RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Rolling Stone — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 14 sources
Closing arguments in the case against Lindsay Clancy , the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children to death in 2023, were delivered on Thursday, the 22nd day of trial.
Clancy is facing three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her three children — Cora, five; Dawson, three; and eight-month-old Callan — in January 2023. She has pleaded not guilty. While Clancy has not denied killing the children, the trial is expected to determine whether she was legally responsible for her actions. Clancy jumped out of a window after strangling the children to death and was paralyzed in the fall. She now uses a wheelchair and has been held at a state hospital since the incident.
Clancy's mental health treatment has been a prominent focus of the trial. She did not testify. On Thursday, closing arguments began in a courtroom packed with Clancy supporters, the Associated Press reported . Hundreds more supporters gathered outside, many wearing pink. Clancy's veteran defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington, told jurors his client suffered from postpartum psychosis — a relatively rare diagnosis that can cause women to develop delusions and even hallucinations, according to the National Institutes of Health .
In his folksy, booming style that's earned him a fandom on social media, Reddington blasted prosecutors for presenting what he called a "repulsive" case built on "manipulation." He argued the evidence showed Clancy was a devoted mother whose postpartum depression spiraled into postpartum psychosis amid heavy medication.
Holding up a colorful chart, Reddington walked jurors through more than a dozen prescriptions written by Clancy's psychiatrist, including Ativan, Zoloft, Valium, trazodone and buspirone. Clancy also saw other medical professionals, obsessively googled treatments, called suicide hotlines, and checked herself into a hospital that released her three weeks before the killings, he said. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
"She was reaching out for help, and she was not getting it," he said. At various points, he slammed quarters down on a table like a pool-hall challenge to make sense of the prosecution's case. "This is a prosecution that has ripped the soul out of this girl," he argued, pointing to Clancy, who was seated in her wheelchair. He showed jurors enlarged photos of the smiling Clancy family before the killings, then contrasted them with an image of Clancy in a hospital bed.
"How does this turn into this? How?" he asked. "Because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care she got."
Reddington argued that prosecutors were being manipulative in suggesting a defense doctor planted in Clancy's head the idea that she heard a voice ordering her to kill the children. He pointed to testimony from Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who met with Clancy after the January 2023 killings.
During the trial, Cavanaugh testified that Clancy described hearing a "persistent" voice that "told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe." Reddington argued Thursday that Cavanaugh was present when Clancy was extubated and around for "eight days before" defense psychologist, Dr. Paul Zeizel, even knew "Lindsay exited."
"She told Sheila first that she heard voices," he argued.
Reddington also faulted the American psychiatric community's diagnostic system for using a four-week cutoff to classify a disorder as having peripartum onset. He contrasted that with the World Health Organization's longer window and said many experts believe postpartum psychiatric conditions can emerge months after childbirth, even within the first year, and require specialized treatment. Related Content Lil Durk Trial: Jurors See Unreleased ‘Redman’ Video, Defense Calls It ‘Expression of Art’ ‘Below Deck’ Star Nathan Gallagher Breaks Silence on Domestic Violence Arrest: ‘I Made Mistakes’ Lil Durk Trial Openings: Rapper Falsely Cast as ‘Big Fish,’ Lawyer Says Reggie Watts: Festivals Remove Comedian, ‘Comedy Bang! Bang!’ Drops Theme Song
"This young lady did nothing wrong in her life," Reddington said. "She was a nurse, a daughter, a wife and a darn good mother. You can see from the objective evidence."
When it was the prosecution's turn, Jennifer Sprague stated the case isn't about the "mental health system or how it treats women." She added: "That's a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that's not on trial here."
Instead, Sprague said, the case is about whether Clancy was acting rationally and understood what she was doing was wrong. She noted Clancy had more medical support than most do. " This wasn't a woman suffering from a lack of care, a lack of resources," she said. Clancy had "an abundance of care" and sometimes refused options, she argued.
Sprague argued Clancy was not always forthcoming about her symptoms with her providers and was impatient when prescriptions didn't work immediately. "She wanted to get better, but she wanted to get better on her own terms," Sprague argued. "And as a nurse, she knew that's not the right way to approach it." Sprague argued Clancy's doctors were "doing the best they could with her level of cooperation and compliance with the plan."
The prosecutor said Clancy's decision to withhold her thoughts about harming her children in December 2022 from her mental health providers was proof she knew those thoughts were wrong. While she told her then-husband about those thoughts, she withheld them from her doctors because she worried her children might be taken away, Sprague said.
"That's a rational thought," Sprague argued. "It also shows you that she knew it was a bad thought, a wrong thought."
Sprague argued Clancy planned the killings and sent Patrick, her then-husband, to pick up takeou...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.