Marci Webber is asking an Illinois judge to release her from a state mental hospital.

Webber's November date is not Lindsay Clancy's. A DuPage County judge already found Webber not guilty by reason of insanity. She is asking to end a commitment. Clancy is still charged after a hung jury, and the Times reported only that Clancy has a hearing next month. It did not report a new ruling. The Daily Mail called Webber's date a parole hearing. The Times described a court petition to leave a state hospital. A quote from Webber about planning and psychosis is her account. It is not evidence in Clancy's case.

The New York Times reported that Marci Webber killed her 4-year-old daughter on Nov. 3, 2010, during a psychotic episode, and then cut her own wrists. The paper reported she has argued for more than a decade that she no longer needs inpatient care, and that a judge will decide in November whether she can go free. It reported her criminal trial, in DuPage County, took one day, that she chose not to have a jury, and that the only witness was a forensic psychologist. The judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Daily Mail reported Webber is 59, that the killing happened while she was visiting family in Bloomingdale, and that she had been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. The paper reported that in June 2012 DuPage County Judge George Bakalis found her not guilty by reason of insanity and confined her to a secured mental health facility for up to 100 years. It quoted him: "Love, when coupled with paranoia, apparently can be a very destructive force." The Daily Mail reported Bakalis retired in 2020, so the November hearing will not be in front of him. The Times reported Illinois law limits this kind of commitment to the prison term she could have received if convicted, which in her case is 100 years, with no minimum, and that a patient may petition a court for release. The paper reported the burden is now on Webber to convince a judge that she is not likely to harm herself or others, or that she would not benefit from continued inpatient care.

The Times account of what happened after the acquittal is more specific than the Daily Mail's line that she has simply remained hospitalized after two failed petitions. The Times reported that in 2014, after several years of inpatient treatment, she refused psychiatric drugs, that her psychosis did not return, and that a judge found that. It reported he still denied release in 2017, saying both she and the state needed to do more to prepare, and that she attempted suicide. It reported that in 2019 the same judge released her with a treatment plan, that prosecutors appealed and won, and that she was back in the hospital after less than two weeks. The Times reported she is an Army veteran. It did not name the hospital where she is held now. The Daily Mail reported she was confined to Chicago Reed and that it is unclear whether she is still there.

In phone interviews from the hospital, the Times reported, Webber called it "the most untherapeutic place you could ever be in" and said, "God, I can't stand living like this," while another patient could be heard screaming. The paper reported she argued that holding her will not stop other parents in a psychotic state from killing a child. "These mothers are trying to protect their child from something in their heads," she said. The Times set her case next to Lindsay Clancy, whose trial on charges of killing her three children ended in a hung jury, with all but one juror persuaded she should be found not guilty. The paper reported prosecutors in that trial portrayed planning as proof Clancy was sane. Webber told the Times, "Planning has nothing to do with whether a person is psychotic and insane." The Daily Mail reported she was defending Clancy as her own hearing approached. Clancy, whom the Daily Mail reported is 36, remains charged. The Times reported prosecutors say Webber is still dangerous, citing the suicide attempt, "aggressive, unruly and hostile behavior," rule infractions, and symptoms that improve on medication and worsen when she stops. November is the hearing on her petition. It is not an order letting her out. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.