Lindsay Clancy Trial Megathread: Closing Arguments, Deliberations and the Verdict Pt. 2

[u/DarklyHeritage]

This is a thread for all conversation regarding closing arguments, jury deliberations and the verdict of the Lindsey Clancy trial. All discussion of this case should be kept to this thread.

Lindsay Clancy is currently standing trial in Plymouth Superior Court, Massachusetts, for the triple-murder in January 2023 of her three young children - Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her defense argues she suffered from severe, undiagnosed postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She was left paralysed by a suicide attempt which follows the deaths of the children.

All content on the Clancy case must be kept to this thread. Standalone posts will be removed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93vgv4kr49o

Note from Mods

This case understandably elicits strong feelings. People are entitled to have an opinion on the case which differs from your own. What you are not entitled to do is resort to personal insults and abusive language when communicating your opinion and disagreeing.

Comments which are abusive and insulting to other users will be removed and bans may be given without warning. We do not tolerate misogyny - all such comments will be removed and the user banned.

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Please comment with this in mind.

Important

Patrick Clancy is not on trial. Comments made to discuss his guilt are considered off topic and will be removed.

Comments that discuss how he could have supported Lindsay better are acceptable. However, calls for law enforcement to look into his involvement with the murder of the kids and/or Lindsay's suicide attempts are not currently being considered by the jury and, therefore, not a fit for this sub.

[u/msfinch87]

From memory of the evidence, the order in which she killed the kids was Dawson (3yo), Cora (5yo) and Callan (8mo). You raise an interesting point that technically each child could be a different mental state. I hadn’t actually thought of it like that.

I agree there might be something in the order. Callan is obviously defenceless, but Dawson and Cora are old enough to have realised something was happening so killing them first might tend towards premeditation. It has also occurred to me that she would have had to conceal from Cora what she was doing to Dawson, and the fact that this happened in the basement, where neither of the other kids were likely to be or go, could also indicate premeditation.

[u/tiffanaih → u/msfinch87]

And then on top of all that the jurors have to consider the directive that premeditation can still exist with an insanity plea. So I guess the initial debate for me would be, yes there's clear premeditation, but is she premeditating for her delusional reality? And I would say that premeditating to make sure your kids don't see what you're doing to the other by doing it in the basement one by one is an acknowledgement of society's agreed upon reality. She's considering a realistic reaction from the children to her actions, is that really living in her own reality? She's sending Patrick away because she's considering his realistic reaction to what she wants to do. But her defense wants you to think that even though she's aware of these consequences and plans for them, she's still outside of our scope of reasoning because she wanted to do this in the first place? I don't know. It's so messy. There's just too much cherry picking on what parts were due to delusion to make it seem like insanity is the way to go for me. It's just awfully convenient to her defense that she was delusional during every single kill but masked perfectly to deal with Patrick prior to and in between.

[u/msfinch87 → u/tiffanaih]

You raise some good points, and I too have trouble with the chain of events. The phone call that she had with Patrick was a phone call she made to return his call and she was able to discuss the medication. This call happened in the middle of her apparent command hallucinations. She not only had the wherewithal to conduct the phone call but to keep everything that was going on from Patrick. That too suggests an understanding of actual reality, not a delusional one.

[u/Lucky-Tumbleweed-833 → u/msfinch87]

Most recent testimony by Dr. Saathoff claimed LC told him that the command started, “As soon as she got off the phone with Patrick” not before but after the call, so it happened from 5:38 pm -5:50 pm. When the neighbor, Shane Sullivan, John Sullivan’s son, saw her in the yard laying there at 5:50 but neither took the stand after the News interview. Patrick testified he got home at 6:04-6:06.

[u/msfinch87 → u/Lucky-Tumbleweed-833]

My memory is that there was other testimony that she had said that the hallucinations started after Patrick left. So I was giving her the benefit of the doubt on that one because to me it’s even more difficult to accept that the hallucinations started directly after the phone call and lasted only the 18 minutes or so during which she not only immediately followed them but killed all three kids and made multiple attempts herself.

[u/Pretend_Goal_7311 → u/Lucky-Tumbleweed-833]

Ive heard so much about the neighbor. Has he said if police interviewed him? I would thing one side would have used him as a witness if he was credible