PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial resumed deliberating for a third day Monday to determine whether to hold the former labor and delivery nurse criminally responsible for killing her three children in 2023 – a case that has drawn attention to maternal mental health after childbirth.
The 12 regular jurors and six alternates began discussing the case Thursday in Plymouth County Superior Court after hearing testimony from more than 70 prosecution witnesses, including her then-husband, and 10 defense witnesses over five weeks.
While Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children, her lawyer said she did it because she had lost her grip on reality due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth. In the months before the killings, Clancy sought treatment for her worsening mental health, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing. They say she strangled the children because she was depressed and tired of living, and made a conscious choice to kill them before attempting suicide.
The jury could find her guilty of murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter, or it could acquit her if it finds that she wasn’t in control of herself due to psychiatric problems. Clancy’s sentence could be as severe as life in prison, or she could be released or remain confined in a mental health facility if acquitted.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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All three children – Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months – were strangled with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts, before Clancy tried to kill herself while her husband was getting takeout and at a pharmacy on Jan. 24, 2023.
Clancy, 36, who grew up in Wallingford, Connecticut, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. She did not testify during the trial, but jurors heard at length from medical professionals who treated her, as well as from friends and relatives she had told about her mental health problems.
Jurors also heard from medical experts called by prosecutors and the defense who disagreed about her likely state of mind when she killed the children.
The killings happened less than three weeks after Clancy was discharged from a psychiatric hospital. She cut herself before jumping from a second-floor window after strangling the children. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.
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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
