What would happen if Lindsay Clancy’s trial took place in Canada? That’s the question CBC put to experts in a recent article. One expert called it a “shortcoming” that Clancy could not use infanticide as a defence in Canada.
Isabel Grant, a criminal law professor at the University of British Columbia, made the comment when examining how the Massachusetts mother’s case might have unfolded if it were held on home turf.
Clancy was accused of strangling her three children, aged five, three, and eight months, with exercise bands while her husband was away running an errand. After the deed, she attempted suicide by jumping from a second-floor window, leaving her paralyzed.
Her defence acknowledged the killings but argued she was not criminally responsible due to bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis while prosecutors sought convictions on three counts of first-degree murder, arguing she planned the killings and arranged for her husband to leave the house.
Had she been tried in Canada, Grant said Clancy could have raised infanticide as a defence in the death of her eight-month-old son, Callan.
