Lindsay Clancy trial: Jury weighs murder case after dueling closing arguments
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PLYMOUTH, Mass. — After weeks of testimony and hours of closing arguments, the fate of Lindsay Clancy is now in the hands of a Plymouth County jury.
Clancy, 36, is charged with three counts of murder in the January 2023 strangulation deaths of her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — inside the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say Clancy sent her husband, Patrick Clancy, to pick up takeout food and medicine on the night of Jan. 24, 2023. While he was gone, they allege, she used exercise bands to strangle each child in separate rooms. She then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window, leaving herself paralyzed.
Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, does not dispute that Clancy caused her children’s deaths, but argues she lacked criminal responsibility — the Massachusetts equivalent of an insanity defense — because she was suffering from postpartum depression and psychosis. Her defense has pointed to her mental health treatment, medication regimen and reports that she heard a voice telling her to kill the children.
The state called more than 70 witnesses over 14 days before resting on Aug. 17. Reddington called 10 witnesses and rested Aug. 21, and prosecutors then presented three rebuttal witnesses. Closing arguments were delivered Aug. 27, with each side given one hour. After receiving final instructions from Judge William Sullivan, the jury began deliberating.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague opened the prosecution’s final argument by acknowledging Clancy had mental health struggles but insisting those struggles do not erase what she did.
“This case is not about our mental health system and how it treats women,” Sprague said. “What’s on trial here, what the issue is here, is what Lindsay Clancy did the night of January 24, 2023, and what her mental state was at the time.”
Sprague argued Clancy was not always truthful with her medical providers, did not take medications as prescribed and was offered treatment options she failed to fully embrace. She also suggested Clancy concealed intrusive thoughts about harming her children because she knew her providers were mandated reporters and feared losing custody.
“She was depressed. She was exhausted. She was done. She didn’t want to try anymore. She felt damaged. 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,” Sprague told the jury.
“She could have killed herself and left her kids alive. But it was a choice to take them with her.”
Sprague described the killings as calculated, noting that the children were taken to the basement and strangled individually. She also argued the acts met the legal standard of “extreme atrocity and cruelty,” saying Clancy “left them discarded on the basement floor like broken toys because she was done playing the game.”
Reddington began his closing by thanking the jurors. “Cora, Dawson, Callan. They are the victims of this case,” he said, as Clancy wiped tears from her eyes. Holding up a photo of the smiling family before the killings and pointing to a hospital photo of Clancy afterward, he said, “How does this turn into this? Because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got.”
He described Clancy as a nurse, daughter, wife and “darn good mother” who “did nothing wrong in her life.” He called her suicide attempt “a legitimate, dreadful suicide attempt” and criticized investigators for not seizing medication from her bedroom. He also pushed back on the idea that a hospital psychologist coached Clancy to claim she heard a voice, saying, “Think about how ugly that is.”
Reddington read from notebooks Clancy kept in the months before the killings, including logs in which she wrote of “horrible thoughts.” He argued that she sought help repeatedly and that her condition was worsened by overmedication.
“This young lady is not guilty of killing her children because she was suffering from a disease or defect, as his honor instructed you,” Reddington said. “And they’re not gonna be able to prove otherwise.”
The closing arguments followed an earlier round of opening statements in which prosecutor Shanan Buckingham painted Clancy as a “controlling, meticulous and manipulative” mother who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted. Reddington countered that Clancy was overmedicated for postpartum depression and anxiety and was a doting mother who loved her children “right up to the time of their death.”
The trial has drawn widespread attention to postpartum psychosis and the way the legal system treats mothers who harm their children while in mental health crisis. Mental health advocates say the case highlights gaps in maternal psychiatric care, while legal experts note that an insanity defense in Massachusetts requires proof that a mental disease or defect kept the defendant from appreciating the wrongfulness of her actions. The jury’s verdict could shape how those arguments are viewed in future cases.
The same jury that heard the evidence will now decide whether Clancy is guilty of murder or not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.