Lindsay Clancy’s Trial Begins: Attorneys Argue Mom of 3 Not ‘Criminally Responsible’ for Murders

A Massachusetts courtroom began the difficult task on Monday, June 20, of seating a jury for one of the state’s most closely watched murder trials in years. Jury selection got underway for Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother charged in the January 2023 deaths of her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.

According to ABC News, the trial, expected to last one to two months, will center on postpartum psychosis, a rare condition that can cause delusions and hallucinations following childbirth.

Nine jurors, six women and three men, had been seated by Tuesday afternoon out of the 18 needed.

The emotional weight of the case was evident in the jury pool itself. The Boston Globe reported on Tuesday, July 21, that dozens of potential jurors were excused, “including a woman who wiped tears from her face on her way out of the courtroom.”

Judge William Sullivan has said the panel will ultimately include six alternates.

Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, does not dispute that she killed the children but has argued in court as recently as June that she should not be found “criminally responsible” due to insanity, according to CNN. “This whole case is an extreme tragedy,” he said. Prosecutors, meanwhile, maintain the killings were deliberate and planned.

According to Reddington, Clancy had struggled with depression for some time and voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital less than a month before her children’s deaths. Her doctors repeatedly adjusted her medications, a process her attorney has said may have worsened her symptoms.

“Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis,” Reddington said at Clancy’s 2023 arraignment, as per CNN. “This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness.”

Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, strangled the children with exercise bands after asking her husband, Patrick, to leave the house on an errand, according to prosecutors.

She then attempted to take her own life by jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed. She remains held at a state hospital.

Experts told CNN that while there is legal precedent for an insanity defense, Clancy’s team may still face an uphill battle.

Patrick is expected to testify for both sides. He has said publicly that he forgives his wife. In January, NBC10 reported that the couple filed a lawsuit alleging her medical providers failed to properly diagnose and treat her postpartum psychiatric condition in the weeks before the killings.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. If convicted, she would face a mandatory sentence of life without parole under Massachusetts law.