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Tommy Pope, the prosecutor who helped convict Susan Smith more than 30 years ago, recently revisited that case while weighing the nation’s reaction to the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial, and his blunt assessment should wake every American up: we are failing in how we treat maternal mental health and how we respond when tragedy strikes. Pope’s reflections — comparing a decades-old, high-profile child murder to a modern trial soaked in medical jargon and media sympathy — underscore how confusing emotion and justice have become in the public square.
For those who need a reminder, Susan Smith drove her car into a lake in 1994 with her two young sons inside and was convicted in 1995 after a prosecutor’s case that pierced through a calculated lie. Tommy Pope, who led that prosecution and later opposed her parole, has said the Smith case still haunts him and warned about the dangers of seeking notoriety through crime — a warning that rings true when the media starts to humanize accused killers before trials are over.
The Clancy case is painfully current: Lindsay Clancy has pleaded not guilty to charges that she killed her three children in January 2023, and her trial this year has featured competing narratives about motive, medication, and mental illness. Prosecutors have stuck to their theory of deliberate violence even as defense lawyers present accounts of severe postpartum struggles and prescription drug effects, and the court record shows toxicology results and other forensic evidence being debated by experts.
Yet this debate about intent versus illness exposes a broader cultural problem — too often our institutions reflexively leap to medicalize monstrous acts, offering diagnosis as a shield rather than demanding accountability. Americans should care about mental-health treatment and support for new mothers, but we should not let explanations become excuses that erase justice for victims and the basic presumption that children must be kept safe.
The media circus around such trials amplifies the danger, pushing narratives that favor sensational sympathy and complex psychological theories over straightforward facts and the voices of grieving families. Conservatives are right to demand both compassion for genuine mental illness and fierce protection for the innocent; sympathy should never substitute for courtroom evidence or common-sense standards of responsibility.
If we really want to prevent these horrors, the solution is not to coddle perpetrators or rewrite criminal law to create special categories, but to strengthen community institutions: earlier screening for postpartum disorders, accountable prescribing practices, robust family and church support, and clear lines of responsibility that do not let ideology or political correctness get in the way of prosecuting child-killers. Public policy must prioritize prevention and prosecution in equal measure, or else tragedies like these will only multiply.
Hardworking Americans deserve a justice system that honors victims, holds the guilty to account, and uses real medicine to help the vulnerable — not to sanitize the unspeakable. Tommy Pope’s career pushing for accountability in the Smith case and his current observations about Clancy should remind patriots everywhere to fight for a culture that protects children first and resists every attempt to excuse evil with vague appeals to notoriety or softened language.
