Brenda Hale, a criminal defense attorney case study in the law’s treatment of postpartum mental illness, ended in 1936 without a murder conviction after expert testimony said she suffered from puerperal insanity. Three weeks after giving birth to her second child, she killed her baby and tried to kill herself.
Police found a note in her hand that read, “I only want to die” and “Can’t I be quietly put away?” The jury in the trial of Hale in July 1936 decided not to convict her of murder, and the case later helped shape statutes in England and Wales that treat infanticide differently from other homicides.
Brenda Hale in Hertfordshire
The defense at the 1936 trial rested on a medical explanation rather than denial of the killing. An eminent physician testified that Hale suffered from “puerperal insanity” and was not responsible for her actions. The verdict left her outside a murder conviction even though the underlying act was the killing of her baby.
England and Wales later adopted the Infanticide Act, which gives courts a different path when a mother kills a child during the postpartum period, defined here as the first year of the child’s life. Karen Brennan said the current Infanticide Act in England and Wales recognizes that childbirth-related mental illness can extend through that period, and that it works both as a lesser charging option and as a partial defense when infanticide is raised instead of murder or manslaughter.
England and Wales Infanticide Act
The practical outcome is usually not prison. Verdicts or pleas under the infanticide law almost never lead to prison time, and commitment for mental health treatment is common. Similar laws influenced roughly two dozen countries, but only Illinois has adopted a law in the United States that gives special consideration to mothers suffering from postpartum mental illness who kill their children, and it applies only at sentencing after a guilty finding.
Jessie Colbert, coordinator of the Massachusetts Mind the Gap Coalition, said, “The criminal justice system needs to be updated to understand this illness,” and, “There needs to be some more clarity and more fairness.” Julie Wiest, a sociology professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, said personal traits such as whether a woman was married or worked outside the home can affect public judgment.
Lindsay Clancy murder trial
The debate has returned in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, where she is on trial in a first-degree murder case for killing her three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. Massachusetts and several other states have considered similar laws, and the Brenda Hale case is being used to frame whether those laws should go beyond sentencing and address criminal responsibility earlier in the process.
Clara Lewis, a Dartmouth University senior lecturer and researcher, said Puritan Massachusetts communities often viewed unmarried women who killed their newborn babies as lewd, cunning, selfish, and callous. Against that history, the legal question now is whether childbirth-related mental illness should change charging, sentencing, or both — the English model does both, while Illinois limits the special consideration to sentencing.
Monica Trujillo sanctions Dean Kajioka $500 in Criminal Defense Attorney case sits alongside the broader legal debate as a reminder that criminal cases turn on procedure as much as facts, and the next step for states considering changes would be deciding whether to follow England and Wales or keep a narrower approach like Illinois.
A mother killing her child can be treated as one of the most appalling crimes imaginable, yet the framework built around puerperal insanity still leaves room for leniency when childbirth-related mental illness is shown. That is the point Hale’s case carries into the present, and it is why the Lindsay Clancy case has pushed the issue back into public view.
