08/14/2026
“HOW CAN KEVIN REDDINGTON DEFEND LINDSAY CLANCY?”
Because the best defense attorneys never stop seeing the human being behind the case.
Every criminal defense attorney has heard it.
How can you stand beside them?
How can you fight for them?
How can you care?
My answer?
The best defense attorneys DO care.
We care about our clients as human beings. We care whether they understand what is happening to them. We care whether their rights are protected. We care whether the evidence is actually what the government says it is. We care whether they are scared, overwhelmed, struggling, or sitting through the worst days of their lives.
Because you cannot effectively stand between a human being and the enormous power of the government if you stop seeing the human being sitting beside you.
This image of Attorney Kevin Reddington rocking Lindsay Clancy struck me for exactly that reason.
For weeks, Lindsay has been discussed as a defendant.
Her mental health has been dissected. Her medications have been discussed. Her marriage, her motherhood, her movements, her words, her medical records, and some of the most private and painful moments of her life have been presented in a courtroom for strangers to analyze.
The public debates her.
The lawyers argue about her.
Witnesses testify about her.
The jury watches her.
Thousands of people online have formed opinions about her.
But sitting at that defense table is still Lindsay.
A human being.
And whatever you ultimately believe about this case, her humanity did not disappear when she was charged with a crime.
That is something defense attorneys cannot afford to forget.
We often meet people when the rest of the world has reduced them to the worst thing they have ever done — or the worst thing they have ever been accused of doing.
But we see more than the accusation.
We see the fear. The grief. The family. The history. The pain. The complicated pieces of a human life that don’t fit neatly into a headline.
And in Lindsay’s case, we are watching a woman sit through testimony about the deaths of her own three children and the events surrounding the most devastating day imaginable.
There are legal questions the jury will have to answer.
There are facts that will be argued.
There is evidence that must be weighed.
But there are also moments when none of that is what matters.
Sometimes there is simply a human being sitting beside you who needs another human being.
And you show up for them.
You don’t have to decide Lindsay Clancy is innocent to recognize her humanity.
You don’t have to agree with the defense to understand why her attorney would comfort her.
You don’t have to excuse anything to have compassion.
Maybe that’s what I see most in this photograph.
For a moment, Lindsay isn’t a headline.
She isn’t a defendant.
She isn’t a legal argument or a case being debated by thousands of strangers.
She’s a human being experiencing something most of us could never begin to comprehend.
And the person sitting beside her sees that.
There is something incredibly powerful about being seen as a human being when the world has reduced you to the worst moment of your life.
Whatever you believe about Lindsay, whatever verdict you think should come back, compassion does not require agreement. Humanity does not require innocence.
Sometimes it simply means looking at another person in their darkest moment and refusing to forget that they are still a person.
That’s what I see in this photo.
And maybe that’s one of the most important things we do as defense attorneys:
When the entire world sees a case, we still see our client.
We still see the human being sitting beside us.
And we care.
Commentary for educational purposes only. Not legal advice. Nothing in this post is an opinion regarding guilt or innocence.
