PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — A jury on Thursday began deliberating in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children in a case that has drawn attention to postpartum mental health.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, with her lawyers arguing she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy at the family’s home in coastal
Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. The rare mental illness is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
Prosecutors say Clancy planned the killings and understood her actions were wrong. Jurors must decide whether she was criminally responsible and, if so, exactly what crimes she committed.
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.
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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.
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During closing arguments Thursday, a prosecutor told jurors that Clancy was exhausted and depressed when she killed her three children but knew it was wrong.
“It was a choice to take them with her. It was a horrible choice. It is a choice that we don’t want to think about that a mother could make, because that doesn’t make us feel safe or comfortable in this world,” said prosecutor Jennifer Sprague. “But it’s a choice she made.”
Clancy's attorney argued that she was in a deep psychosis when she killed her children, telling jurors that she had been a loving mother before her mental health spiraled.
“Because of the damned medicine and the lousy medical care that she got,” attorney Kevin Reddington said, referencing the mental health providers she saw and drugs prescribed in the months before the January 2023 killings.
Sprague said the case isn’t about the nation's mental healthcare system or how it treats women. “That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here,” she said.
Clancy did not testify during the trial, now in its fifth week. During closing arguments, she dabbed her eyes with a tissue and, at one point, put a hand to her forehead as the prosecution described how she killed her children.
If convicted of murder, Clancy 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.
During more than four weeks of testimony, jurors heard opposing views from medical experts about Clancy’s mental state after the birth of her third child and her culpability.
Both Clancy’s mother and sister testified that she became anxious, paranoid and suicidal.
Clancy, now 36, had sought treatment from multiple providers in the months before the killings and even checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. Less than three weeks after being discharged from that hospital, Clancy strangled Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, with exercise bands in the basement of their home south of Boston. She then jumped from a second-floor window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
During closing arguments, Sprague argued that 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.
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.
Reddington said the prosecution tried to paint Clancy’s attempt to take her life after killing her children as “a fake suicide.”
“You know that is not what happened,” he said.
Reddington held up a copy of the book “Good Moms have Scary Thoughts” that investigators found at the Clancy house. He said prosecutors tried to use it as evidence against Clancy but that it was a mental healthcare provider who gave it to her.
“This woman lived for her kids,” he said.
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 after Clancy started seeing a psychiatrist that “it was not a wonderful life anymore.”
“You heard the testimony. You know her concerns. You know her fears,” he said.
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Willingham reported from Boston.
