Lindsay Clancy trial: Verdict watch continues as jury deliberations resume

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After breaking for the weekend with no verdict in sight, jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial are set to head back into deliberations Monday morning.

The 12 deliberating jurors — nine women and three men — have been in talks for about 10 hours over two days following closing arguments last Thursday. In their final pitches to jurors, the defense and prosecution laid out dueling narratives about what drove Clancy to strangle her three children on Jan. 24, 2023.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued Clancy was a devoted mother to 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan before she was caught in the throes of postpartum mental illness. Blaming “the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got” after giving birth to her third child, he alleged Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time and heard a voice in her head demanding she kill the children and herself.

He pointed out that Clancy, now 36, has never denied strangling her children, even as she has raised what is colloquially known as an insanity defense.

“She never ran from anything,” Reddington asserted.

While prosecutors acknowledged Clancy was struggling with her mental health in the months leading up to the killings, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague alleged that by January 2023, Clancy was suicidal and no longer wanted to keep trying to get better. Her children, however, “were keeping her from ending her misery,” Sprague suggested. “And so she had to remove the protective factor. And I’m not saying she was happy about it; I’m saying that it was what she had to do to end her misery. But it was a choice.”

Clancy is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, though jurors may also consider lesser-included offenses of second-degree murder or manslaughter if they feel prosecutors fell short of proving all the first-degree elements beyond a reasonable doubt.

If her insanity defense prevails and Clancy is found not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, she wouldn’t necessarily go free as she would in the event of an acquittal. As Judge William Sullivan told jurors last Thursday, prosecutors in those scenarios can — and often do — petition the court to have the individual committed to a mental health facility. A judge may do so if they feel the person is still mentally ill and poses a risk to themselves or others, but they can also revisit that decision during periodic reviews.

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Lindsay Clancy murder case since January 2023.