A few years ago, I said, commenting on my observation of changes in responses by Ethics students in responses to various cases:
I have a sort of standing nightmare that I will have to spend the last decades of my life arguing that, as a matter of fact, it is indeed morally wrong to murder babies.
In this context, it has been interesting to see the furor over the Lindsay Clancy case. The issue is not so much the case itself -- as Clancy has confessed to killing her three children, the issue is not whether she did it, but whether she meets the technical requirements for being incompetent to discern the right and wrong of what she did due to psychosis from postpartum depression, and that is just a matter of jury decision on evidence. The problem with these kinds of cases is never the case itself but with other people using it as a totemic emblem. Many of her supporters have been what can only be called unhinged in their comments; Anne Hendershott at "The Catholic World Report" mostly captures my views on that.
Clancy's jury was hung, requiring the judge to declare a mistrial, so I'm sure we'll be dealing with more of this for some time yet. The repeated public valorization of killers is a sign of something very wrong with people.