PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, will hear closing arguments Wednesday before deciding whether to hold the former labor and delivery nurse criminally responsible for killing her three children in 2023.
While both sides agree she killed her children, Clancy’s defense team argues she suffered from postpartum psychosis and filed lawsuits accusing medical providers of failing to properly diagnose
and treat her condition. Prosecutors at the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office argue she intentionally planned the killings.
Postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery. Experts at the Cleveland Clinic describe it as a mental health emergency affecting someone’s sense of reality. It can happen to anyone after giving birth, but the chances are higher for people with certain mental health conditions. Though most people with postpartum psychosis don’t harm their children, mothers with severe cases may try to do so, and also may try to harm themselves.
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Editor’s Note: 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. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.
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Many are dressed in pink and calling attention to women’s mental health issues.
“I feel that mental health is at the cornerstone of this, but so is community, family — and we need to believe women,” said Marta Quijano. “And we need to support people and help people when they ask for help. And as a physician myself, I’ve been on both sides of this coin when women are dismissed for our concerns, and it’s not fair.”
Lyn Feeney said women suffering in their mental health, especially new mothers, need support from a variety of people.
“The more children you have, the harder it gets,” she said. “So I feel like women just need support from mental health professionals, physicians, family and the justice system.”
About 75 people were waiting around 7:30 a.m. ET to get into the Plymouth County court building, including journalists and other members of the public.
Several media outlets have set up canopies on a nearby grassy area. A handful of people wearing pink in support were also in line.
For his final witness on Friday, Reddington called Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, or the killing of a child by a parent.
Resnick testified that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her children and was not in control of her actions.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” said Resnick, who testified for the defense in the 2006 trial of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.
Resnick said he spent hours interviewing Clancy four months after the killings and believed she tended to minimize rather than exaggerate her symptoms. He said she suffered from severe depression, showed evidence consistent with bipolar disorder and reported hearing a voice commanding her to kill her children.
Resnick described several categories of filicide, including killings involving abuse. Others involve psychosis or what he calls “altruistic” filicide — a killing committed “out of love rather than hostility.” He said he found Clancy’s case involved both of the latter categories, but he didn’t find evidence of abuse.
About two weeks after giving birth, Bridget María Chesterton was curled up on the bathroom floor, saying things that made little sense. Later, in the emergency room, she kept repeating, “What’s going on?” She’d lost touch with reality.
The family eventually learned that Chesterton had postpartum psychosis, a severe mental health disorder thrust into the spotlight by the Clancy case.
If not for medication and strong family support, Chesterton said her own situation “could have gone sideways.”
Chesterton bristles at online comments about the Clancy case suggesting postpartum psychosis is not a real disorder. She feels driven to raise awareness by sharing her story publicly; a poem she wrote about the experience will be published in a journal in the fall. She wants to dispel misconceptions about the widely misunderstood condition — and let families know there is hope.
“It’s something that we do not talk about as a society,” said Chesterton, a 52-year-old history professor who lives outside Buffalo, New York. “I’m not embarrassed about what happened. I want people to know about it.”
Postpartum psychosis usually happens within several days of giving birth but can occur up to six weeks afterwards.
Symptoms may include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia or other behavior changes.
A woman may also have mood changes, such as mania or depression, disorganized thinking or behavior, insomnia, irritability or agitation.
Mothers with the condition need inpatient mental healthcare, which can include involuntary hospitalization. Treatments include medications or electroconvulsive therapy, a procedure done under anesthesia in which small electric currents pass through the brain, intentionally causing a brief seizure.
Experts say getting help early increases the odds of a good outcome.
Kirk Heilbrun, the forensic psychologist hired by prosecutors, told jurors that he didn’t believe Clancy’s claim that she hallucinated a voice telling her to kill her children. He said he instead believed she took their lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself.
“Everything I did as part of this evaluation, the evidence much more strongly, in my opinion, supported the second explanation, which was the serious suicide attempt accompanied by killing the children out of love,” Heilbrun said.
Heilbrun told jurors that Clancy had bipolar disorder and depression, conditions made worse by her insomnia and adverse reaction to medications she was prescribed. But he concluded that Clancy was “criminally responsible” for the killings.
“She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including her children,” he said. “Her moral awareness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die and, if she was dead, not to leave her children behind.”
Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington probed her psychiatrist’s expertise, prescribing decisions and overall treatment, suggesting that the mental healthcare system mishandled the Massachusetts mother’s decline.
In questioning Dr. Jennifer Tufts, defense lawyer Kevin Reddington spotlighted her use of 25-minute video appointments with limited time for talk therapy, the computerized forms that documented her observations, and the series of pharmaceuticals she recommended as Clancy reported various side effects, symptoms and concerns about taking medications.
Reddington portrayed Clancy’s care not as common practice in U.S. mental healthcare, but rather as inadequate and indifferent treatment of a deteriorating patient. At one point, Reddington implied that the doctor was a box-checking “robot.”
“What did you do? You had a woman who was telling you she felt hopeless,” he asked as they discussed an appointment about two months before the killings.
Postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict only 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery. Experts at the Cleveland Clinic describe it as a mental health emergency affecting someone’s sense of reality.
It can happen to anyone after giving birth, but the chances are higher for people with certain mental health conditions. In a journal article on the subject in 2023, researchers at the Medical University of Lublin in Poland said about half of people with postpartum psychosis have a previous history of psychiatric problems and the most common risk factor associated with the condition is bipolar affective disorder, which causes extreme mood swings.
Though most people with postpartum psychosis don’t harm their children, mothers with severe cases may try to do so, and also may try to harm themselves.
Experts say it’s important to seek immediate help if you or your partner or family member show signs of postpartum psychosis.
Closing arguments are set for Thursday 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.
Proceedings are expected to resume around 9 a.m. ET in Plymouth Superior Court. The prosecution and defense will each have an hour to make their final case before the jury receives instructions and begins deliberating.
Clancy did not testify during the trial, which is in its fifth week. Prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses, including Clancy’s then-husband, while the defense called 10 witnesses, including some of Clancy’s friends and relatives.
Multiple psychologists and psychiatrists also testified about Clancy’s mental health, which is the central issue in the case.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, had the jury hear from Clancy’s family members, who detailed her worsening mental health and attempts to fix it through psychiatric treatment and medications before the January 2023 killings. The jury also heard from a psychologist and a hospital chaplain who met with Clancy after the killings.
Clancy’s sister, Allison Ozga, testified that at the end of December, Clancy told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.
Clancy’s mother, Paula Musgrove, recalled standing in the kitchen with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, in December when she appeared nervous and said she needed to tell her something.
“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.
