Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / Lori Vallow, Lindsay Clancy And When Diagnosis Collides With Criminal Responsibility (9/7/26)

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Lori Vallow, Lindsay Clancy And When Diagnosis Collides With Criminal Responsibility (9/7/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome back to the program. For
0:04
Speaker 1: the better part of seven years, we've spent an enormous
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Speaker 1: amount of time on this show talking about children. Children
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Speaker 1: who were exploited, children who were manipulated, children who were
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Speaker 1: failed by adults who should have protected them. Children who
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Speaker 1: crossed paths with Jeffrey Epstein, Glenn Maxwell, and a constellation
0:22
Speaker 1: of powerful people who either participated, enabled, looked the other way,
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Speaker 1: or somehow managed to convince themselves that what was happening
0:30
Speaker 1: around them was somebody else's problem. And through all those years,
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Speaker 1: one principle has remained pretty damn simple for me. Adults
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Speaker 1: are supposed to protect children. That's the deal. That's the
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Speaker 1: bare minimum. You don't get a medal for it. You
0:44
Speaker 1: don't get applause. You don't get some special recognition for
0:47
Speaker 1: doing the most fundamental things society expects from a parent,
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Speaker 1: a teacher, a doctor, a prosecutor, a police officer, or
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Speaker 1: any other adult who finds themselves responsible for the safety
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Speaker 1: of a child. You protect them. And if you've listened
1:02
Speaker 1: to me talk about Epstein all these years and somehow
1:04
Speaker 1: came away believing that my empathy begins and ends with
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Speaker 1: children he preyed upon, then you have not been paying attention.
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Speaker 1: Not even close. I don't care who the perpetrator is.
1:14
Speaker 1: I don't care whether that person has money. I don't
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Speaker 1: care whether they have a famous last name. And I
1:20
Speaker 1: don't care whether they come wrapped in some carefully constructed
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Speaker 1: public image. And I certainly don't care whether their story
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Speaker 1: is emotionally complicated. When children are hurt, my instinct is
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Speaker 1: not to immediately begin searching for reasons to make the
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Speaker 1: adult at the center of it more comfortable. My instinct
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Speaker 1: is to look at the children. Because they're the ones
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Speaker 1: who didn't have the power. They're the ones who didn't
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Speaker 1: make the decisions. They're the ones who depended on the
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Speaker 1: adults around them to keep them alive. And there's something
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Speaker 1: especially dark to me about a parent becoming the source
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Speaker 1: of the danger. There's a special place in hell for
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Speaker 1: people who hurt their own children, in my opinion, that
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Speaker 1: may sound harsh. I'm pretty comfortable with it. Because a
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Speaker 1: child should be able to believe that home is the
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Speaker 1: safest place in the world. A child should be able
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Speaker 1: to believe that the person tucking them into bed is
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Speaker 1: not the person they need to fear. A child should
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Speaker 1: be able to trust that the arms holding them belong
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Speaker 1: to somebody who would die protecting them, not somebody from
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Speaker 1: whom they need protection. And once that boundary is crossed,
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Speaker 1: I have a very difficult time allowing the conversation drift
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Speaker 1: so far toward the adult that the children become scenery.
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Speaker 1: And we do that far more than people want to admit.
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Speaker 1: I covered the Lori Vallow case extensively. Anyone who followed
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Speaker 1: the case knew almost immediately that we're not dealing with
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Speaker 1: a woman operating from a healthy, rational understanding of reality. Yo,
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Speaker 1: those beliefs were bizarre. The religious delusions were extreme. We're
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Speaker 1: talking about zombies, dark spirits, supernatural classifications, apocalyptic prophecy, and
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Speaker 1: an entire worldview that had detached itself from what most
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Speaker 1: of us would recognize as reality. You didn't need to
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Speaker 1: be a psychiatrist to recognize that something was profoundly wrong.
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Speaker 1: And yet, I don't remember a massive cultural movement demanding
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Speaker 1: that everyone center Lori Vallow's suffering before discussing what happened
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Speaker 1: to her children. I don't remember armies of people lecturing
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Speaker 1: the public and that we needed to be more compassionate
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Speaker 1: toward Lori before we were permitted to say the names
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Speaker 1: of Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow. I don't remember being
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Speaker 1: told that criticizing her meant I didn't understand mental illness.
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Speaker 1: I don't remember being told that talking about the children
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Speaker 1: somehow stigmatized people suffering from psychiatric disorders. The overwhelming focus
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Speaker 1: was exactly where most people instinctively believed it belonged. On
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Speaker 1: the children. On what happened to them. On who was responsible.
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Speaker 1: and how something so horrific was allowed to happen. Now,
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Speaker 1: we arrive at another case involving dead children, and suddenly
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Speaker 1: the rules of the conversation seem to have changed. Now
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Speaker 1: I'm told I need to understand nuance. I'm told that
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Speaker 1: I need to understand the medical history. I'm being told
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Speaker 1: that I need to understand postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, medication changes,
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Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment, and whether the medical establishment failed Lindsay Clancy. Yo,
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Speaker 1: maybe they did. That's a legitimate question. If doctors failed her,
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Speaker 1: investigate that shit. If medications were mishandled, examine it. If
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Speaker 1: warning signs were missed, let's determine why. If a medical
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Speaker 1: system left a severely ill mother without adequate support, then
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Speaker 1: that system deserves scrutiny. None of that bothers me. What
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Speaker 1: bothers me is the enormous leap some people make immediately afterward.
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Speaker 1: Because explaining how somebody arrived at a horrific act is
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Speaker 1: not the same thing as declaring the act acceptable. Understanding
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Speaker 1: is not absolution. Diagnosis is not innocence. And sympathy is
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Speaker 1: not a verdict. And compassion for mental illness does not
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Speaker 1: require us to rearrange the entire moral universe until the
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Speaker 1: person accused of killing children becomes the central victim of
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Speaker 1: the story. That's where I start having questions. Because I
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Speaker 1: watch the language surrounding this case become increasingly strange. People
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Speaker 1: speak about Lindsay Clancy in tones normally reserved, for somebody
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Speaker 1: to whom something happened, rather than somebody accused of making
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Speaker 1: something happen to three children. They speak about the medical system, medication,
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Speaker 1: psychological suffering about pressure, exhaustion. They speak about everything surrounding
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Speaker 1: those children, except those children themselves. And when somebody does
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Speaker 1: insist on bringing the conversation back to them, suddenly that
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Speaker 1: person is accused of lacking compassion? No, I have compassion.
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Speaker 1: I simply refuse to ration all of it to the adult.
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Speaker 1: I have compassion for children who are small enough to
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Speaker 1: trust completely. I have compassion for children who had no
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Speaker 1: ability to diagnose the mental state of the adult caring
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Speaker 1: for them. I have compassion for children who had no
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Speaker 1: emergency exit from their own home. I have compassion for
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Speaker 1: children who couldn't call a psychiatrist, change a prescription, request
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Speaker 1: a second medical opinion, or move themselves somewhere safer. That
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Speaker 1: vulnerability matters too. In fact, it matters enormously. If severe
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Speaker 1: mental illness changes how we talk about responsibility, then we
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Speaker 1: should be willing to apply that principle consistently. If distorted
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Speaker 1: thinking changes culpability, then let's examine exactly how far we
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Speaker 1: believe that principle extends. If a profoundly sick mind demands
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Speaker 1: that we reinterpret a horrific act, then we need to
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Speaker 1: be willing to ask what happens when we encounter another
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Speaker 1: profoundly sick mind. Because principles aren't really principles if they
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Speaker 1: only apply to defendants we find sympathetic. They are preferences.
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Speaker 1: And preferences are dangerous foundation for deciding who receives moral
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Speaker 1: accountability and who receives an explanation. So, before we go
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Speaker 1: any further, I want to conduct a little experiment. Not
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Speaker 1: because mental illness isn't real. It is. Not because postpartum
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Speaker 1: psychiatric disorders aren't serious. They absolutely are. And certainly not
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Speaker 1: because medical failures should be ignored. They shouldn't. I want
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Speaker 1: to test the argument itself. I want to strip away
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Speaker 1: the personalities, the social media campaigns, the emotional investment, and
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Speaker 1: the instinctive loyalties that have formed around the case. I
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Speaker 1: want to see whether the standard people are demanding here
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Speaker 1: still makes sense when we apply it somewhere else. Because
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Speaker 1: if the arguments sound, it should survive that test. And
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Speaker 1: if it doesn't, then maybe the problem isn't that some
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Speaker 1: of us lack empathy. Maybe the problem is that somewhere
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Speaker 1: along the way, empathy stopped being something we extended to
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Speaker 1: everyone involved, and became something we used selectively to excuse
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Speaker 1: the person whose story made us feel the most uncomfortable.
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Speaker 1: Because if mental illness is enough to transform an intentional
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Speaker 1: killing into legal innocence, then Lori Vallow deserves the same indulgence.
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Speaker 1: Vallow was not merely eccentric, emotionally distressed, or struggling through
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Speaker 1: an ordinary period of instability. She was consumed by an
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Speaker 1: elaborate religious delusional system involving chosen beings, zombies, dark spirits...
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Speaker 1: apocalyptic missions, and supernatural classifications of the people around her.
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Speaker 1: By any ordinary understanding of severe psychological disturbance, her beliefs
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Speaker 1: were far more removed from reality. She reportedly believed that
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Speaker 1: certain human beings had effectively ceased to be themselves because
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Speaker 1: evil spirits had taken control of their bodies. Her own
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Speaker 1: children became incorporated into that distorted worldview. If the decisive
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Speaker 1: question is simply whether a defendant was profoundly mentally ill
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Speaker 1: when children died, then the defense should practically write itself.
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Speaker 1: Why examine planning, concealment, motive, consciousness of guilt, or participation
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Speaker 1: when a psychiatric explanation can simply swallow the entire crime?
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Speaker 1: Declare the delusion, announce the diagnosis, and apparently the criminal
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Speaker 1: law is supposed to pack its bags and head home.
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Speaker 1: That's the logic we're testing. and Lori Vallow is where
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Speaker 1: the logic immediately begins to look disgusting. Under this theory,
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Speaker 1: the more bizarre Vallow's beliefs become, the stronger her claim
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Speaker 1: to innocence supposedly becomes. The zombies help her rather than hurt,
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Speaker 1: because they demonstrate just how detached her thinking had become
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Speaker 1: from objective reality. The apocalyptic prophecies help her because they
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Speaker 1: provide evidence that she was operating within a distorted mental framework.
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Speaker 1: The supernatural hierarchy helps her because it shows that ordinary
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Speaker 1: moral reasoning had allegedly been displaced by delusional conviction. Every
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Speaker 1: increasingly disturbing belief therefore becomes another brick in the wall,
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Speaker 1: protecting her from responsibility. We would be instructed to stop
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Speaker 1: asking whether children were knowingly placed in moral danger and
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Speaker 1: start asking whether Valo sincerely believed the universe demanded it.
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Speaker 1: We would be told that sincerity matters more than consequence.
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Speaker 1: We'd be asked to substitute psychiatric explanation for legal accountability.
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Speaker 1: And once that substitution is accepted, conduct that would ordinarily
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Speaker 1: establish culpability becomes merely another symptom of the disease. At
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Speaker 1: that point, the courtroom is no longer deciding whether a
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Speaker 1: person committed a crime with a legally required state of mind,
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Speaker 1: but whether the defendant can produce a sufficiently powerful psychological
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Speaker 1: narrative afterward. Consider how extraordinarily forgiving this standard would have
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Speaker 1: to become. Vallow's children did not simply disappear into some
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Speaker 1: instantaneous fog of psychosis while everyone around them immediately called
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Speaker 1: for help. Their disappearance were followed by lies, evasions, concealment,
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Speaker 1: and an extraordinary campaign of deception. Questions about where the
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Speaker 1: children were produced, false explanations, rather than frantic demands for police, doctors,
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Speaker 1: or rescuers. Children's whereabouts became something to hide. Their absence
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Speaker 1: became something to explain away. And their deaths existed within
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Speaker 1: a broader pattern of conduct involving secrecy and self-preservation. Yet
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Speaker 1: the expansive mental health defense would have us discount all
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Speaker 1: of that because delusional people can also conceal things. Of
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Speaker 1: course they can. But that observation proves far less than
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Speaker 1: advocates sometimes pretend it proves. A person can be mentally
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Speaker 1: ill and still understand that other people regard and act
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Speaker 1: as criminal, dangerous, or morally unacceptable. If concealment automatically becomes
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Speaker 1: part of the illness whenever illness is present, then consciousness
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Speaker 1: of guilt can be explained out of existence and in
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Speaker 1: virtually every psychologically complicated homicide. Now, apply the same generosity
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Speaker 1: to Chad Daybell and the entire world they built around themselves.
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Speaker 1: Their extraordinary beliefs did not occur in a vacuum, divorced
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Speaker 1: from practical interests, romantic desire, financial considerations, and the elimination
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Speaker 1: of inconvenient people. The theology and the world beliefs managed
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Speaker 1: to coexist remarkably well. People designated as spiritually compromised had
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Speaker 1: a peculiar tendency to become obstacles whose disappearance benefited the
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Speaker 1: believers making that designation. Under the maximalist mental health theory, however,
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Speaker 1: that coincidence should apparently trouble us very little. We could
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Speaker 1: simply say delusional systems often absorb personal desire into supernatural explanation.
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Speaker 1: We could say the mind rationalizes conduct through the architecture
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Speaker 1: of illness. We could say their apparent self-interest does not
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Speaker 1: disprove psychiatric impairment. All of those statements can clinically be
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Speaker 1: plausible while still being legally incomplete. The question is not
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Speaker 1: whether mental illness can help explain monstrous behavior because sometimes
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Speaker 1: it unquestionably can. The question is whether explanation itself should
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Speaker 1: be transformed into exoneration because once that happens, nearly every
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Speaker 1: severely disturbed murderer acquires a ready-made road to innocence. Imagine
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Speaker 1: presenting Vallow's case using the broad rhetoric sometimes heard whenever
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Speaker 1: a horrific family killing intersects with mental illness? We would
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Speaker 1: begin by demanding compassion before discussing evidence. We'd warn people
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Speaker 1: not to stigmatize psychiatric disease. We'd emphasize that untreated delusions
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Speaker 1: can radically distort judgment. We'd remind everyone that mentally ill
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Speaker 1: defendants are still human beings. Look, every one of those
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Speaker 1: statements is true, and none of them establishes innocence. Compassion
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Speaker 1: is not a mens aurea standard. Stigma reduction is not
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Speaker 1: an affirmative defense. A diagnosis is not a judicial eraser
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Speaker 1: that removes planning, assistance, deception, or knowledge from the evidentiary record.
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Speaker 1: The criminal law can recognize mental disease while still asking
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Speaker 1: whether the defendant knew what she was doing, understood its
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Speaker 1: wrongfulness under the governing legal test, intended particular consequences, or
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Speaker 1: deliberately helped bring those consequences about. Collapsing all of those
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Speaker 1: questions into the single sentence, she was mentally ill, is
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Speaker 1: not sophisticated psychiatry or sophisticated law. In fact, it's the
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Speaker 1: abandonment of both. Mental illness may contribute to why a
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Speaker 1: person behaves in a particular way without legally absolving that
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Speaker 1: person of the behavior. Anger contributes to crimes without excusing them.
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Speaker 1: Trauma can shape conduct without automatically eliminating responsibility. Addiction can
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Speaker 1: influence decision-making without making every resulting act involuntary. Personality disorders
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Speaker 1: can alter relationships without erasing criminal intent. Psychosis can become
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Speaker 1: legally decisive in some cases, but only where the jurisdiction's
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Speaker 1: actual insanity standard or another relevant doctrine is satisfied. That
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Speaker 1: requires far more than demonstrating that the defendant held irrational beliefs.
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Speaker 1: If irrationality alone were the test, Vallow's supernatural worldview would
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Speaker 1: place her near the front of the line for acquittal.
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Speaker 1: Yet most people instinctively understand that something critical is missing
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Speaker 1: from that conclusion. What is missing is the legal bridge
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Speaker 1: between this person was severely mentally ill and this person
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Speaker 1: was therefore not criminally responsible. So let us carry that
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Speaker 1: argument all the way to its uncomfortable destination. If a
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Speaker 1: mother kills or participates in the killing of her children,
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Speaker 1: While experiencing profound delusions, and profound delusions are sufficient to
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Speaker 1: establish innocence, then Lori Vallow becomes a model defendant for
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Speaker 1: the doctrine. Her beliefs were not subtle. Her worldview was
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Speaker 1: not merely depressive. Her thinking involved allegedly supernatural enemies, spiritual possession,
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Speaker 1: prophetic missions, and a cosmic battle between light and darkness.
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Speaker 1: The children themselves were absorbed into that belief system. If
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Speaker 1: psychological distortion overrides accountability whenever it substantially colors a parent's
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Speaker 1: perception of her children, Valo's distortion was enormous. One could
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Speaker 1: therefore argue, following this logic, that she did not perceive
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Speaker 1: her children as ordinary children at all. One could say
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Speaker 1: she perceived corrupted vessels, spiritual threats, or beings whose physical
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Speaker 1: deaths carried a meaning radically different from the meaning understood
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Speaker 1: by everyone else. And if subjective distorted perception is all
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Speaker 1: we require... then the moral horror of the act becomes
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Speaker 1: the very evidence used to excuse the person connected to it.
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Speaker 1: But that is precisely why criminal law does not ordinarily
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Speaker 1: operate through unlimited psychiatric storytelling. Courts distinguish competency from insanity,
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Speaker 1: diagnose from legal incapacity, and diminish judgment from the absence
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Speaker 1: of legally required intent. A defendant can believe bizarre things
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Speaker 1: while still appreciating that police will arrest her if they
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Speaker 1: discover what happened. A defendant can suffer delusions while still
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Speaker 1: lying strategically. A defendant can be mentally ill while still
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Speaker 1: remove evidence, mislead relatives, coordinate stories, profit financially, or protect
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Speaker 1: a romantic partner. These facts do not magically prove sanity,
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Speaker 1: but neither does a diagnosis magically prove innocence. The law
17:12
Speaker 1: looks at function, knowledge, intent, appreciation of wrongfulness, and the
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Speaker 1: specific requirements of the charged offense. That's the analytical discipline
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Speaker 1: that prevents mental health evidence from becoming an all-purpose solvent
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Speaker 1: capable of dissolving responsibility. Without that discipline, the defendant with
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Speaker 1: the most extreme psychiatric presentation would often receive the greatest
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Speaker 1: legal protection, regardless of what the evidence showed about her conduct.
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Speaker 1: The danger of that expansive defense is not merely that
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Speaker 1: it produces strange results in Vallow's case. It creates a
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Speaker 1: principle that cannot be contained once announced. If severe mental
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Speaker 1: illness plus distorted judgment equals innocence, defendants in countless deliberate
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Speaker 1: killings can demand the same equation. The parent who believes
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Speaker 1: the child is possessed can invoke it. The cult member
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Speaker 1: who kills under apocalyptic delusions can invoke it. The paranoid
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Speaker 1: spouse who believes supernatural forces inhabit a partner can invoke it.
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Speaker 1: The religious extremist acting under a psychotic conviction can invoke it.
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Speaker 1: The defendant, whose hallucinations coexist with careful planning, can invoke it.
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Speaker 1: Soon the courtroom becomes trapped in an impossible contest over
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Speaker 1: whose internal suffering was profound enough to neutralize external conduct.
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Speaker 1: That wouldn't represent enlightened treatment of psychiatric illness. It would
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Speaker 1: represent a refusal to distinguish between people whose disease actually
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Speaker 1: destroys the capacities required for criminal responsibility and people whose
18:42
Speaker 1: disease coexist with those capacities. And in my opinion, that
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Speaker 1: distinction is exactly why Lori Vallow is such a devastating
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Speaker 1: stress test for the argument. Nobody needs to deny that
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Speaker 1: she displayed profound psychiatric disturbance in order to believe she
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Speaker 1: could still be legally responsible for crimes connected to the
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Speaker 1: death of her children. Nobody needs to mock delusions, minimize psychosis,
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Speaker 1: or pretend that mental illness is unimportant. The opposite is true.
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Speaker 1: Taking mental illness seriously requires precision and rather than slogans.
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Speaker 1: It requires asking what symptoms existed, when they existed, how
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Speaker 1: they affected cognition, whether they eliminated legally relevant capacities, and
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Speaker 1: how those conclusions fit the defendant's actual behavior before and
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Speaker 1: after the crime. It requires separating sympathy for illness from
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Speaker 1: conclusions about culpability. It requires acknowledging that psychiatric explanation can
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Speaker 1: be compelling without being exculpatory. remembering that murdered children do
19:44
Speaker 1: not become secondary characters merely because the defendant's mental state
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Speaker 1: is medically complicated. If the mental health argument cannot survive
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Speaker 1: application to Lori Vallow without producing a conclusion that feels absurd,
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Speaker 1: then the problem is not that Lori Vallow has somehow
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Speaker 1: exposed a loophole. The problem is that that argument was
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Speaker 1: drawn far too broadly in the first place. If we're
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Speaker 1: prepared to say that mental illness alone can transform the
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Speaker 1: killing of children into innocence, then intellectual consistency demands that
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Speaker 1: we extend that protection to defendants whose delusions are even
20:18
Speaker 1: more profound, elaborate, and reality-detached. And Lori Vallow would not
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Speaker 1: be an exception to that rule. She'd be one of
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Speaker 1: its strongest beneficiaries. We would be forced to look at
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Speaker 1: dead children, concealment, lies, extraordinary beliefs, and an entire trail
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Speaker 1: of conduct and conclude that the psychiatric diagnosis is overwhelms
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Speaker 1: everything else. Very few people actually believe criminal responsibility should
20:41
Speaker 1: operate that way. What they usually believe, once the rhetoric
20:45
Speaker 1: is stripped away, is that some mental conditions, under some circumstances,
20:50
Speaker 1: may satisfy specific legal standards and excuse or mitigate responsibility.
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Speaker 1: That's an entirely different proposition. It's more narrow, harder to prove,
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Speaker 1: intensely fact-dependent, and incapable of being established merely by repeating
21:04
Speaker 1: the name or of a diagnosis. So, when any defense
21:08
Speaker 1: of a parent accused of killing children begins and ends
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Speaker 1: with the existence of a serious mental disorder, Lori Vallow
21:15
Speaker 1: should be standing in the intellectual doorway, because either mental
21:19
Speaker 1: illness requires careful legal analysis before it negates responsibility, or
21:24
Speaker 1: consistency demands that we start manufacturing innocence for defendants, almost
21:29
Speaker 1: nobody invoking that argument would ever dream of acquitting. And
21:34
Speaker 1: that's where all this ends. Because eventually the euphemisms run
21:38
Speaker 1: out and the bodies remain. If mental illness is going
21:42
Speaker 1: to be treated as a magic phrase that wipes away responsibility,
21:45
Speaker 1: then stop pretending that principle belongs only to the defendants
21:49
Speaker 1: people find sympathetic. Give it to Lori Vallow too. Give
21:53
Speaker 1: it to every parent who believes something insane, every killer
21:56
Speaker 1: who heard voices, every defendant who lived inside a delusion,
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Speaker 1: and every person whose grip on reality was profoundly damaged
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Speaker 1: when someone else ended up dead. Follow that rule honestly,
22:07
Speaker 1: and watch how quickly compassion mutates into absurdity. The law
22:12
Speaker 1: can't become a popularity contest when one mother is recast
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Speaker 1: as a victim because her diagnosis makes people uncomfortable, while
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Speaker 1: another is condemned because her delusions are uglier, stranger, or
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Speaker 1: harder to romanticize. Dead children don't care which psychiatric label
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Speaker 1: makes the public feel better about what happened to them.
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Speaker 1: They don't get their lives back because adults found a
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Speaker 1: more palatable explanation for the person who killed them. At
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Speaker 1: some point, explanation has to stop masquerading as absolution. Because
22:42
Speaker 1: if we keep moving the line every time a defendant
22:44
Speaker 1: has a tragic enough story, then the only person who
22:48
Speaker 1: never received the benefit of our compassion are the ones
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Speaker 1: buried in the ground. And maybe that's the ugliest truth
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Speaker 1: of all of this. We've become so desperate to understand
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Speaker 1: the person standing at the defense table that that we're
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Speaker 1: in danger of forgetting the children who will never stand
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Speaker 1: anywhere again. All the information that goes with this episode
23:09
Speaker 1: can be found in the description box.