Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial began deliberating a verdict, tasked with deciding whether she was in control of herself when she killed her three children, or had lost her grip on reality due to mental illness.
In her closing argument, a prosecutor said Clancy strangled her three children because she was depressed and tired of living.
“It was a choice to take them with her,” prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said. “It is a choice that we don’t want to think about that a mother could make.”
“But it’s a choice she made,” Sprague said.
Clancy’s attorney contends she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her children, telling jurors she was a loving mother before her mental health collapsed and she repeatedly sought help that failed her. The rare mental illness is linked to stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes following childbirth.
“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington told jurors.
The jury met for a few hours and will resume deliberations Friday morning (local time). 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 for the January 2023 killings.
Clancy, who did not testify during the monthlong trial, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. If convicted of murder, she 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.
Clancy, now 36, had sought treatment from multiple providers in the months before the killings and was prescribed various drugs. Less than three weeks after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital, she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at the family’s Massachusetts home. She then jumped from a second-floor window and remains paralysed from the waist down.
Lindsay Clancy was depressed, prosecutor says
Both sides agreed Clancy had mental illness but not on the severity of her condition or the quality of care she received.
Sprague said the case shouldn’t be a referendum on the nation’s mental healthcare system or how it treats women. She argued that Clancy had access to many providers and a wealth of family support.
Clancy dabbed her eyes with a tissue and put a hand to her forehead as the prosecution described how she killed her children and confronted a central question in the case: Why would a mother who loved her children kill them?
“She was depressed. She was exhausted. She was done. She didn’t want to try anymore. She felt damaged,” Sprague told the jury. “But those kids, those kids were her protective factor. Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery and so she had to remove the protective factor.”
Reddington argued that Clancy was overmedicated, misdiagnosed and turned away by some providers.
“She was reaching out for help and she was not getting it," Reddington said.
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