Jury weighs whether Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible for killing her children
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial began deliberating a verdict Thursday, tasked with deciding whether she was in control of herself when she killed her three children, or had lost her grip on reality due to mental illness.
In her closing argument, a prosecutor said Clancy strangled her three children because she was depressed and tired of living.
“It was a choice to take them with her,” said prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said. “It is a choice that we don’t want to think about that a mother could make.”
“But it’s a choice she made,” Sprague said.
Clancy’s attorney contends she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her children, telling jurors she was a loving mother before her mental health collapsed and she repeatedly sought help that failed her. The rare mental illness is linked to stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes following childbirth.
“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington told jurors.
The jury met for a few hours Thursday and will resume deliberations Friday morning. Clancy’s mental state is at the center of the closely watched trial that has drawn attention to maternal mental health after childbirth. The debate has stirred deep divisions among the public over whether she should be held criminally responsible for the January 2023 killings.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
___
Clancy, who did not testify during the monthlong trial, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she still could be committed to a state mental health facility.
Clancy, now 36, had sought treatment from multiple providers in the months before the killings and was prescribed various drugs. Less than three weeks after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital, she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at the family’s Massachusetts home. She then jumped from a second-floor window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Both sides agreed Clancy had mental illness but not on the severity of her condition or the quality of care she received.
Sprague said the case shouldn’t be a referendum on the nation’s mental healthcare system or how it treats women. She argued that Clancy had access to many providers and a wealth of family support.
Clancy dabbed her eyes with a tissue and put a hand to her forehead as the prosecution described how she killed her children and confronted a central question in the case: Why would a mother who loved her children kill them?
“She was depressed. She was exhausted. She was done. She didn’t want to try anymore. She felt damaged,” Sprague told the jury. “But those kids, those kids were her protective factor. Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery and so she had to remove the protective factor.”
Reddington argued that Clancy was overmedicated, misdiagnosed and turned away by some providers.
“She was reaching out for help and she was not getting it," Reddington said.
Clancy’s decision not to tell her mental health providers about thoughts she had in December 2022 of harming her children showed that she understood those thoughts were wrong, Sprague said.
She also made sure she had just enough time to kill her children on Jan. 24, 2023, Sprague said, by sending her husband to pick up dinner and medicine for one of the kids.
The prosecutor acknowledged that Clancy sought help for her mental health struggles, but said she did not always take medications as prescribed or give her providers complete and accurate information.
Both Clancy’s mother and sister testified in the trial that she became anxious, paranoid and suicidal.
Clancy’s attorney criticized the prosecution’s case and raised doubts about the police investigation while painting Clancy as a good mother.
He said prosecutors tried to suggest her suicide attempt wasn’t serious. “You know that is not what happened,” he said.
He said investigators didn’t take pictures or test blood found at the home. He held up a copy of the book “Good Moms have Scary Thoughts” that investigators found at the Clancy house. He said a mental healthcare provider gave it to her.
He showed jurors a small “wish box” that Clancy and then-husband Patrick bought on their honeymoon. Over the years, the couple filled the box with slips of paper wishing to have healthy, successful kids, Reddington said as Lindsay Clancy wiped away tears.
Reddington told the jury that Clancy “lived for her kids” but that after she started seeing a doctor, “It was not a wonderful life anymore.”
“You have the medical records. You heard the testimony. You know her concerns. You know her fears,” he said.
___
Willingham reported from Boston. Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
