"Fa Cao" [Si Xiang's Commentary] Looking at the crime of infanticide by biological mothers from the case of maternal homicide in the United States, postpartum mental illness cannot be ignored!

◎ Facao Sixiang Media

Recently, a piece of news has triggered heated discussions in American society. In the case of Lindsay Clancy, a woman from Massachusetts, who was suspected of killing three young children, the judge recently declared a mistrial due to major problems in the trial process. Clancy's defense attorney argued that she was suffering from postpartum mental illness at the time of the crime, and that her mental state may be an important key to understanding the tragedy.

Clancy, 36, was suspected of strangling three young children to death with an elastic cord in the basement of his home in Duxbury, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts in January 2023. After committing the crime, he mutilated himself with a knife, and jumped from the second-floor window of his home in an attempt to commit suicide. Although she eventually survived, the fall caused severe injuries that left her paralyzed for life.

How to calculate the time "just after giving birth"? Is postpartum depression only for 5 days?

We all know that among the crimes of homicide in the criminal law, there is a crime of "birth-mother infanticide". Since the mother may suffer from postpartum depression after giving birth, there is a special reduction in criminal liability.

Clinical statistics show that many women experience temporary depression after giving birth, and some of them are more likely to develop into postpartum depression; in a few cases, they may even develop into severe postpartum psychosis. The physical pain of childbirth, combined with hormonal changes, chronic sleep deprivation, and the intense stress of caring for a newborn, can put some women in physical and mental difficulties that are different from those of the average offender.

Legislators adopt relatively lenient penalties for maternal infanticide. To some extent, they hope to consider the reasons for the crime under the mother's special physiological and psychological state, rather than treating it the same as general homicide.

But how should we define what the law calls "immediately after childbirth"? In the past, an unwed mother drowned her baby boy on the 6th day after birth. The prosecutor believed that the time limit of "immediately after birth" had passed, so the prosecution was changed to ordinary homicide with a heavier punishment. It can be seen that if the law focuses too much on the number of days after delivery, it may cause completely different criminal liability issues on the "5th day and the 6th day".

There is no such clear time line for postpartum mental illness in psychiatric medicine. Some women's symptoms may appear a few days after delivery, or may last for several months or even longer. If only the number of days after childbirth is used as the basis for judgment without further examination of the perpetrator's mental state at the time of the crime, it may be difficult to fully reflect the connection between postpartum mental illness and criminal behavior. This also makes whether the time standard for "immediately after delivery" should be adopted or whether it should also be included in the results of mental evaluation has become an important legal controversy in the crime of infanticide by the biological mother.

From the Clancy case in the United States to the crime of infanticide by biological mothers in my country

From this case, we can see that there is always a dilemma when criminal law faces cases of postpartum infanticide: on the one hand, the consequences of killing innocent children are extremely serious, and the law cannot condone it just because the perpetrator is the biological mother; on the other hand, the birth itself may be accompanied by drastic physiological and psychological changes, and a small number of pregnant women may even lose their normal ability to recognize or control due to severe mental illness. If these factors are completely ignored, it may also cause an imbalance in the evaluation of responsibility.

To determine why a mother kills a child does not depend on "how long ago the child was born" or "whether the mother has been diagnosed with postpartum depression." Rather, it is necessary to go back to the moment when the crime occurred and specifically examine the physical and mental state of the perpetrator, and how much impact this state had on her ability to identify and control.

The purpose of criminal law is not to simply respond angrily to the consequences of a crime, but to go beyond the consequences of a serious crime and further ask why the perpetrator committed this behavior and how much ability she still had to understand and control her behavior at the time.

Postpartum mental illness does not certainly mean that "you can kill someone without being held responsible," but it also does not mean that just because the perpetrator is the mother, you should not ignore the serious mental illness she may be experiencing. How to strike a balance between the life and legal interests of the murdered child, society's condemnation of the crime, and the perpetrator's true mental state at the time is the most worthy legal consideration in this type of case.

This article is reprinted with permission from "Fa Cao" [Si Xiang's Comments] Looking at the crime of infanticide by biological mothers from the case of maternal homicide in the United States, postpartum psychosis cannot be ignored!

Please read on...