Who hasn't been watching the Cancy Trial?

Kevin Reddington Lyndsey Clansy's Defence Atourney

Or “Big Red”, as the internet inevitably christened him.

I know who I want representing me if I ever murder anyone.

Watching Reddington cross-examine witnesses has been fascinating because so much of what he does isn’t dramatic at all. It’s tiny. Its clever.

A word here.

A hesitation there.

A seemingly innocent question that suddenly changes how you look at everything that came before it.

"Can you remember what you testified to yesterday?"

"No? You cant?"

"Okay. I’ll remind you....."

It sounds almost laughably simple, but think about what has just happened.

If what you said yesterday was something you absolutely knew to be true, why don’t you know the answer today?

Now the witness starts thinking. Now they become cautious. Now comes the “I don’t know”.

And now we’re wondering too.

He hasn’t necessarily proved the witness wrong. He has done something arguably much more useful to a defence lawyer.

He has put a little doubt in your head.

The quarters Big Red used as visual symbols of key points in the case in his closing statement were also another brilliant example.

Placed there on the table, one after another, like bait.

And the Commonwealth picked them up.

Every one.

Hook, line and sinker.

They were discussing exactly what Reddington wanted them discussing.

The bands.

They weren’t tied.

They were “looped”.

Okay. Looped? Looped in a tied kind of way....? And now you look silly...

It sounds pedantic until you remember that this is precisely what a trial is about.

Words matter. Certainty matters. Memory matters. The difference between I know and I think can matter enormously.

It is forensic chess, and a very good trial lawyer makes you forget he is moving the pieces.

But Reddington’s questioning also exposes something much bigger about criminal trials.

People are fallible.

We misremember. We become defensive. We protect ourselves. We convince ourselves that our recollection is correct. Sometimes two people can genuinely remember the same event differently.

And yes, sometimes people lie.

That applies to defendants.

But it can also apply to witnesses, professionals and institutions.

A doctor doesn’t stop being human when they put on a white coat. A police officer doesn’t become incapable of making a mistake when they put on a uniform. An expert witness isn’t automatically right because they have more letters after their name than the rest of us.

That’s why cross-examination exists.

Not because experts should automatically be distrusted.

Because nobody should automatically be believed.

By the end, Lindsay Clancy wasn’t simply being tried in Massachusetts.

She was being tried across America.

Cardi B was tired of people blaming postpartum depression and mental health for harming children, making the entirely legitimate point that huge numbers of women experience postpartum mental-health problems without killing their children.

Candace Owens came charging in from the opposite direction, focusing on the extraordinary amount of medication involved and raising questions about Big Pharma and whether the treatment itself contributed to Clancy’s deterioration.

And whichever side of that argument you fall on, the sheer number of medications discussed in this case is difficult not to question.

Not because lots of medication proves medication caused the killings.

It doesn’t.

But because at some point surely medicine has to be prepared to ask whether treatment is actually making a patient better.

Another appointment.Another prescription.Another doctor.

Another medication.Another opinion.

Keep spinning.

At what point does somebody stop the hamster wheel?

That, for me, is one of the most disturbing elements of the whole case.

This wasn’t simply a woman who was struggling and told nobody.

From everything heard during the trial, there were doctors, appointments, medication, psychiatric treatment and a family trying to find help.

There was a lot of healthcare. And alot of money involved.

The much more difficult question is whether there was the right care and not just getting a pay check.

And then, because apparently everybody needed a seat at this particular table, Donald Trump offered his pennyworth.

“She did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse.”

And perhaps that contribution demonstrates perfectly what this trial became.

Everyone had an opinion.

Politicians. Celebrities. Commentators. TikTok. YouTube. Reddit. Millions of people sitting at home.

We created one enormous thirteenth juror.

Then came the pink.

Women gathered in pink in support of Lindsay Clancy and maternal mental-health awareness, a movement driven heavily through social media and TikTok.

And there is something incredibly powerful about women saying:

This could have been me.

I suffered too.

I wasn’t listened to.

I know how dark postpartum illness can become.

That matters.

For generations women have been told that profound changes in their mental health after childbirth are simply the “baby blues”. The medical profession is still a male dominated profession with more senior decision making positions held by men- male biology has historically been treated as the medical default and medication is often prescibed on this default measure. This creates widespread biases that severely compromise the quality of healthcare women receive.

Severe postpartum mental illness is very real, and women shouldn’t have to reach crisis point before somebody takes them seriously.

But there is also something deeply uncomfortable about watching a woman accused of killing three children develop what, from the outside, can begin to resemble a fan club.

Spencer Pratt described the phenomenon as “inverted morality”, essentially arguing that society has lost its mind.

The language is deliberately provocative.

But the underlying question is worth asking.

Have we become so accustomed to choosing sides online that even tragedy requires a team?

Pink for Lindsay.

Justice for the children.

Prosecution versus defence.

Big Pharma versus mental-health awareness.

Pick your side. Follow your hashtag.

Real life is rarely that convenient.

You can have enormous compassion for Lindsay Clancy without forgetting Cora, Dawson and Callan.

You can believe maternal healthcare failed without deciding that every piece of prosecution evidence must therefore be wrong.

You can believe somebody was severely mentally ill without turning them into a celebrity.

And you can demand justice for three children without pretending postpartum psychosis doesn’t exist.

Those things can all be true at the same time.

For British viewers there is another fascinating dimension to this case.

Our criminal law has expressly recognised for nearly ninety years that childbirth can so profoundly disturb a woman’s mind that it may fundamentally affect how the killing of her infant is treated.

Under the Infanticide Act 1938 in England and Wales, where a mother causes the death of her biological child under twelve months old while the balance of her mind is disturbed because she has not fully recovered from childbirth, she can be convicted of infanticide and dealt with as though guilty of manslaughter.

That does not mean Lindsay Clancy would simply have faced manslaughter had this happened here.

Only Callan was under twelve months. Cora and Dawson were older and therefore fall outside the scope of that legislation.

But the philosophical difference is fascinating.

British law decided decades ago that there are circumstances in which the mental disturbance associated with childbirth can be so profound that the criminal law should recognise it.

The American system does not have an equivalent nationwide infanticide offence, leaving cases such as Clancy’s to become battles over insanity, criminal responsibility and competing psychiatric evidence.

And we have just watched how difficult that becomes.

After weeks of testimony and days of deliberation, eleven jurors apparently reached one conclusion.

One did not.

A mistrial.

For British viewers accustomed to our courts eventually being able to accept majority verdicts in certain circumstances, watching an enormous trial end because one juror remains unconvinced seems extraordinary.

But perhaps that lone juror represents something fundamental about criminal justice.

Eleven intelligent people can look at the same evidence and see one thing.

One intelligent person can look at exactly the same evidence and see another.

Reasonable doubt isn’t supposed to disappear simply because everyone else in the room thinks you’re wrong.

And this isn’t simply an American issue.

Look at what is happening here in Britain around the Lucy Letby case.

Letby is, legally, a convicted murderer. She was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, and those convictions remain in force.

That has to be stated clearly.

But the evidence and circumstances surrounding her convictions have subsequently become the subject of an extraordinary and continuing debate involving doctors, statisticians, scientists and legal commentators.

That debate does not make her innocent.

It does raise uncomfortable questions.

What happens when the institution telling us what happened may itself need examining?

The neonatal department at the centre of the Letby case had its own pressures and problems, and questions have subsequently been raised around aspects of staffing, clinical conditions, medical evidence and statistical interpretation.

None of that proves Lucy Letby didn't kill those babies.

But it reminds us why “the experts said so” should never automatically be the end of an argument.

And there is a similarity with the Clancy case — not because the two women or the allegations against them are remotely the same.

The similarity is power.

Hospitals are powerful.

Medical institutions are powerful.

Expert witnesses carry enormous authority.

Police and prosecutors carry authority.

Pharmaceutical companies have enormous resources.

And when a criminal case becomes sufficiently enormous, careers, reputations, money and institutions can become caught within it.

That doesn't require some sinister conspiracy.

Human behaviour is considerably more ordinary than that.

People protect decisions they have already made.

Nobody particularly enjoys standing in a courtroom and saying:

We got this wrong.

A doctor doesn't want to discover that a clinical decision harmed a patient. A hospital doesn't want catastrophic failings exposed. A police force doesn't want an investigation dismantled. An expert doesn't want their professional opinion destroyed under cross-examination.

Just as a defendant can have something enormous to lose, so can everybody else.

That's why the adversarial system matters.

We shouldn't distrust experts because they're experts.

But neither should we automatically believe them because they're experts.

We test them.

Question them.

Compare what they say with the physical evidence.

And occasionally ask the embarrassingly simple question Big Red does so effectively:

Can you remember what you told us yesterday?

Perhaps the biggest legacy of the Clancy case, however, won't be Reddington, the pharmacy journey, the phone records or even the verdict — if eventually there is one.

Lindsay Clancy has become an incredibly uncomfortable face of maternal mental illness.

We like postpartum mental-health campaigns when the ending is reassuring.

A struggling mother asks for help.

She receives treatment. She gets better. She holds her baby.

Everyone talks about how important it is to speak out.

That's a story we know how to sell.

But severe mental illness isn't created by a PR department.

It can be frightening. Irrational. Ugly.

And occasionally catastrophic.

So what happens when the woman at the centre of the postpartum conversation isn't holding her recovered baby?

What happens when her three children are dead?

Politically, medically and culturally, Lindsay Clancy becomes an almost impossible poster girl.

For maternal mental-health campaigners, the deaths of three children make her extraordinarily difficult territory.

For those who see only a murderer, the evidence surrounding her mental health makes the story more complicated than simply labelling her a monster.

For healthcare professionals, the amount of treatment preceding the deaths raises uncomfortable questions about whether having lots of healthcare professionals involved necessarily means somebody is receiving good healthcare.

For people suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry, the number and combination of medications inevitably raise questions — although questions are not proof that those drugs caused what happened.

Perhaps that's why this case has become so enormous.

Everyone can find something in it that confirms what they already believe.

And social media absolutely loves that.

Tragedy. Mystery. Children. Mental illness. Medicine. A handsome husband. Lawyers. Experts. Conspiracy theories. Heroes. Villains.

A cliffhanger.

And now a mistrial.

Megan Keppy made the bleak observation that Lindsay's “earthly time here is effectively over”.

Whatever ultimately happens legally, there is no version of her previous life waiting for her.

Three children are dead. Their father has lost them. Their mother is paralysed. Families have been devastated.

There may be another trial.

More experts.

More evidence.

More TikToks.

More theories.

More pink.

Another jury.

And we'll probably watch that too.

Because people fascinate us.

THE TRUTH? WE'LL PROBABLY NEVER KNOW

And ultimately, we will never know the true picture.

Perhaps that's the most frustrating thing about cases like this.

We watch for weeks because we think eventually there will be a moment when everything clicks into place. One final witness. One timestamp. One piece of DNA. One devastating question from a lawyer that suddenly gives us the answer.

But real life doesn't work like Netflix.

A trial can reconstruct a day minute by minute. It can extract a phone, analyse a car, examine snow, recover emails, count pills, interrogate Wi-Fi data and put some of the finest medical minds in the country on a witness stand.

It still can't tell us everything.

It can't put us inside Lindsay's mind in those final minutes.

It can't tell us exactly what Patrick knew, thought or noticed at every point leading up to that evening.

It can't recreate every conversation with every doctor exactly as it happened.

It can't tell us whether a witness remembers something incorrectly, has convinced themselves of something over time, is protecting somebody, protecting themselves — or is simply telling the absolute truth.

And that's before we get to evidence that was never collected, questions nobody thought to ask at the time and tiny details whose importance only became apparent months or years later.

There will always be gaps.

Into those gaps step the prosecution, the defence, the experts, the internet sleuths — and us.

We fill them. That's human nature.

One person looks at an eighteen-minute gap and sees something sinister. Another sees traffic and a man running an errand.

One person sees a mother suffering catastrophic mental illness. Another sees planning.

One sees medical treatment. Another sees overmedication.

One sees a healthcare system desperately trying to help. Another sees a system that spectacularly failed.

The uncomfortable truth is that two intelligent people can watch exactly the same weeks of evidence and come away absolutely convinced of completely different things.

Eleven jurors and one juror demonstrated that rather spectacularly.

Perhaps that's the mistake we make when we become consumed by trials like Clancy, Letby and all the enormous cases that came before them.

We assume there is a complete picture somewhere and that if we watch for long enough, eventually we'll see it.

There probably isn't. There are fragments.

Evidence. Memories. Data. Medical opinions. Human behaviour.

And stories constructed from all of them.

A court ultimately has to reach a legal answer: guilty or not guilty, criminally responsible or not, proved or not proved.

The rest of us have the luxury of admitting something considerably less satisfying.

We don't know.

And perhaps we never will.

Because beneath the celebrity commentary, the pink T-shirts, the TikTok detectives, the medical experts, Big Pharma arguments, politicians, lawyers, timestamps, snow and millions of dollars is a fact that doesn't require an expert witness.

Three children died.

Cora. Dawson. Callan.

There is no season finale that fixes that.

And perhaps the question we should be left asking isn't simply whether Lindsay Clancy was legally insane or criminally responsible.

It's how a woman can see doctor after doctor, receive medication after medication, enter psychiatric care, have a family apparently trying to help her — and still reach this point.

We spend enormous amounts of time telling women suffering postpartum mental illness:

Ask for help.

Lindsay Clancy did.

Perhaps the question nobody really wants to answer is:

What happens when asking for help isn't enough?