Faust was found incapable of proceeding to trial following two suicide attempts and evidence indicating she was contemplating another attempt while incarcerated.
“It is evident that she is a danger to herself and requires immediate and intensive psychiatric attention,” a court document read. “Further evaluation is also necessary in order to determine her capacity to proceed.”
The competency finding does not necessarily mean Faust will escape prosecution.
Instead, proceedings can resume if she is eventually determined capable of understanding the case against her and assisting with her defense.
Her attorneys are already signaling what that defense will look like.
They intend to argue that Faust should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, with postpartum psychosis expected to play a central role.
“I suspected this would be a postpartum psychosis case from reading the headlines and, after my first meeting with my client, I knew this was a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity [NGRI] psychosis case,” Faust’s attorney, Nicole Galinsky, said in a statement to WRAL.
Galinsky also said a defense expert has concluded Faust could not understand the moral nature of what she was allegedly doing.
“Defense expert Adrienne Saxton has already found that Andrea was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong in relation to [the incident].”
The defense is drawing an unmistakable connection to another case that has attracted national attention: the prosecution of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy.
Clancy was charged after her three young children were strangled with exercise bands in January 2023.
Her attorneys have maintained that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and should therefore be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Faust’s lawyer says the parallels between the women are striking.
“Andrea and [Lindsay Clancy’s] cases are eerily similar, though not entirely the same. Both women were known to be loving, doting, responsible mothers who were worried about and caring for their children up until the very-second they decided to kill them. Both women were reaching out to their own mothers to come help them because they both recognized that they were having “horrible” (intrusive) thoughts and both, at some point, did not feel safe around their children. Both were beginning to have auditory hallucinations which they were doing everything in their power to ignore or make go away (including seeking out psychiatric help, being prescribed medication, etc.). Both were psychiatrically hospitalized before the killings happened. Neither woman did this out of the blue. Both were struggling enormously with their mental health. But, like most women and almost-all moms, they were just trying to get through each day, care for their children, be a good mom/wife/employee. Both were seeking help from doctors who weren’t really taking their concerns seriously.”
Despite those comparisons, the two defendants face significantly different legal landscapes.
Massachusetts and North Carolina do not apply identical standards when determining whether mental illness legally excuses criminal conduct.
In Massachusetts, once sufficient evidence raises the issue of criminal responsibility, prosecutors generally bear the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible.
The state’s standard examines whether a defendant, because of mental disease or defect, lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of the law.
That framework gives Clancy’s defense an avenue to argue that severe mental illness prevented her from being legally responsible even if jurors conclude she physically committed the killings.
Prosecutors in the Clancy case have pushed back against that narrative.
They have pointed to evidence they say demonstrates planning and deliberate behavior surrounding the deaths, arguing those circumstances undermine the claim that Clancy was legally insane.
The defense, meanwhile, has focused heavily on Clancy’s psychiatric history, medication and alleged postpartum psychosis.
North Carolina presents Faust with a different challenge.
The state’s insanity standard is considerably narrower and places the burden on the defendant to establish the defense.
North Carolina traditionally applies the M’Naghten framework, which centers on whether a mental disease or defect prevented the accused from understanding the nature and quality of the act or knowing that the act was wrong.
That distinction could become critical.
Simply establishing that a defendant was mentally ill, suicidal, hallucinating or undergoing psychiatric treatment does not automatically establish legal insanity.
Mental illness and criminal insanity are separate legal concepts.
Faust’s attorneys will therefore have to do more than demonstrate that she was suffering from severe psychiatric problems. They will need to connect that condition directly to her ability to understand her alleged actions under North Carolina’s legal standard.
The emerging similarities between the two cases are nevertheless likely to fuel a broader debate surrounding postpartum mental illness, criminal responsibility and where courts should draw the line between psychiatric disease and accountability for horrific acts.
That debate has already surrounded the Clancy prosecution.
Supporters of Clancy have argued that postpartum psychosis can completely detach a mother from reality and that punishment cannot be separated from the defendant’s mental condition.
Critics counter that sympathy for mental illness cannot become a substitute for carefully examining the evidence surrounding a child’s death.
That distinction matters because an insanity verdict is not simply a medical diagnosis.
It is a legal determination carrying enormous consequences for defendants, victims and surviving families.
The Faust case could now force North Carolina jurors to confront many of the same emotionally charged questions.
Her lawyer has already made clear that the Clancy comparison will not merely remain outside commentary. It appears poised to become part of the public framing surrounding Faust’s defense.
Whether that comparison ultimately helps her is another matter.
Different evidence, different defendants and substantially different insanity standards mean Faust’s case will have to stand on its own.
And at the center of the proceedings remains a fact no legal argument can erase: a 3-year-old child is dead, another young child allegedly survived an attempted killing, and prosecutors will seek to determine whether the woman accused of those acts should be held criminally responsible.
Whatever happens in the Clancy case, Faust’s prosecution could become the next major courtroom battle over postpartum psychosis and the limits of the insanity defense.
This time, however, that argument will unfold under North Carolina law — where clearing the legal threshold for insanity may prove considerably more difficult.
