Nancy Mace has argued there can be no excuse for killing three children and that the punishment should serve as a “warning to women everywhere”
US Congresswoman Nancy Mace has called for the public execution of Lindsay Clancy, wading into an increasingly bitter national debate over the Massachusetts mother who killed her three young children.
Clancy, a former nurse, admitted to strangling five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan at the family home in 2023 before attempting suicide. However, her lawyers have argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was therefore not criminally responsible. Her trial ended in a mistrial earlier this month after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
“Her children are dead, she should be dead too,” Mace told TMZ on Monday, adding that Clancy deserved the death penalty and that it should be carried out publicly.
“It could be by firearm, it could [be] electric chair, I don’t really care,” the Republican lawmaker said, arguing that the execution would serve as a “warning to women everywhere” not to kill their children.
The case has sharply divided public opinion. Prosecutors have argued that Clancy carefully planned the killings, deliberately sending her husband out on errands before strangling the children in the basement. Their experts have also disputed her psychosis defense, arguing her actions required a series of deliberate choices.
Her critics have also rejected the idea that postpartum illness can effectively excuse murder and argued that although mental illness may explain Clancy’s actions, it should not erase responsibility for deliberately killing three defenseless children.
On the other side, Clancy has attracted a large and highly mobilized following, particularly among women and advocates focused on postpartum mental illness, who view the killings as the catastrophic result of psychosis and failures in maternal mental healthcare. A fundraiser set up to support her parents, who have financed her legal defense, has raised over $1.2 million.
The mistrial has further intensified the dispute after jurors revealed they had split 11-1 in favor of finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, with the lone holdout preventing a verdict after seven days of deliberations.
The man has since been doxxed online and subjected to intense scrutiny over his personal history. Supporters have raised nearly $200,000 for him, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has offered him “asylum.”
Several fellow jurors have publicly criticized his reasoning, with one saying he “had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
Clancy’s lawyers are now seeking to have the case dismissed to avoid a retrial. Prosecutors have yet to announce whether they will retry her, with the next hearing scheduled for September 29.
