the evidence to form a conclusion, not the cacophony of influencers outside the courtroom who swear she is not just innocent but represents the strains of modern motherhood.

They should not see the women dressed in pink outside the courtroom, who mob her lawyer like fangirls each day and tell him they love him. They should not see the TikTok moms making insane videos holding their babies and mouthing, “Same, Lindsay.”

Judge Sullivan has instructed the jury that they “not read anything about this case. Don’t listen to anything about this case.” But in an era of all-pervasive media, that’s nowhere near enough. The fact that two jurors turned up in court on Monday this week wearing pink, the symbolic color of Lindsay supporters, suggests that they may not have obeyed his instructions.

The jury’s duty

The jury has sat through every day in court, observed Lindsay as she sobs through the autopsy evidence or silently weeps after the testimony of ex-huband Patrick.

They have seen Patrick, now remarried, and his parents, Lindsay’s parents and their friends, fragments of a tight-knit Catholic family’s life in suburban Boston.

Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s trial for allegedly murdering her three children:

They have heard psychiatrists testify about Lindsay’s mental health, and first responders describe the horror that greeted them that night. They have heard Patrick’s primal howls on the 911 call that recorded the moments when he found his children’s lifeless bodies  with exercise bands drawn tight around each little neck.

Lindsay has pleaded not guilty to homicide by reason of insanity but she does not deny that she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, deliberately, meticulously, and with great cruelty, after sending then-husband Patrick out on an errand.

The evidence shows that she first killed Dawson, the rambunctious toddler whom she had once complained on Facebook was the “most difficult human I’ve ever encountered.”

He was the little boy Patrick wailed was “Dawson, my buddy” on the 911 call. The evidence shows that as soon as her husband left to pick up dinner and stop off at CVS for medication, Lindsay left Cora upstairs with baby Callan, and took Dawson down to the basement, placing him face down on the floor of Patrick’s office and strangling him.

She wrapped an exercise band around his neck and pulled it tight until his little body was limp, and blood vessels popped in his eyes.

Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Olson testified that Dawson had a ligature furrow around his neck and more hemorrhaging in his eyes than Cora that could have been caused by his struggling. She also recorded recent bruises and minor injuries on his left arm and legs.

Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that “just like adults, children have a will to survive, a strong, strong will to survive. I think it’s just part of being human . . . Children are not puppets.”

In other words, the children struggled. It is horrendous to dwell on their suffering but they are what this trial should be about, not whether Lindsay felt anxious about motherhood.

Each child took between 10 and 30 seconds to die, depending on which expert was testifying, although Callan was later revived by first responders and was pronounced brain dead days later in the hospital.

Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague told the jury in her closing statement: “I’m sorry, how many seconds is it OK for them to have been in pain, and panic, and confusion? How about it wasn’t OK for one second for any of those children to feel that? And they all felt it all for up to 30 seconds. And then she continued strangling their limp bodies for one to two minutes to make sure they were dead.

“The indifference that she showed to their pain, to their struggle, to their suffering, leaving them there on the floor with the bands around their necks, completely indifferent because she had a plan and she was following it through. Just think of . . . the pain, and the confusion that they’re going through . . . Their mom is the one that’s hurting them. Their mom is the one that’s killing them. That’s extreme atrocity and cruelty.”

The defense has done its best to put the medical system on trial, to claim that Lindsay was crying out for help and was abandoned, that her mental health spiraled until she descended into postpartum psychosis right at the moment Patrick left the house that night to ­dutifully perform errands for her.

‘Heard a voice’

She said she heard a voice tell her this was her last chance to kill her children that only lasted for the 18 minutes it took her to do the deed. Multiple psychiatrists who treated Lindsay before the killings never diagnosed her with psychosis. The consensus was depression and perhaps bipolar.

Far from being abandoned, she had a husband who worked at home and helped with the kids, who paid for a nanny and provided health insurance that covered multiple doctors, and treatment at three different hospitals. She had support from both sides of her family. Cora and Dawson were in preschool 3½ days a week.

She was mentally ill, but that is not an excuse for murder.

We have to trust the jurors who know more than anyone, but it matters that their verdict is morally sound because we don’t want young women to think it’s a normal aspect of femininity for a mother to kill her children. Nor do we want young men deciding they want nothing to do with marriage and children lest they end up like poor Patrick Clancy.

If this case results in a mistrial, then it’s injustice on top of tragedy for the three dead Clancy children — and it’s a terrible indictment of the TikTok feminists who have turned the tragedy into a circus and given women everywhere a bad name.