A judge has found a mum not guilty of killing her two children by reason of insanity as the world waits for the verdict on the Lindsay Clancy case.
Dimone Fleming, was 22 when she was accused of stabbing her two sons, 11-month-old Octavius Canada and Daishawn Fleming, three.
Fleming, now 26, was found not responsible for the deaths by mental disease.
She had received treatment for depression and anxiety before the children’s deaths, according to the NYT, and was living a shelter in the Bronx, New York.
Doctors diagnosed her with major depressive disorder and prescribed psychotropic medication by doctors.
But Fleming continued to use marijuana daily, which amplified her symptoms.
Psychiatrist Dr Eric Gldsmith described her as ‘grossly psychotic and out of touch with reality’ on the night she killed her sons.
She thought the world was coming to an end and a spirit had invaded her body, believing killing her children was ‘necessary to protect or cleanse’ them.
Officers were called to the shelter after an employee noticed smoke and water coming out of Fleming’s apartment.
She was taken to hospital for treatment as she was found naked from the waist up and holding her children’s book upside down when police found her.
But the bodies of her two children were not discovered until Octavius’s dad, Columbus Canada, returned home and found them under a sheet in the bathtub.
Columbus told the court he forgave Fleming, describing her as ‘loving’.
It comes as mum Lindsay Clancy is on trial for strangling her children before attempting suicide, which left her partially paralysed in January 2023.
But unlike Clancy, prosecutors did not aggressively pursue a murder conviction against Fleming, although she was originally charged with first-degree murder.
Fleming’s lawyer, Jodi Morales, said: ‘Everybody recognized what we were dealing with here.
‘That doesn’t happen often when you’re on opposite sides of the table.’
Tiffany Wichman, a Bronx assistant district attorney, said: ‘Prosecuting mothers does not and cannot prevent these crimes from happening, but public discourse might.
‘People talking about it is important, and I hope people continue talking about it.’
Meanwhile prosecutors in Lindsay Clancy’s case are pushing for a first-degree murder conviction.
But Clancy’s lawyers argue she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her children and unsuccessfully tried to take her own life.
Jurors failed to reach a verdict after two days of deliberation, with Judge William Sullivan allowing them to go home for the weekend.
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