Lindsay Clancy: Why Yale Law School's Jed Rubenfeld Predicts a Plea Deal

Michael Smerconish (0:00)

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Michael Smerconish (1:04)

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Judge William Sullivan (1:15)

Alright, members of the jury, at this point, I'm going to declare that the jury is deadlocked and I'm going to declare a mistrial.

Michael Smerconish (1:24)

So that's Judge William Sullivan in the Clancy case, the Lindsay Clancy case.

The most cogent analysis of what went on here was written by my next guest, Jed Rubenfeld, who's a Professor of Constitutional Law at the Yale Law School. He's a free speech lawyer. He's the host of the Straight Down the Middle podcast. He's the author of five books, including the million copy bestseller novel, The Interpretation of Murder, and you know his wife for her research and work, Amy Chua. The two of them together, quite the power couple. Jed wrote the piece that I'm referring to for the free press. Under the headline, The Law is Inadequate to Judge Lindsay Clancy. And he wrote it while the jury was deliberating. Professor, thank you so much for coming back to the program. You say laws are inadequate in a case like this. How come?

Jed Rubenfeld (2:21)

Well, the case is just so tragic and painful. I mean, human judgment is almost inadequate. But you know what? The point I was making in that piece, Michael, is that Massachusetts laws, this case is tried under Massachusetts law, and Massachusetts law is particularly terrible, totally inadequate because, and this is what folks didn't realize, a lot of people still don't understand it.

In Massachusetts, somebody pleads insanity, unlike most of the rest of the country, somebody pleads insanity, they've got to prove it. They got to prove it to the jury that they're insane.

And, by the way, that's why almost all insanity please fail. You know, if the person generally knows what they're doing, you're not going to convince the jury they're insane. But in Massachusetts, it's the opposite. The state had to prove she was not insane. How do you prove a negative? And they had to do it by a reasonable, beyond a reasonable doubt. So the judge had to tell the jury, hey, listen, if you have any doubt, any reasonable doubt about her sanity, you must acquit. And you know, how can you not have reasonable doubt in this case? Psychiatrists disagree. So, you know, the writing was on the wall. A bunch of those jurors were going to vote to acquit on that ground.

Michael Smerconish (3:24)

So I'm so glad that you said what you said about the insanity offense, because I think the public perception, often in the fictionalized cases, Hollywood likes an insanity defense, and often in high profile cases, I'm thinking of John Hinckley and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. You know, they get a lot of notoriety, but they're very rarely brought, and even more rarely successfully brought, for the reason that you just identified, true?

Jed Rubenfeld (3:52)

Yes, one out of a hundred, roughly. It's like 99% chance of failing. You bring in an insanity defense, you're basically admitting you did it, and 99 times out of 100, you're going to lose that case.

Michael Smerconish (4:04)

You wrote, think about it, if there's any reasonable doubt about her sanity, Clancy must be acquitted. And how could there not be a reasonable doubt about Clancy's sanity? The psychiatric experts who are testifying sharply disagreed about it. All across the country, Americans sharply disagree about it. So where you've got that division of opinion as to whether she knew right from wrong when she was carrying out those atrocious acts, the fact of the matter is the expert testimony kind of precluded a finding of beyond a reasonable doubt, her being sane.