The jury has yet to announce the verdict in the Lindsay Clancy case, but a similar case offers a window into what may be possible.
Back in 2022, a mom living in the Bronx carried out a horrific killing of two young sons.
Daishawn Fleming, 3, and Octavius Canada, 11 months.
Before allegedly stabbing them, Dimone Fleming drowned them in a bathtub.
Two counts of first-degree murder were slapped on her.
Yet she was not convicted under the legally applicable standard.
What followed next was a trial; Fleming’s legal team, similar to Clancy, argued she had postpartum psychosis.
Citing psychiatrist Dr. Eric Goldsmith, defense argued that their client was “grossly psychotic and out of touch with reality.”
According to the shrink, “Ms. Fleming believed her actions were necessary to protect or ‘cleanse’ her children.”
To sum up, Fleming’s mind, as said by her attorneys, became so twisted that she began to believe her children were in some inexplicable danger and the only thing that saved them was her killing them.
In the verdict, the Bronx Criminal Court determined that the mom of two cannot be held criminally responsible for her actions in a conventional trial.
But that does not mean she can go scot-free.
Instead, a psychiatric evaluation is in order, which can determine how long she will spend time in a psychiatric ward at the next hearing on Sept 18.
So, while a verdict is expected in Clancy’s case, Fleming’s trial offers a sense of what’s possible.
