Nancy Mace: A Child Murderer Wants Mercy. The Rest of America Wants Justice.

Kevin Reddington says I have never sat in the courtroom where Lindsay Clancy was tried.

He is right.

Neither will Cora, Dawson, or Callan.

That’s the point.

Cora was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, strangled them to death with exercise bands. The defense did not dispute who killed them or how they were killed.

Reddington argued Clancy should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

Psychosis does not make her children less dead.

The jury could have convicted Clancy of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter. It could have acquitted her outright or found her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Instead, it returned no verdict at all.

Eleven jurors reportedly favored the insanity verdict; one held out. Only one held the line.

The result was a mistrial. Not an acquittal.

Due process does not belong exclusively to the defendant. It also requires the state to finish the job, retry the case, and give the Clancy children the full measure of justice the first trial failed to deliver.

I have spoken openly about suffering postpartum depression after my second child. Maternal mental illness is real. It can be terrifying. Mothers need treatment before a crisis, support during one, and serious medical care afterward.

Mental illness is an explanation — it is not an excuse. A diagnosis is not a magic eraser. Yet, she wasn’t even diagnosed.

Compassion cannot become a coupon for three dead children.

Massachusetts’s official homicide instructions place the burden on the Commonwealth to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.

The moral question is whether our society will remember the victims with the same intensity it has shown the defendant.

So far, the answer is not encouraging.

Mr. Reddington says he will handle this case in court, not on television. That would be more convincing had he not gone on national television after the mistrial and asked President Trump to consider pardoning his client.

There is one small constitutional problem: the president cannot pardon a Massachusetts state offense. Article II limits presidential clemency to “Offenses against the United States,” and the Justice Department expressly states that the president has no authority to pardon a state conviction.

Mr. Reddington’s stunt was cute, though, as he took to the airwaves in a publicity tour. Mr. Reddington has practiced law in Massachusetts for more than 50 years and damn well knows you can’t ask for a federal pardon in a state case.

He accused me of staging a publicity stunt because I’m asking for justice for three children. Asking the president for a pardon he cannot legally grant, on national television, is apparently called something else.

Any attorney who petitions the president for a federal pardon in a state case forfeits the right to lecture anyone on the law. Mr. Reddington might be able to read the law, but I write it.

Mr. Reddington is correct that Massachusetts does not currently authorize the death penalty. I am saying perhaps they should.

The absence of capital punishment is a legislative choice. Massachusetts lawmakers can make a different one.

They should.

I stand by the death penalty for the most deliberate and depraved murders. I also stand by public accountability when the state carries out its gravest sentence.

If this case happened in South Carolina, Lindsay Clancy could be facing the firing squad.

Over the past few weeks, the pink mob has become an army of amateur psychiatrists and prosecutors. Blaming her medication. Blaming her emotions. Blaming the healthcare system. Blaming the government. Blaming the father who came home to find all three of his children dead. And blaming the lone black juror.

Reddington threw gas on the fire. After the judge declared a mistrial, he left the courtroom and headed to television.

“I’m representing a woman who is a fantastic, wonderful individual. This woman is so brave, so awesome.”

This is why I’m calling for the death penalty.

If you kill your children, you should not be described as a “fantastic, wonderful individual.” You should not have a fan club raising you over a million dollars either.

Lindsay Clancy deserves the same mercy she gave her children. None.

Reddington went on to say: “Every day she came into the courthouse, stood tall, no pun intended. The poor thing is in a wheelchair, as we all know, for the rest of her life.”

Lindsay Clancy may never walk again.

Cora, Callan, and Dawson will never breathe again.

They do not get another trial date. They do not get another appeal. They do not get to grow up.

Mr. Reddington can attempt to mansplain all he wants to this girl from South Carolina. He can call my position a stunt. He can object to the death penalty and defend his client as aggressively as the Constitution allows.

What he cannot do is make three children disappear from the center of this case.

Mr. Reddington wants mercy before a verdict.

I want justice after one.

***

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. Subscribe to her YouTube channel here.

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