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Prosecutors on Monday appeared to challenge a central piece of Lindsay Clancy’s defense, pushing back on the suggestion that she had been heavily medicated by showing jurors nine prescription bottles that still held a significant number of pills.
Patrick Clancy told the court that his ex-wife had received multiple psychiatric prescriptions in the months leading up to the deaths of their three young children. But during cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham, he conceded that a number of those medications did not appear to have been fully used.
“So there were a lot of pills prescribed, but not a lot of pills taken. Correct?” Buckingham asked as she displayed a bag containing the prescription medications.
Assistant Plymouth County District Attorney Jennifer Sprague entering a bag of prescription pills that were prescribed to Lindsay Clancy into evidence during the first day of her trial. (Greg Derr/Pool/The Patriot Ledger)
“Is that comprehensive?” Patrick replied. “Of all the pills that were prescribed?”
“These are the pills that you brought into the police station,” Buckingham clarified. “So out of these.”
“Out of those, yeah,” Patrick answered. “It’s possible that not a lot were taken.”
Buckingham also sought to distinguish between the total number of medications prescribed over several months and how many Lindsay was prescribed at one time.
Patrick estimated that she was taking three or four medications at most. Buckingham then asked whether it would surprise him to learn that Lindsay was prescribed no more than three medications at any given time and usually two.
Patrick Clancy took the stand Monday and described watching his wife fall into a “big spiral” before she allegedly strangled their three young children inside the family’s Massachusetts home. (Greg Derr/Pool/The Patriot Ledger)
“It wouldn’t be terribly surprising, no,” Patrick said.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said the questioning appeared designed to prevent the defense from controlling how jurors view the cocktail of medications that Lindsay Clancy was prescribed in the months before authorities say she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, inside the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023.
Lindsay Clancy reacts as the details of her children’s deaths are read in court on Monday. (Greg Derr/Pool/The Patriot Ledger)
“An important part of being a good prosecutor is not just proving your case, but anticipating the defense’s arguments,” Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told INC News. “The prosecution wants to get out ahead of that potentially bad evidence by arguing that even though she was prescribed all these meds, she wasn’t prescribed them at the same time. At most, she was prescribed two, three, maybe four medications at once and importantly, she wasn’t taking them.”
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Rahmani said prosecutors appeared to be getting ahead of the defense’s claim that Lindsay’s changing prescriptions contributed to her alleged psychosis.
“The last thing you want is the defense to gain control of the key piece of evidence,” he said. “It can be O.J.’s glove or a bag of pills.”
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington shows a list of medications prescribed to Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her children, during his opening statement in Clancy’s murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, U.S., July 27, 2026.
Rahmani said the next phase will likely focus on how long Lindsay took each medication, when she stopped taking it and how many drugs she was prescribed at once.
“It’s not uncommon for psychiatrists to try different medications and stop them when they stop working,” he said. “So how long was she on the Zoloft versus the Ativan versus the Seroquel? How many pills was she taking? I think the prosecution is gonna argue that Lindsay and her doctors were trying to get her better, and the fact that she wasn’t on all these pills at once really shows that the defense is trying to mislead the jury.”
Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial is expected to last six to eight weeks, and the witness list contains more than 200 names. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via Pool)
The defense has argued that Lindsay was suffering from psychosis and was not criminally responsible when she strangled her three young children. Prosecutors, meanwhile, framed the mom of three as a calculated killer, saying that Clancy’s children were “deliberately and meticulously killed.”
Buckingham alleged that Clancy deliberately sent Patrick from their Duxbury home to pick up medication and takeout food, giving herself enough time to strangle each child with an exercise band before attempting to kill herself.
Patrick Clancy exits Plymouth Superior Court, Plymouth, Mass., Monday, July27, 2026. His ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, is on trial for the murder of their three children. (David McGlynn for INC News)
During opening statements, defense attorney Kevin Reddington conceded that Clancy killed the children but argued that the only meaningful dispute is what was happening inside her mind.
“She knows that she killed these children,” Reddington told jurors. “The issue for consideration is what was going on in that woman’s mind.”
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, has pleaded not guilty to three counts each of murder and strangulation.
Judge William Sullivan told jurors that the Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible when the children were killed.
