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Lindsay Clancy\u2019s lawyer urged jurors at the end of her murder trial on Thursday to conclude that she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis when the Massachusetts \u200bwoman killed her three young children in 2023, an act a prosecutor said she intentionally carried out after sending her husband out on an errand.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lindsay Clancy, 36, admits that she killed her three \u200cchildren by strangling them with exercise bands in the basement of her home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury in January 2023. She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-story window in a failed attempt to end her own life that left her paralyzed.<\/p>\n But defense attorney Kevin Reddington during his closing argument in Plymouth County Superior Court urged jurors to find her not guilty by reason of insanity on the three counts of first-degree murder she faces, presenting a defense that throughout the trial has revived \u200ba nationwide debate over how postpartum mental health in women is treated in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cHer mind was gone,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He said testimony and evidence throughout the trial showed that for months leading up to the \u201chorrific\u201d \u200bkillings, Clancy had been seeking treatment as she struggled with her mental health and suicidal thoughts following the birth of her third child.<\/p>\n Reddington argued that prosecutors had manipulated evidence \u2060to \u201cassassinate\u201d the character of a \u201cyoung, vibrant hardworking\u201d mother who killed her children and tried to commit suicide, acts he said occurred after she heard a voice he blamed on \u201cthe damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she \u200bgot.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect, as his honor instructed you,\u201d he told jurors. \u201cAnd they\u2019re not going to be able to prove otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n Assistant \u200bDistrict Attorney Jennifer Sprague did not dispute that Clancy had struggled with her mental health. But she said that was not the question \u2014 but instead whether on January 24, 2023, she could appreciate that it was wrong to kill her children but did it anyway before attempting to commit suicide.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women,\u201d she told jurors. \u201cThat\u2019s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that\u2019s not on trial here.\u201d<\/p>\n Following closing arguments, Judge \u200bWilliam Sullivan finished instructing jurors on the law, picked a foreperson and sent the 12 jurors who will decide the case out to begin their deliberations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be an easy task,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n POTENTIAL LIFE SENTENCE<\/strong><\/p>\n Clancy, a \u200bformer labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder for killing Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan on January 24, 2023.<\/p>\n If found not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility \u200cor by reason \u2060of insanity, she would be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation. Jurors also have the option to find her guilty of murder in the second degree or manslaughter.<\/p>\n The five-week trial drew comparisons to the case of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. After an appeals court overturned her initial murder conviction, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. Her lawyers had said that she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In her closing argument, Sprague focused on evidence showing how shortly before the killings, Clancy sent her then-husband, Patrick, out to pick up a food order and to a pharmacy after mapping on her phone the \u200btime it would take for him to return.<\/p>\n He spoke \u200bon the phone briefly with his wife while at \u2060the pharmacy. Upon his return, he discovered her lying on the ground in the backyard with cuts on her wrists and neck. She told him she had tried to kill herself.<\/p>\n He said he asked where the children were, and she said they were in the basement. After he called 911 and first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy said he \u200bran to the basement and discovered them with exercise bands tied around their necks.<\/p>\n Witnesses during the trial including Patrick, other family members and a hospital chaplain testified \u200bthat Clancy later told them that \u2060she had heard a man\u2019s voice tell her that if she did not act, she would lose her chance.<\/p>\n But Sprague argued that Clancy was \u201cmaking up the voice,\u201d claiming that experts say it would make no sense for her to have heard it only once and that Clancy only began speaking about having heard it after she was in the hospital following her failed suicide.<\/p>\n She argued that Clancy clearly knew that what she was doing was wrong and had sent her husband out on \u2060the errand to \u200bprovide her enough time to execute her plan to take the children to the basement one by one to strangle them before then \u200btrying to kill herself. She made no mention of a voice when she spoke to Patrick Clancy on the phone when he was at the pharmacy, Sprague said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a choice to take them with her,\u201d Sprague said. \u201cIt was a horrific choice. And it\u2019s a choice that we \u200bdon\u2019t want to think about that a mother made because that doesn\u2019t make us feel safe or comfortable in this world. But it\u2019s a choice she made.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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