Case heads to jury next week after defense rests

Forensic psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, the defense’s final witness, told jurors Friday that Lindsay Clancy was experiencing a ‘command hallucination’ and a ‘delusion of influence’ when she killed her three young children in Massachusetts in January 2023.

“My opinion is that Ms Clancy was, due to her mental disease, unable to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law on the day that she took the lives of her children,” Resnick said. He testified that she was “just following the command rather than being able to make any decision to do it or not.”

Resnick, who evaluated Clancy after the killings and reviewed her medical records, told jurors she lacked control and was likely unable to tell the difference between right and wrong on that January 2023 day. “In her mind, she believed that she would be doing her children a favour by having them go to heaven with her rather than remain on earth without her doing the mothering,” he testified.

The defense does not dispute that Clancy carried out the killings but argues she pleaded not guilty to murder charges because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors have alleged she made a calculated decision to intentionally kill the children.

Clancy, now 36, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. Prosecutors say that in January 2023, she intentionally strangled the three children with fitness bands in their Massachusetts home before jumping from a second-floor window. Clancy was paralyzed by the jump and has attended the trial in a wheelchair.

The defense has said Clancy experienced hallucinations and delusions after giving birth to Callan and was undergoing medical treatment for psychiatric problems. She checked herself into a psychiatric hospital for a few days just before the deaths.

Earlier in the trial, Clancy’s mother and former mother-in-law testified about how her mental health deteriorated after the birth of her youngest son. “She was begging for help,” Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, said of a woman she described as a “very nurturing, very loving” mother.

The UK’s National Health Service defines postpartum psychosis as a rare serious mental health illness that can affect someone soon after having a baby. “Postpartum psychosis is very different from the ‘baby blues,’” the NHS adds. “It’s a serious mental illness and should be treated as a medical emergency.”

The case is expected to go to the jury early next week following nearly a month of witness testimony.