The husband of a Massachusetts woman accused of killing the couple’s three young children is expected to take the stand for her defense when her trial begins next week.
Lindsay Clancy, 35, faces three murder charges, along with three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, after prosecutors folded the original strangulation counts into the murder charges, WCVB reports.
Clancy’s attorneys are not contesting that she strangled her children — five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan — with exercise bands on January 24, 2023.
Their case instead centers on her mental state at the time. The defense argues that Clancy was overmedicated and experiencing severe postpartum psychosis, and that she should therefore be found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Patrick Clancy, Lindsay’s husband and the father of the three children, is set to testify on her behalf, according to PEOPLE.
In a wrongful death lawsuit filed against some of his wife’s medical providers, Patrick said he believes Lindsay killed the children after she “started hearing a compelling and unrecognizable singular male voice” that told her “this is your last chance” and that she had to “take them” with her.
The same voice, according to the filing, “indicated to [Lindsay] that she should die” and that her children would suffer if she was gone.
However, when the trial gets underway, Clancy’s legal team will not be permitted to call other people who have experienced postpartum psychosis as witnesses.
Lindsay Clancy, 35, is facing three counts of murder for strangling her three children
She is accused of killing her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, by strangling them with exercise bands on January 24, 2023
Hearing from more than a dozen other women who suffered from similar experiences could help jurors better understand what Clancy was allegedly going through, defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued in Plymouth Superior Court on Monday.
‘For us to believe that somebody is hearing voices, the natural reaction from any one of us, I think in this courtroom would be “Come on. You’re not hearing voices. What are you talking about? You’re making this up. You’re trying to avoid responsibility,’ he said, according to Boston.com.
‘But it is true and it happens, and it is an affliction that people have put up with.’
Reddington then argued that ‘a woman who has suffered and has put up with this affliction should be able to testify and say probably in an emotionally-charged fashion, very credibly, “I too have heard these command voices. I too acted on the command voices.”‘
But Judge William F Sullivan denied the request, siding with the prosecutors who argued that allowing the women to testify even though they have no personal connection to the case would be prejudicial and would force them to call even more witnesses in rebuttal.
In a filing seeking to get the women to testify, Reddington said he had been contacted by 15 different people who claimed to have their own experiences with postpartum psychosis, hallucinations or drug use and were willing to testify on Clancy’s behalf.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty, arguing she had been suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time
Jurors will hear from the father of the three victims, Patrick Clancy, who will be testifying in his wife’s defense
The lawyer acknowledged the women have no personal connection to Clancy’s case, but have ‘been victimized by the medical system that fails to recognize the severe, debilitating and devastating impact of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis,’ the filing says, according to CBS News.
It then notes that the women have suffered from ‘suicidal ideation, infanticide ideation [and] homicidal ideation with auditory and visual hallucinations.’
Yet prosecutor Jennifer Sprague argued in court that some of the women the defense sought to call as witnesses were ‘women who suffered from postpartum depression and psychosis who did not kill their children, who locked themselves in a room, to keep themselves from harming their children, who got in a car and drove away so they didn’t harm their children.’
‘And so then it becomes a trial within a trial.’
Sullivan ultimately agreed, noting that expert witnesses can give jurors the relevant information about postpartum mental illness.
But jurors will also hear the harrowing 911 call Lindsay’s husband Patrick made to police when he found his three children killed at their home.
In the call, Patrick explains that he found the exercise bands still wrapped around the children’s necks but that they were easy to take off.
Patrick was already on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when he found his three children strangled to death in the basement of his Duxbury, Massachusetts home
‘The spontaneous and excited nature of the 911 call, made prior to any reflective thought, further established that the bands were wrapped around each child’s neck in a fashion that negates any theory that they were tied or knotted,’ prosecutors argued.
‘He further states he believed the bands were looped like you would tie a shoelace, but came off quickly.’
By the time first responders then arrived on the scene, ‘each band [was] lying next to each child,’ the filing alleges, according to the New York Post.
‘The brief time between finding each child and the fact that Mr Clancy was able to remove each band so quickly’ negates the theory Lindsay may have tied the bands in a knot and walked away.
Instead, prosecutors say, the evidence suggests she ‘manually pulled the bands around each child’s neck until they died,’ showing ‘the deliberateness of her acts and the extreme atrocity and cruelty of her acts.’
Jury selection in the case is now scheduled to begin on July 20, when prospective panelists are expected to be asked about their own mental health history.
The trial is then expected to last four to six weeks.
