Closing arguments set Thursday, jury deliberations expected Friday
Prosecutors put two expert witnesses on the stand Tuesday to challenge the defense’s central claim that Lindsay Clancy committed the acts while suffering from postpartum psychosis, a mental illness Kevin Reddington has said causes hallucinations, mood swings and delusions, and that in Clancy’s case involved her hearing a voice compelling her to act. The Massachusetts mother is charged with killing her three young children — Callan, 8 months; Dawson, three years old; and Cora, five years old — in January 2023, before she allegedly jumped from a second-floor window, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. It is not disputed that she strangled the children.
Forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun, who was retained by prosecutors and evaluated Clancy in April, told the court he “did his best to have an open mind” and that he believed she was “criminally responsible” for the deaths. “She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including her children,” Heilbrun said. “Her moral awareness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die and, if she was dead, not to leave her children behind.”
Over nearly three days of testimony, the prosecution also focused on the timeline of events during the killings, asking Heilbrun to identify whether each step Clancy took was a decision — including her action to take the children down to the basement — in an attempt to convince the jury that these were planned murders. For each, he answered that they did.
Under cross-examination, Heilbrun told the court he had been paid roughly $54,000 for the 180 hours he has worked on the case on behalf of the state, and that he will likely be paid more as the trial goes on. He also told Reddington that he didn’t have experience with postpartum mental health conditions. A recess was called at one point after several heated exchanges between Heilbrun and Reddington, during which Clancy’s attorney accused the psychologist of not reading her medical reports.
Heilbrun’s testimony on Monday prompted a request for a mistrial from Reddington after the psychologist mentioned Clancy’s Catholic faith. The request was denied, but Judge William Sullivan admonished Heilbrun for the comment and instructed the jury to disregard the reference to “the religion that the defendant was raised with,” calling it “an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony.”
After Heilbrun left the stand on Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors called forensic psychiatrist Gregory Saathoff, who is affiliated with the FBI and University of Virginia. Unlike Heilbrun, he claimed he was not paid for his testimony and had treated several women who have killed their children.
Saathoff told the court that it was unusual that Clancy hadn’t reported hearing voices before the killings and that the voices ceased afterwards. He also said he found several inconsistencies in Clancy’s account of what happened.
The defense has argued Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings; Reddington has also claimed Clancy had bipolar disorder and was overmedicated.
Earlier in the trial, defense experts reached different conclusions about her mental state. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, testified on Friday that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her children and was not in control of her actions. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” he said. That echoed another defense witness, psychologist Paul Zeizel, who concluded Clancy “had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.”
It is well documented that Clancy needed treatment for a mental health condition, and admitted herself to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, a few weeks before the murders.
Before the court adjourned for the day on Tuesday, Judge Sullivan told the jury that the presentation of evidence would conclude on Wednesday and that closing arguments would likely follow on Thursday. Deliberations are expected to begin on Friday. He encouraged jurors not to form their own conclusions until the very end. “You’ve heard a lot of evidence, but you haven’t heard all of it, right? And like I said before, you haven’t heard the closing arguments of the attorneys,” Sullivan said. “You haven’t heard the law that you’re going to have to apply to this. So you still have to keep an open mind.”
The burden of proof is on the prosecution to show Clancy was not suffering from “a mental disease or defect” and that she had enough capacity to understand “the wrongfulness or criminality of her conduct.”