A Lindsay Clancy-Inspired Murder? Hours Before Boy, 2, Was Found Hanging from Rafter, Mom Was Discussing Clancy Online: Court Docs
The greatest fear that spawned from the Lindsay Clancy trial and subsequent social media/podcastery maelstrom was that it would inspire copycat crimes. If the case of Corie Walsh is any indication, those chickens may be coming home to roost quicker than expected.
Walsh, a 40-year-old mother of four children from Frankfort, Illinois, is being held on three charges of first-degree murder after allegedly hanging her son.
Her attorney says that her client was “experiencing a psychotic episode,” according to WMAQ-TV in Chicago, but authorities said that the mother had “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.”
Prosecutors said that a neighbor found her 2-year-old child hanging from a rafter in the basement last Tuesday.
“She removed the ligature, lowered the child to the ground, and attempted CPR while calling 911. According to the neighbor, Barrett was cold and had no pulse,” court documents read. Officers were then “directed to an upstairs bathroom located in the master bedroom… reportedly due to this defendant, the mother of the victim, attempting to harm herself.”
Police said they found Walsh in a tub “fully dressed, surrounded by bloody water.” The child, meanwhile, was pronounced dead from “asphyxia due to ligature compression of the neck” later in the day. The mother was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.
The killing of the 2-year-old and its similarities with the Clancy case had already generated considerable attention when it was discovered that Walsh was “actively discussing the case” in text messages with friends just hours before the killing allegedly occurred.
At the time, the jury was still deliberating Clancy’s fate.
On Friday, a mistrial due to hung jury was declared by the judge, with the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal by reason of insanity.
From WMAQ:
According to court documents, Walsh told officers she “did this to her baby because he was the ‘devil’ and the ‘anti-Christ.’”
Walsh’s attorney said she was “experiencing a psychotic episode” in a statement released on Friday evening.
“This is a tragedy, for the Walsh family all of whom are mourning the loss of this child. It is also a tragedy in that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened. It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
However, it’s unlikely that the case will proceed similarly to Clancy’s, in part because of where the burden of proof lies.
Both Massachusetts and Illinois have a similar standard for determining legal insanity — the Model Penal Code rule, which states that an individual “is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality [wrongfulness] of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.”
Much of the contentiousness in the Clancy case came because of the fact that Massachusetts is an outlier, with the burden of proof in an insanity defense case lying with the prosecution. In Illinois, the burden to prove the lack of substantial capacity lies with the defense, as it does in most states.
Clancy also had a significant history of medical illness and a claim of postpartum psychosis which, if it strained credibility for some observers and experts, at least existed.
If the child in this case was the youngest, a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis could likely be ruled out, and regular psychosis would be difficult to prove for the defense if their client was talking — apparently with some clarity — about the Clancy case in the hours beforehand.
Walsh was no doubt disturbed. Indeed, most people who commit the majority of violent crime are, and could, in some way, be diagnosed with a legitimate psychiatric condition. They also still have the “substantial capacity” to conform their actions to the law, most juries find.
While one does not wish to prejudge this case, the defense will have an unusually high bar to clear.
And this was the most worrying fact out of the Clancy killings and the subsequent trial: While the initial reason why the case generated interest was because of the unusual confluence of circumstances, both in terms of the facts of the case and the law, which made it an unusually tricky conundrum of how to serve justice, the glut of social media attention eventually discarded most of this entirely.
Instead, Clancy was seen by too many as a sympathetic proxy for feminist grievance, a Lizzie Borden for the Zoloft age. Of all the wrong takes that floated about during the Clancy trial, of which there existed no shortage, this was the most pernicious — inasmuch as it encouraged disturbed copycat would-be martyrs of motherhood to cash in on their bit of sympathy, too.
It is a matter of little, but some, solace that the Kafkaesque quirk in Massachusetts law which requires the prosecution to prove the defendant is sane does not exist here. That will not bring a child back. That also does not answer how many more children might end up dead all because of the ghastly “Natural Born Killers” antihero worship Lindsay Clancy has engendered.
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