The prosecution says that she planned the killings, sent her husband out on errands and then methodically murdered the children while he was gone. It describes her as a "controlling, meticulous and manipulative" mother who could no longer tolerate losing control of her family life.

The defense says she was experiencing a catastrophic psychiatric break and heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children and then herself.

That is the question before the jury. Not whether three children died. Not whether Clancy killed them. Not whether the act was horrific. The question is whether, at the time, she retained the substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing or to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.

Massachusetts places the burden on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did.

The Right Has Already Reached Its Verdict

This is important because much of the commentary from the American Right has dispensed with the legal question entirely. For figures such as Matt Walsh and Megyn Kelly, Clancy is simply a cold-blooded murderer, and the women who have gathered outside the courthouse to support her are deranged apologists for child-killing.

Walsh has described Clancy as selfish and methodical. He has reportedly suggested that men married to women who attended the courthouse rally should remove their children from them. GB News presenter Ben Leo declared that anyone who defended Clancy or suggested that someone other than a “crazed, psychotic and murderous mother” had taken her husband’s children from him “should be sectioned”.

That’s that, then.

There is to be no careful consideration of postpartum psychosis, no examination of the medical treatment Clancy received and no distinction between explaining an act and excusing it. Any derogation from the approved line means that you are defending child murder and should perhaps be locked up yourself.

I do not believe that Lindsay Clancy is guilty of murder on the facts as I understand them and under the Massachusetts test of criminal responsibility. Others are entitled to reach a different conclusion. What they are not entitled to do is pretend that the evidence of severe mental illness does not exist or that considering it amounts to celebrating Clancy, making her a martyr or giving her a "free pass".

What a jurisdiction labels murder matters. What might cause a mother to kill three children whom, until that moment, she had cared for, protected and nurtured certainly matters.

"Begging for help"

Before the killings, Clancy had repeatedly sought help. She suffered from insomnia, anxiety and depression. She had told her family that she was having thoughts about harming the children and had admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, who had worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 38 years, told the jury that Lindsay had been "begging for help".

The family was deeply concerned.

Clancy was prescribed a succession of powerful psychiatric drugs. Her medications were repeatedly changed, and she was reportedly taking four at the time of the killings. The defense says that her treatment triggered or aggravated bipolar disorder, mania, hallucinations and psychosis. One practitioner conducted all 14 of her consultations by telemedicine. The first time practitioner and patient were physically in the same room was at the trial.

The prosecution disputes that she was psychotic and has produced experts who say that, while mentally ill, she understood that what she was doing was wrong. The defense has produced experts who say that she was "frankly psychotic" and acting under a command hallucination.

That is a genuine factual and medical dispute. It is precisely the kind of dispute for which trials exist.

A Loving Mother or a Calculating Killer?

From everything I have read and heard, Clancy had previously been a loving mother. The nanny who briefly cared for her children described her as wonderful and devoted. Her former parents-in-law, who lost three grandchildren, described her as protective, nurturing and loving. She had extended her maternity leave because she did not want to leave her baby.

The case advanced by the prosecution – and eagerly adopted by parts of the supposedly truth-telling Right – is that this labor and delivery nurse, described by those closest to the family as a wonderful mother, simply decided that she no longer fancied motherhood. She then hatched an unspeakably evil plan to murder the children she had given birth to, fed, comforted and loved.

To establish an excuse, according to this theory, she also planned to cut her wrists and neck, throw herself from a second-floor window and somehow survive.

Is that impossible? No. Mothers can be evil, just as fathers can. Mental illness is not established merely because the alternative explanation is appalling.

But which explanation is more consistent with the whole picture: that Clancy suddenly became a calculating child killer because she was selfish and tired of motherhood or that her documented psychiatric collapse, profound insomnia, repeated pleas for help, rapidly changing medication and possible hallucinations culminated in a psychotic catastrophe?

At the very least, the latter possibility deserves more than sneering dismissal.

The Questions the Right Should Be Asking

The Right could have used this case to place a spotlight on the prescribing of powerful psychiatric drugs. Even if one believes Clancy was criminally responsible, serious questions remain. Why are so many American women and men taking mind-altering substances? How closely are their side effects monitored? What happens when multiple practitioners are involved? What are the warning signs of postpartum psychosis, and why did nobody intervene after Clancy disclosed thoughts of harming her children?

Postpartum psychosis is rare, affecting roughly one or two women in every thousand after childbirth, but it is a psychiatric emergency. Postpartum depression is much more common. A movement that claims to care about mothers, babies and families might be expected to discuss both.

Instead, parts of the MAGA Right have found a more congenial target: women.

The New Salem Witches

It is a bitter coincidence that Clancy’s trial is taking place in Massachusetts, the state of the Salem witch trials. The American Right has found its witch: an evil mother who strangled her children. The women standing outside the courthouse in pink, offering support for Clancy and drawing attention to maternal mental health, are witches too.

Those women were not celebrating the deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan. They were mostly silent and dignified. They formed heart shapes with their hands in support of Clancy and of women suffering from mental illness. That does not make them bloodthirsty, baby-sacrificing monsters. It does not make them "libtards". It does not mean their husbands should take away their children.

What really disgusts me is the pretense – certainly from the likes of Matt Walsh – that those most eager to condemn Clancy necessarily care more about her children than those willing to consider the evidence of psychosis.

They do not.

Three children are dead. Nothing can soften that fact. But refusing to join a social-media witch-burning does not amount to sympathy with evil. Trying to understand what happened does not make somebody sympathetic to mothers who kill their children, hostile to men or “cray-cray”.

In 1692, people relied upon superstition and mystical signs to explain frightening human behavior. We do not have to do that now. We have medicine, psychiatric evidence and a legal test designed to distinguish an evil act from an act committed by someone who was incapable of criminal responsibility.

There is evil in the world. There is also psychosis.

The jury must decide which explains Lindsay Clancy. The Right should at least be willing to admit that the question exists.