Mothicide: A Culture on Trial in Massachusetts

I have sat with women walking through real postpartum suffering for years through my ministry, No Longer Bound. I do not use that word carelessly. But what happened in a Massachusetts courtroom this September, and what has happened since to the one juror who wouldn't go along with the room, convinced me the English language needed a word it did not already have. I am calling it Mothicide, the specific horror of the hand that was supposed to protect a child becoming the hand that ends her life.

What Actually Happened

On January 24, 2023, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, were found dead in their Duxbury, Massachusetts home, strangled with exercise bands. Lindsay Clancy has never disputed that she did it. The only question at trial was whether she bears criminal responsibility for it, given her claim of postpartum psychosis.

After six weeks of testimony and seven days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked eleven to one. Not a verdict of not guilty. Not a conviction. A jury that could not agree, period. Nine women, three men. The first vote in that room was eight leaning toward not responsible, two undecided, two leaning toward guilty. By the seventh day it was eleven against one. The result was a mistrial, not an acquittal, and Massachusetts has not yet decided whether to try her again.

"A jury that could not agree, period. Eleven to one. This was a jury that spent seven days convincing two people out of their own doubt until it was eleven against one." (Marc Little, Episode 72)

The Man Who Wouldn't Fold

His name is Michael Desronvil. Forty-eight, from Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Haitian, from a Catholic family. He held the line for seven days against eleven other jurors, and through his lawyer he said it plainly: he didn't have any doubts. A fellow juror later told CBS Mornings the holdout was the only person of color on the entire panel, and Gayle King, a professional interviewer, sat frozen on live television. That reaction told me something no editorial could have told me as well.

After his name got out, people went looking for something to use against him. They found a restraining order and an eviction filing, both first reported by the Boston Globe. His family says they can't leave the house.

"This is the same country that spent six weeks building sympathy for a woman who strangled three children, and then spent six days digging through a stranger's eviction file because he wouldn't sign on to it. That's not scrutiny. That's spite, wearing a press badge." (Marc Little, Episode 72)

Three Rooms, One Pattern

Michael Desronvil is not an isolated story. He is a symptom of a pattern I can trace as a lawyer, one piece of law at a time. Before birth, Massachusetts removed its last gestational limit on abortion this year, leaving the decision to a physician's judgment with no stated cutoff at all. In the classroom, a standing Department of Education guidance lets schools withhold a student's new name, pronouns, or gender identity from parents, a policy a Ludlow, Massachusetts family fought all the way to the Supreme Court and lost when certiorari was denied this past April. In the doctor's office, the Commonwealth's own published guidance lets a minor under eighteen access gender-affirming health care without parental consent if a physician judges the minor mature enough to decide, and judges that not telling the parents serves the minor's best interest.

Three different rooms. One pattern.

"The state will take control of a child, from the womb to the classroom, and hold onto that control right up until the parent gets on board with destroying them. That is not protection. That is not neutrality." (Marc Little, Episode 72)

What the Culture Chose to Talk About Instead

Oprah Winfrey ran a podcast episode on this case. Her guest, an OB-GYN, asked the audience for the same compassion toward women who don't have Lindsay Clancy's "melanin" and "privilege." In the middle of a conversation about three dead children, race got dragged into a room where it had no business being, and nobody on that stage said a word about it.

I also have to be honest about my own house. I looked for a Black evangelical voice, loud and unashamed, who had already said what needed saying about these three children and about the one man who wouldn't let a room forget them. I could not find one. Two million dollars has been raised for the woman who did this. Not one dollar, not one hashtag, not one pink shirt for Cora, for Dawson, for Callan.

"Say their names. Somebody has to, because it clearly isn't going to be the crowd outside that courthouse." (Marc Little, Episode 72)

There is a man in this story almost nobody is talking about. Patrick Clancy went to the store and came home to the worst thing a father can come home to, and he has had to grieve it in front of the entire country. His pain isn't political, and it doesn't belong to a side.

Say Their Names

It is never defensible, not for a man, not for a woman, to end the very gift God placed in their hands. When a society turns out in sympathy for what should be treated as a moral pariah, that tells you something. It tells you a great many people have drifted far from the heart of God.

I closed this episode in prayer, for Cora, Dawson, and Callan by name, for Patrick Clancy, and for Michael Desronvil and his family. Some weeks the only honest thing left to do is pray and keep watching. This is one of those weeks. Until next time, say their names, and don't look away.