PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Lindsay Clancy was in a deep psychosis when she strangled her three children in their Massachusetts home, her lawyer said Thursday, 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 during closing arguments of Clancy’s murder trial, referencing the various mental health providers she saw and different
drugs prescribed in the months before the January 2023 killings.
Prosecutors contend that Clancy acted intentionally and sent her husband out on an errand before killing her young children and attempting suicide, rejecting her lawyer’s claims that Clancy was in the throes of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes following childbirth.
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.
Clancy, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, did not testify during the trial, now in its fifth week.
Jurors will begin deliberations following closing arguments. 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.
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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 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 and checked herself into to a psychiatric hospital in the months before killing Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months.
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.
Prosecutors say Clancy understood her actions were wrong.
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.
All three children were strangled with exercise bands in the family’s basement before Clancy jumped from a second-floor window while her husband went to pick up takeout and medication on Jan. 24, 2023.
A forensic psychologist who testified for the prosecution said he concluded that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, killed the children because she wanted to kill herself but didn’t want to leave them behind.
A psychologist who took the stand for the defense said Clancy didn’t recognize the “wrongfulness” of killing her children because of her mental health issues.
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Willingham reported from Boston.
