Two days before closing arguments in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, The New York Times published a guest essay with a headline that leaves nothing ambiguous: “I Study Women Who Kill Their Children. Lindsay Clancy Deserves Mercy.”
The author is not a commentator reacting to a livestream. Michelle Oberman is a law professor at Santa Clara University who has spent much of her career on exactly this subject, and who wrote the books When Mothers Kill: Interviews From Prison and Mothers Who Kill Their Children. When someone with that background weighs in while a jury is days from deliberating, it is worth understanding precisely what she argued, and what she did not.
Her argument, in short
Oberman writes that when she first heard about Clancy’s arrest, her instinct as someone who studies these cases was that Clancy was insane, and her instinct as a legal scholar was that Clancy would have an uphill battle proving it. Both halves of that sentence matter, because the second one is the part that gets ignored in most public argument about this trial.
Her conclusion is that on the evidence presented, Clancy should be acquitted by reason of insanity, and that she deserves mercy because she did something she never would have done had she not been severely ill.
The most useful part of the essay for anyone following the trial is her explanation of why these cases are so hard to win. Postpartum psychosis, she writes, waxes and wanes. Mothers experiencing it can appear to be coping when they are in fact drowning. That intermittent quality is precisely what makes the insanity defense so difficult to establish, because prosecutors can point to any stretch of apparent normal functioning as evidence of a mind in control of itself.
Why that argument lands where this trial actually is
Read against the testimony, Oberman’s point is not abstract. It is a direct answer to the Commonwealth’s strongest evidence.
Prosecutors have built their case on stretches of competence: the takeout order, the 5:15 p.m. text asking her husband to add a pharmacy stop, the CVS manager and restaurant hostess who found her entirely normal that evening, and the treating psychiatrist who saw her fourteen times in four months, including the day before, and never observed psychosis. Dr. Kirk Heilbrun told the jury she retained an awareness of the illegality of killing her children. Dr. Gregory Saathoff, the FBI forensic psychiatrist who was the trial’s final witness, seized on the fact that the voice she reported stopped the moment the killings ended.
Oberman’s framework treats that entire category of evidence differently. If psychosis genuinely comes and goes, then normal-seeming behavior hours or days before is not proof that a person was lucid at the moment that mattered. Whether twelve jurors in Plymouth County find that persuasive is a separate question, and one no essay can answer.
What the essay is and is not
It is an opinion piece, published on the Times opinion pages as a guest essay. Oberman has not examined Clancy, has not seen the full trial record, and is not a witness in the case. She says as much: her assessment rests on what she has read.
The jury will never hear any of it. Jurors in a case of this profile are instructed to avoid coverage, and an opinion column two days before closings sits entirely outside the record they are permitted to consider. Its audience is the public conversation, not the courtroom.
That conversation is now unusually loud in both directions. USA Today ran a piece today asking why women are defending Clancy. A veteran Los Angeles child-abuse prosecutor argued in Fox News this week that postpartum illness is real but that killing children demands accountability. The Atlantic published an analysis of why the insanity defense here might fail. Oberman’s essay is the most credentialed voice yet on the other side.
The legal question underneath the moral one
Mercy and acquittal are not the same thing, and the distinction matters for what happens next.
A verdict of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility does not send Clancy home. It moves her into the civil commitment system under G.L. c. 123, § 16, beginning with a psychiatric evaluation, then a commitment hearing the district attorney can contest, an initial six-month commitment, and annual reviews after that for as long as she remains mentally ill and dangerous. We laid out that machinery in detail in what happens if Lindsay Clancy is found not criminally responsible.
And under Massachusetts law the jury is not asked whether she deserves mercy. It is asked whether the Commonwealth has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she was criminally responsible under the standard from Commonwealth v. McHoul. Every psychiatric expert in this trial, on both sides, agrees she was mentally ill; we broke down what they actually disagree about in this piece.
What happens next
Dr. Saathoff finishes his testimony Wednesday morning. Closing arguments are expected Thursday, with the defense arguing first and the Commonwealth last, followed by Judge William Sullivan’s instructions and deliberations.
More coverage: the FBI expert’s testimony, Day 20 in court, what each side will argue in closings, the case for and against conviction, what a guilty verdict would mean, and the trial timeline.
Questions readers are asking
Who is Michelle Oberman?
A law professor at Santa Clara University and the author of When Mothers Kill: Interviews From Prison and Mothers Who Kill Their Children. She wrote the guest essay published by The New York Times on August 25, 2026 arguing that Lindsay Clancy deserves mercy.
Does the New York Times essay affect the trial?
No. It is an opinion piece outside the trial record. Jurors are instructed to avoid media coverage, and nothing in it is evidence.
Why is the insanity defense hard to win in postpartum psychosis cases?
Oberman’s answer is that the symptoms wax and wane, so a mother can appear to be functioning normally while severely ill. Periods of apparent competence then become evidence prosecutors use to argue she was in control.
Does an insanity acquittal mean Lindsay Clancy goes free?
No. It begins a civil commitment process under Massachusetts law that can keep her hospitalized for years, subject to annual review as long as she remains mentally ill and dangerous.
When are closing arguments?
Expected Thursday, August 27, after the final witness completes testimony Wednesday morning.