How the Lindsay Clancy Discourse Could Erode Our Crumbling Justice System

This is an opinion piece. I hold firmly to the belief that the defense’s argument is that Lindsay Clancy killed her kids but is not criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis. Whether the jury will find her guilty of murder, find her lacking criminal responsibility, or find that the prosecution has failed to prove she did it beyond a reasonable doubt is to be seen; I’m watching the trial to learn, not speculate. But I believe the same as Kevin Reddington, that Patrick Clancy is the victim who lost his children and family that day. If you believe otherwise, this is not an article to argue over that conspiracy theory. Please keep it to your social media profile.

 

We’re into week three of the trial for Massachusetts v. Lindsay Clancy, as the defense has just wrapped their case. Lindsay Clancy allegedly strangled her three young children with exercise bands in January of 2023, then cut her wrists and throat and leapt from her second story bedroom window, landing on the icy ground, where her husband found her barley alive, but paralyzed. She suffered spinal injuries and now utilizes a wheelchair for mobility, but otherwise seems to be recovering well with proper medical care.

This trial has been uniquely volatile, but the chaos has been less inside the courtroom and more across every social media platform, reaching a global scale of discussion.

Inside the courtroom, the Commonwealth is working to prove that Lindsay Clancy committed three counts of first degree murder in the deaths of her three children, and that she was lucid, aware, and had planned the acts. The defense is arguing a lack of criminality, claiming that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she committed the acts, and thus was unaware of the criminality of her conduct.

Outside of the courtroom, social media is worked itself into a frenzy with a conspiracy theory claiming that it was actually Patrick Clancy, Lindsay’s husband, who committed the murders and he convinced Lindsay that she had done it by implanting memories while she was in the hospital and still in a state of psychosis and recovery.

The Internet Is Getting Ugly Over This

It’s hard to keep track of what the narrative for the Patrick Clancy conspiracy theory is, because there is no one true theory that makes sense of all the trial evidence. Instead, there is an onslaught of TikTok videos, Instagram reels, and Threads posts from true crime junkies who have scoured the internet to find information to prop up their theory, a confirmation bias train gone off the rails.

Patrick Clancy remarried in April 2026 to a Dr. Rachel Danis, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist practicing in New York. Social media quickly took to prying into both of their private lives, dissecting online reviews of hiking trails and vacation trips, poring through social media posts and tags, contriving a story that Danis was Patrick’s mistress he had been having an affair with who helped him commit the crimes of murdering his children and framing his now ex-wife.

To complete this narrative, fake AI generated photos and videos quickly spread across social media. And it got ugly.

People took this photo from the Instagram for the fertility clinic that Dr. Danis works at. She had run a marathon for a good cause. They spread this photo, claiming she was wearing exercise bands around her waist as a public allusion to the alleged crime she had committed of strangling the Clancy children, in order to mock Lindsay Clancy. Because murderers typically wear similar-but-not-the-same items in public to represent the murder weapons they use.

The reality? Far less sinister, and far more boring. She had taken off the shirt she had started the race in and tied it around her waist.

And at this point, we have strayed far from the official evidence in the trial presented by the expert attorneys arguing the case.

Misinformation & Disinformation Have Entered the Chat

I study misinformation and disinformation campaigns and talk about it at length on here, and that’s part of what drew me to this case. Misinformation is false information spread accidentally, and disinformation is false information spread with intent to deceive.

I have a number of articles on misinfo and disinfo, and in one, I go over what to look for to spot disinformation:

• Emotionally Charged: Does this generate a lot of emotion for people? How engaging/viral is it? If the info feels very convenient and the info feels very graphic/emotional and generates a strong response, it’s likely fabricated to do exactly that.
• Convenient: Does this feel super convenient? Does this make something that I already know suddenly feel explained? Does it conveniently connect dots I didn’t have connected?
• Easily Fought Over, Not Easily Proven: The information is usually really easy for fights to break out with people taking one side or the other, but it can be difficult to disprove the information.

Myself and some of my colleagues saw the Patrick Clancy conspiracies careening quickly into disinfo territory because of how easily it checked the boxes.

Emotionally Charged: Does this generate a lot of emotion for people?

It’s easily an emotionally charged case. Three children were brutally murdered and then Lindsay Clancy allegedly attempted suicide, and her defense is now arguing the insanity defense, which is difficult and interesting. This went viral on social media on its own, no problem. So tie in the Legally Blonde style plot twist that eventually it would come out that the husband actually did it, so that he could run off with his mistress, and you have an extremely globally viral court case story on your hands.

Convenient: Does this feel super convenient?

The conspiracy conveniently ties up an otherwise really messy case. If we take the defense’s argument at face value, we have to accept the fact that an otherwise caring and seemingly loving mother may have killed her children while in an unwell mental health episode, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. Believing that Patrick Clancy, the husband did it fits the known narrative of abusive husband who just wants a way out, so he commits familicide and runs off with his mistress.

It also plays into the stereotypical structures of what makes for interesting crime stories for true crime podcasts. True crime podcasts don’t often talk about cases where the person who killed their children goes into the trial not arguing the fact that they did it. The podcasts love the twists. “But what they discovered was something they could never expect.”

It ties it up in a neat, tidy bow. Until you have to explain how it happened. And explain why he called 911 when Lindsay was half alive instead of letting her die. And explain why Lindsay’s incredibly competent lawyers all agree that she was the one who killed her children. That is why this is easily fought over, and not easily proven.

Easily Fought Over, Not Easily Proven

Trials are complicated legal proceedings.

The Massachusetts approach to the insanity defense is not even normal compared to others states, in that it’s formally known as an argument for a “lack of criminal responsibility,” which, instead of an affirmative defense, puts the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove that the defendant was capable and aware of the crime of their conduct and thus is criminally responsible.

That’s complicated and takes educating the masses with complex legal terms and knowledge, and that is how misinfo and disinfo succeed.

When misinformation can conveniently be buttoned up using tropes and well-established narratives to easily spread a viral idea, it goes much further and faster on the internet than the rebuttal. The rebuttal always takes more education and explaining, and makes it harder to stop the spread of bad information. The bad information is interesting; the rebuttal is a yawn.

My paragraph explaining “lack of criminality” is a wordy mouthful, but it’s the explanation for Lindsay Clancy’s defense argument. And yet it’s far less interesting than, “They thought they had the murderer, but we were left with more questions than answers. When the evidence was finally laid out, what they discovered was something they didn’t see coming. It was the husband and his mistress all along.”

Bad Actors Are Getting Involved

Something myself and my colleagues always watch for is when viral misinformation gets co-opted and weaponized by opportunistic bad actors. It’s a common theme in disinformation campaigns. Not all disinformation is absolutely new information seeded onto the internet. More often than not, bad actors see a wildfire spinning up on its own, and jump in to start fanning the flames.

There are certain common things we see when misinformation gets co-opted into disinformation. (I am not citing sources or screenshots for the below bullet points for legal reasons, so I apologize that I cannot be as transparent on this, but I hope it helps you spot what I’ve seen on social media).

• A “chant” gets created. Some type of repeatable phrase or various phrases becomes formulaic and the formula starts popping up all over social media. In another disinfo campaign I studied, “believe survivors” was the chant created to support the spread of disinfo for fake Epstein survivors, a campaign meant to distract from the real survivors fighting for justice.
  • I’ve seen a few pop up, but nothing I want to state here, yet, for fear I in some way influence the trajectory.

• Gender wars are common, and fan the flames quicker.
  • If the disinfo agents can find a way to pit feminists against other women or make them support men or ideals they wouldn’t normally, game on. And they’ve done just that in this case. If you believe Lindsay Clancy killed the children instead of Patrick Clancy, you’re supporting the patriarchy, according to the people in my own comments.
  • This trial is forcing feminists to support a woman as the person who killed her children, and the conspiracy about Patrick Clark being the murderer is making sane, informed people appear as though they’re supporting and protecting a white man as opposed to a woman and mother.
  • Meanwhile, sexist men are all for the idea that finally it’s the mother that killed the family, taking the spotlight from the far more prevalent narrative of the homicidal father. This puts people who have knowledge of the trial, who believe the defense’s argument, standing side by side with sexist men in the comments of people spreading misinformation, and the optics of that don’t look good for people who are fighting for the truth.

• Political party lines become confused.
  • The misinformation isn’t typically inherently liberal or conservative, but disinfo agents love to start artificially drawing those lines, which gets confusing for everyone as it begins to pit ideologies against beliefs.
  • The Patrick Clancy misinformation is starting to see some of this emerge. I’ve seen posts saying things like, “I’ve been called a liberal for believing Patrick Clancy is the murderer, but I’m a conservative woman.” That doesn’t make sense, considering nothing about the case is inherently liberal or conservative, but disinformation loves to start to shape the conversation that way, to further cause chaos.

• It gains international attention on social media, and a number of European accounts, in particular, crop up talking about the case.
  • It’s always the European accounts. When they enter the conversation, that tends to be when I see the shift deeper into disinformation. This is purely anecdotal, though. I’m sure there are many examples of disinfo that this is less the case, but the cases I’ve investigated for the past year, in particular, saw UK, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Australia, and Russia accounts pop up quickly to chime in to the discourse. When I saw it happening with this case, I immediately sat up straight. Why would a Massachusetts criminal trial for a mother who allegedly killed her children catch so much attention abroad so quickly?

• Bots and trolls join the party.
  • We saw this happening early in week two. A first sign is when a bunch of accounts on Threads, for instance, start posting about the misinformation and the thread is labeled * First Thread *. What an interesting topic to decide to use your first Threads post on…
  • A lot of AI generated content, including Threads text posts have cropped up, complete with contradictory statements and em dashes.
  • This can mean that bad actors somewhere are putting effort and potentially money behind the spread of the disinformation, which is notable and raises the question of why. More on this soon…

• The misinformation party becomes entrenched and immovable in their beliefs, despite new evidence to the contrary.
  • This court case has continued to develop, and Reddington and witnesses have continued to support the defense’s argument that Lindsay Clancy is not criminally liable for the acts of homicide she committed due to postpartum psychosis. Despite the ongoing trial in this direction, the conspiracy theorists have doubled-down and found ways to twist the new information to fit their narratives.

• The people who believe in the misinformation pick a name for themselves and/or a name for the other side, to further divide people and pit people against each other.
  • At this point, we’ve seen a variety of this, mainly the people who believe that Patrick Clancy is the murderer call themselves “Juror 13” or refer to themselves as “co-jurors” in posts on social media, clearly misunderstanding what it means to be a juror (ie. jury instructions typically include: do not discuss the trial while it’s ongoing, do not post about the trial online, etc.).

So who would benefit from this disinformation spreading? And what would be the goal? We’ll explore that a bit below.

This new development of the Patrick Clancy conspiracy theorists referring to themselves as jurors was the point where I began to see why a potential disinformation campaign might be forming around this case.

Our jury system in the US is a special cornerstone to our justice system as a whole, and some would have interest in eroding that.

The Importance of Jury Trials in Our Justice System

Jury trials were a piece the founding fathers put in place to prevent tyranny through a system of check and balances within the government.

Serving on a jury is one of the most impactful way for citizens to participate in the process of governing, collectively. It is a way that we, the people can ensure that our justice system remains balanced and fair. The founding fathers found the constitutional right to a jury trial for the people to be so important, it can be found in both the original Constitution (Article III, Section 2) and the Bill of Rights (the Sixth Amendment).

Our Jury System is at Already Risk in the US

Despite so many agreeing throughout history that the jury trial is a crucial part of the US justice system, jury trial numbers are dropping significantly. Use of jury trials in federal criminal cases dropped from 8.2% to 3.6% between 1962 and 2013, according to research cited by Diamond and Salerno. (1)

A number of variables have contributed to this drop, including the expense of litigation, the pressure for litigants to settle or take plea deals, and more. Despite all of the reasons for the decline in jury trials, they are still one of the fairest methods of finding justice in cases.

One of the issues with over 95% of trials never going before a jury is that justice ends up dealt out behind closed doors, and the general public does not see or have insight into how that justice is being administered.

This blindness to our own justice system has a few detrimental effects. It’s been shown that those who’ve served on juries tend to get more involved in their community and local politics. The reduction in jury trials means fewer people have the opportunity to experience serving on a jury, and this can lead to the general public potentially having less civic engagement.

Deals happening behind closed doors also can lead to a greater concentration of power, as it benefits political and rich elites. This is what the founding fathers wanted to prevent by emphasizing the importance of the people’s right to a jury trial.

And generally, the fewer jury trials that take place, the less the general public understands about how our justice system works. And this is painfully apparent from the discourse on social media lately.

Granted, I also believe that jury reform is important, because our jury system is not perfect. But I’m not going to go into detail on that here; we have enough to talk about.

People Do Not Understand How Criminal Trial Processes Work

I don’t have the energy or capacity to fully get into how many erroneous statements I’ve seen posted to Threads about the Clancy case that clearly demonstrated that the poster did not have a clue how a jury trial for a criminal case works.

If the vocal people on social media actually understood what an insanity defense or “lack of criminality” defense consists of, the majority of this discourse would have never occurred. While it’s true that Lindsay Clancy plead not guilty, in a lack of criminality defense, that does not technically mean that she didn’t do it. And in fact, her attorneys for both her civil and criminal lawsuits have said that she knows that she killed her children.

That said, where a lot of confusion is arising is around how Massachusetts handles an insanity defense, which is admittedly a little confusing. Instead of it being an affirmative defense, in which the burden of proof shifts to the defense to prove their argument, in MA, the burden of proof stays with the prosecution. It is on the prosecution to prove that Clancy was aware of the criminality of her conduct when she committed the crime of killing her three children. To further confuse the layman watching, the burden of proof to prove that Clancy committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt is still on the prosecution, and they could still fail at this, despite Clancy’s defense submitting their argument of lack of criminality.

If this is all confusing, that’s the issue, and you’re not alone. The general public has misunderstood and argued over these very facts that set the tone for the entire trial. Although, to be fair, this has been explained at length in news articles about this case for months since the defense first stated their argument publicly, so at a certain point, it is a bit of irresponsible ignorance to continue to assert anything otherwise.

One of the other issues I’ve seen was mentioned above: people are starting to call themselves “jurors” and post that they “just got out of court” jokingly after the session ended for the day. This would be less of an issue if it wasn’t a glaring example of how little people understand of jury trials.

Jury instructions vary state to state and court to court, but the general concept is the same. The instructions are meant to keep the jury fair and neutral in receipt of the information only presented in court, so that they can make their decisions based on the trial and nothing else.

Joking that you’re a “co-juror” with others on social media, while asking about something that the jurors were specifically instructed not to discuss or speculate on feels… obtuse and especially ignorant, and like it’s making a mockery of the already dying jury system. But I feel that way due to an expectation of everyone that’s speaking on the trial to have actually watched the full trial, and that is likely not the case for the majority of the vocal people on social media. And I may also be a tad sensitive due to my own interest in the justice system and my idealism in thinking that we can reform and improve it.

My Fears About This Discourse

I try to be slow to speculate, especially on something like an ongoing court case, but seeing as this is my opinion editorial piece, I’ll theorize a bit, while not muddying the already muddy waters with too much conjecture.

Whether or not there are truly bad actors behind this or if it’s our own country eating itself from within, I fear there will be long term ramifications for how this all played out online.

Jurors in the future will be excited and feel compelled to gossip online or see what conspiracy theory is spreading online that they haven’t considered.

Next time one of these “co-jurors” get selected for jury duty, this example of this conspiracy theory going around behind the jury’s back might give them “FOMO”, and they may feel compelled to break the rules, which will bias them and has potential to poison the whole jury.

Oftentimes, jurors who break their oath are policed by themselves or other jurors or caught by the judge or attorneys. Juror replacements and dismissals are not uncommon, but can lead to ramifications. Replacing a juror mid-trial can invalidate a verdict if the substitute does not fully rejoin the deliberation process from the start or if the issue raises concerns about the jury impartiality. If the verdict is invalidated, this can be a costly issue, as the parties will have to restart and go through a new trial.

The jokes about being “co-jurors” seem lighthearted, until it starts to lead to posts like this.

All of these repercussions will also naturally lead to even more cases choosing a bench trial or defendants taking plea deals. The litigants will see the result of this trial and any other future copycats that these “co-jurors” take interest in, and will opt to avoid becoming the subject of the swirl of misinformation and public attacks.

This further pushes our already weakening justice system towards more authoritarian styles of governing and “justice”, as we lose more of our constitutional checks and balances.

Who Stands to Benefit From This as a Disinformation Campaign?

I can’t say who exactly is behind any of the disinformation being seeded about Patrick Clancy and this case, or even if it is a disinformation campaign.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that the misinformation has been co-opted by bad actors who are deploying trolls and seeding more disinformation to stir up more chaos.

Who would benefit from that?

Well if you remember the Mueller Report, which was also recently referenced by the President of the United States in his election integrity speech, Russia, in particular, loves to stir the pot this way, with the ultimate goal of weakening the US as a world power, for their own benefit.

In that same election integrity speech, the President announced an election integrity web site that provided zipped files about foreign influence on our elections. In some of those files, there were CIA reports alluding to the possibility that China was participating in social media disinformation campaigns about the elections.

In both of these cases, Russia and China would benefit from the US justice system continuing to erode, as it further weakens the US on the global scale. However, I’d argue that China is less likely to be a player in this particular game, as their interests tend to lean economic, and I don’t see any direct economic correlation to this case.

It’s worth mentioning that President Donald Trump also benefits from the general public leaning further away from the jury trial system. Consolidation of power is the name of his game, and he’s no stranger to jury trials, having been convicted of 34 felonies in a jury trial in New York in 2024. It doesn’t take much to imagine that Trump and his administration, which is full of many who could also find themselves one day in consequential trials, may want to do what they can to subtly erode what’s left of our justice system.

These are all hypotheticals I’m walking out, however. I do not have any specific opinions, nor am I stating any of these theories as fact. It’s purely a thought experiment into who would stand to benefit from a disinformation campaign like this, if that’s what this was.

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Thanks for reading. I have a passion for researching misinformation and disinformation, and correcting the misinfo I discover when I can. If that’s something you’re into, please consider subscribing. If you find value in my work, please also consider buying me a coffee. I’m in school for a specialized program in criminal justice, and every little bit helps me survive school and beyond.

 

Sources

• Evans, Emanuella, Newman, Jonah. (2021, February 17). “Jury trials are disappearing. Here’s why.”. Injustice Watch. https://www.injusticewatch.org/criminal-courts/2021/disappearing-jury-trials-study/.