Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children to death in 2023, is set to stand trial this week.
Jury selection for the murder trial began Monday in Plymouth County Superior Court. Clancy has pleaded not guilty to charges in connection with the deaths of her three children — Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan — in January 2023, according to the Associated Press.
Clancy jumped out a window after killing the children and was paralyzed in the fall. She is being held at a state hospital while awaiting trial and now uses a wheelchair.
While Clancy has not denied killing the children, the trial is expected to determine whether she was legally responsible for her actions. Clancy claims she developed postpartum psychosis after the birth of her youngest child. The relatively rare diagnosis can cause women to develop delusions and even hallucinations, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is considered a psychiatric emergency.
Both Clancy’s lawyer and her husband, Patrick Clancy, support her claim that she was not responsible for her actions and plan to raise an insanity defense. “This whole case is an extreme tragedy,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington said, according to AP.
Prosecutors, however, contend that Clancy planned and went through with the killings with a clear state of mind.
What Is Clancy Accused of?
On Jan. 23, 2023, Clancy allegedly asked Patrick to leave the home to pick up takeout for dinner and medication from a local pharmacy. While he was gone, she is accused of taking her three children down to the basement in their family home and using exercise bands to strangle them. Clancy then jumped from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed upon impact.
Investigators said that before carrying out the act, she researched how long the trip to the restaurant and a pharmacy would take so she would know how much time she had alone with the children.
When he arrived home, Patrick told police he noticed that the house was unusually quiet and began searching for his family, according to CNN. He said he discovered the bedroom door was locked, but noticed blood and the open window when he got inside.
He found Clancy lying on the ground outside and called 911. Clancy then informed him that she had tried to kill herself, and told him that the children were in the basement.
While still on the phone with police, Patrick could be heard moments later “screaming in agony and shock as he found his children,” Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said, CNN reports.
The children were taken to local hospitals, where they were pronounced dead.
What Is Lindsay Clancy’s Defense?
Reddington has indicated that he plans to argue Clancy should not be held “criminally responsible” for the deaths of her children because she was suffering from extreme mental health distress at the time of the crime, specifically postpartum psychosis.
Earlier this year, both Lindsay and Patrick Clancy filed separate lawsuits against her medical providers, alleging they failed to properly diagnose, treat, and monitor what they described as a severe postpartum psychiatric condition. Reddington has claimed her doctors took her on and off medications to treat her depression, which ultimately made her worse. Clancy voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric hospital just weeks before the killings.
Patrick claimed Clancy was prescribed at least nine medications in the months before the killings, with eight of them prescribed over a three-week period.
“Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis,” Reddington said at a 2023 arraignment hearing, according to CNN. “This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness.”
In Clancy’s lawsuit, she said she was depressed, had trouble sleeping, and repeatedly heard voices urging her to harm her children and herself, reports AP. She alleged she heard voices on the day of the killings telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself.”
“Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do,” the lawsuit stated. “She recognized something was wrong with her. She sought medical treatment. She went to emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals. She took the medication prescribed to her. She communicated her worsening symptoms to her providers. She told them the medications were making her worse.”
Who Is Expected to Testify?
Patrick, who has publicly stated that he forgives his wife, is expected to testify for the defense. The trial is set to last six to eight weeks and could see more than 200 potential witnesses. It is unclear if Clancy herself plans to take the stand.