Jurors chosen for the upcoming trial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her three young children while experiencing postpartum struggles, will be asked to hear what her attorney described Monday as an exceptionally harrowing case.
Clancy, 35, a former nurse, is scheduled to stand trial next week on allegations that she strangled her three children with exercise bands before attempting to take her own life, an incident that left her paralyzed. Jury selection is set to begin Monday morning.
At a final pretrial hearing in Plymouth, Mass., Clancy’s defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington, asked Judge William Sullivan for additional peremptory challenges, arguing that the deeply tragic facts of the case could make it harder to select an impartial jury.
“The impact of this case, which, in my decades of trying cases, is probably the most emotionally disturbing and challenging, I think it’s going to have an impact on jurors more so than the usual we deal with,” Reddington told the court.
Sullivan said he would take the request under advisement and issue a ruling in the days ahead. Prosecutors did not object to the defense motion.
The judge indicated that he expects to seat 18 jurors, apparently including several alternates, because the trial is projected to run six to eight weeks and will involve unusually sensitive circumstances.
As many as 200 potential witnesses are listed for trial, although both the witness list and the expected length of proceedings could shrink considerably. Reddington said the defense is prepared to stipulate, or formally agree, to the facts surrounding the children’s deaths.
Instead of trying to prove that Clancy didn’t kill her children in the basement of their Duxbury, Mass., home on Jan. 24, 2023, the attorney will admit to those heinous acts and instead argue she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, since she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis, Reddington has said.
Sullivan shot down Reddington’s last-minute request to call 16 women to testify about their own experiences with postpartum depression.
The judge agreed with prosecutors that allowing that testimony would cause a mini-trial within a trial and the expert witnesses expected to be called by both sides can speak to the effect that postpartum can have on someone anyway.
Clancy allegedly carried out the slayings before she cut her neck and wrists and threw herself out of the second-story window of her home, paralyzing herself. She has attended court hearings in a wheelchair.
Her husband, Patrick Clancy, came home to discover his wife wounded outside their home and his kids dead in the basement. Patrick is expected to testify at trial.
The couple has filed separate lawsuits against the doctors who were treating Lindsay, claiming they misdiagnosed and overmedicated her, causing her to hallucinate voices telling her to kill her kids.
