.png)
11 hours ago
4
The trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children in January 2023, will likely head to the jury next week to decide if she is guilty of murder or was suffering from postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible.
The outcome may come down to expert witness testimony – and there have been many – but the trial will be remembered for the spotlight it put on maternal health care in the United States. Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington has said that, in addition to postpartum psychosis, Clancy also had bipolar disorder and was overmedicated.
‘Postpartum psychosis’
On Wednesday and Thursday, jurors were sent home early. Judge William Sullivan described the first as an “unforeseen circumstance” and directed the jury “not to speculate about what it is; you’re not to hold it against either side. It’s just something that we have to deal with”.
Thursday’s abbreviated session came after a hospital chaplain, Sheila Cavanaugh – who met with Clancy after the deaths of the children and her alleged suicide attempt – testified that Clancy recalled to her a voice that allegedly told her to kill her children. Clancy told her: “I am so glad my children are safe.’”
Cavanaugh said in the days after the murders, while Clancy was still receiving emergency care treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “her emotional state was very neutral, a flat affect.” She said that Clancy mentioned hearing a male voice multiple times.
“The voice, according to Lindsay, told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe,” Cavanaugh said. “She alluded to the fact that it was a male voice, and it was persistent.”
Cavanaugh said that she “replied theologically” to Clancy, saying, “Lindsay, your children are safe. They’re safe in heaven with God.”
Defense witness Paul Zeizel, a forensic psychologist who met with Clancy dozens of times and reviewed her medical records, offered powerful testimony this week and echoed Cavanaugh’s claims.
Ziezel recalled that Clancy had said during a telephone call with her former husband, Patrick Clancy, “that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, but she had to kill her children and then kill herself”.
Elsewhere in his testimony, Zeizel noted that Clancy had been “unable to conform her behavior to the rule of law. She had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.” He said that psychological testing administered by a government doctor found no evidence she was manufacturing or exaggerating psychiatric symptoms.
The defense’s final witness was Dr Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist with expertise in postpartum disorders who had consulted on the case of Andrea Yates – a Texas mother who drowned her five children and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity – who said he believed Clancy was “frankly psychotic” on the day she killed her children.
He said Clancy was in a “postpartum psychosis” after her third child was born. On the day of the killings, he said, Clancy was hearing not only “command hallucinations” but felt what’s known as a “delusion of influence” and that an “external force” had taken over her body.
‘She needed help’
The defense rested their case after Resnick’s testimony on Friday and the trial moved into the rebuttal phase.
Prosecutors pushed back on defense claims that Clancy was suffering from a postpartum mental illness that caused her to break from reality. They contend Clancy acted deliberately and rationally when she took the lives of her children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, after sending her husband out on errands.
Prosecutors recalled psychiatrist Dr Avram Mack to the stand. Mack said that the medical standard for assessing if someone can be held criminally responsible for their actions under Massachusetts law, they would have to know their actions were wrong.
The burden of proof is on prosecutors to show that Clancy “did not suffer from a mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged offense” or that, even if she did, she “retained the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of her conduct and to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law”.
Mack said Clancy suffered from a “major depressive episode” in 2022 and 2023, and that he had reached that conclusion based on Clancy’s descriptions of her feelings and the progression of her illness.
“Generally she was friendly and cooperative,” Mack said of his meetings with Clancy after the killings. “There were not many abnormalities in her presentation.” He said that “at some points she seemed distressed” and had told him she was “miserable”.
During cross-examination, Reddington’s line of questioning with Mack became contentious. Reddington criticized Mack for educating himself about Clancy’s background only through Clancy herself while she was medicated in a psychiatric hospital and notably without interviewing other people from her life.
Asked about Clancy’s condition in the aftermath of the birth of Callan, Mack testified that Clancy had been anxious about returning to work and having a nanny.
“There was some degree of wanting to be able to handle the children on her own,” Mack said. “She felt very positively about her ability to take care the children, but also some ambivalence about other people being able to take care of the children.”
Given the widespread interest in the trial online and beyond, the subject matter has ignited a movement for those invested in maternal and postpartum healthcare in the US. Earlier in the week, on Thursday, hundreds of women gathered outside the courthouse in support of Clancy, with many donning pink clothing with statements such as “She Needed Help.”
“Women are being dismissed, neglected and ignored when we speak up,” April Vincent, who was in attendance, said. “We’re scared because nobody takes us seriously.”
Possible outcomes
If jurors acquit Clancy of murder by reason of insanity, she will not go free but would be sent to a state psychiatric hospital and come up for periodic review for release. If jurors find for the prosecution, she will be sentenced to life without parole.
Closing arguments are slated to begin next week.
Still, Clancy’s legal battles will not end with the verdict for this trial. A civil case brought by Clancy and her former husband is pending against several mental healthcare providers, including two mental health workers who saw Clancy before the killings and testified at trial.
