Defense Rests in Lindsay Clancy Trial: Jury to Decide if Mother Who Strangled 3 Kids Is Criminally Responsible
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — After four weeks of harrowing testimony, the trial of Lindsay Clancy — the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children with exercise bands in 2023 — is now in the hands of a jury.
The defense rested its case Friday, Aug. 21, in Plymouth Superior Court. Prosecutors had rested Monday, Aug. 17. Closing arguments are expected to begin Monday, Aug. 25, with a verdict possible as early as late this week.
Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, is charged with three counts of murder in the Jan. 24, 2023 deaths of her children at the family’s Duxbury home: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.
She has pleaded not guilty. Her defense does not dispute that she killed the children, but argues she is not criminally responsible — Massachusetts’ version of the insanity defense — because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
What the Jury Heard in the Final Days
In the final week before the defense rested, jurors heard evidence that has fueled intense debate on social media.
On Monday, prosecutors presented evidence that in the days before the killings, Clancy conducted online searches for depression, suicidal ideation, and “symptoms of postpartum psychosis.”
On Tuesday, jaws dropped when a psychiatrist who supervised Clancy’s discharge from McLean Hospital — a top psychiatric facility where Clancy admitted herself on New Year’s Eve 2022, just three weeks before the killings — testified that in more than 20 years of practice, she had never treated a patient with postpartum psychosis.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has argued that Clancy was overmedicated in the months leading up to the deaths, prescribed a cocktail of benzodiazepines, antidepressants and antipsychotics by two different providers, Dr. Jennifer Tufts and psychiatric nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta.
He has also argued that Clancy heard a male voice telling her to commit the killings, and painted her as a doting mother who “tried very hard to get the help she needed.”
On Tuesday, a psychiatrist testified that Clancy ran a 5K road race mere hours after giving birth to her youngest child in 2022, months before she would strangle him.
The Husband’s Testimony
The prosecution’s most emotional witness was Clancy’s then-husband, Patrick Clancy.
He took the stand in the first two days of the trial, recounting his wife’s mental health decline from September 2022 to January 2023. He said she repeatedly sought care for worsening insomnia and postpartum depression and anxiety and was hospitalized at least three times — once for lack of sleep and twice for suicidal thoughts.
According to prosecutors, Lindsay Clancy sent Patrick out of the house to pick up takeout food and medication for the children, then strangled them while he was gone. Afterward, she cut her wrists and neck and jumped out of a second-story window, an attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She has been held at Tewksbury Hospital for court-ordered mental health treatment since May 2023.
Patrick Clancy, who has since remarried and moved to New York City, has been cleared by police. In a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, he said he does not believe his wife was a monster; she was sick.
That has not stopped online sleuths.
TikTok’s Own Verdict
If the courtroom is somber, TikTok is in a frenzy.
The trial is being livestreamed, and clips are going viral with wild theories. Many users are convinced Lindsay Clancy must have been framed by her husband, calling his alibi — that he was at CVS picking up medications — too perfect. Some have claimed a body double walked into the pharmacy. Others have tried to paint a motive from his later remarriage.
The phenomenon, Boston University assistant professor Katy Coduto calls “forensic fandom” — “not only are you invested in a story, but you think you can solve it.”
On Aug. 11, Reddington even asked Judge William Sullivan to allow TikToker Emily Thorndike to testify. Reddington said he discovered Thorndike through a viral video she made about working at McLean Hospital, where she was critical of the facility — which he argued countered the prosecutor’s portrayal of it as “some kind of a five-star institution.”
“I hardly know what TikTok is,” Reddington told the court.
Judge Sullivan denied the request, siding with prosecutor Jennifer Sprague: “This isn’t someone who’s proposed to be an expert … She’s been following the trial.”
In the comment sections, users are posting “thirst trap edits” of Reddington. One comment with over 15,000 likes reads: “I’d bet $1000 Reddington has a Gen Z legal aide with a burner TikTok account combing through edits and comment sections.”
TikToker Matty Addison, whose video about Patrick Clancy went viral this week, told USA TODAY he became invested because he saw “injustice” and needed a “sense of community.”
“I have been up for the past three nights ’til 2 am, trying to put this together like a puzzle because of my ADHD; and I can’t, like, not solve a puzzle,” he said at the start of his video.
What Happens Next
Under Massachusetts law, a person is not criminally responsible if, as a result of mental disease or defect, they lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of their conduct or to conform their conduct to the law.
If the jury finds Clancy not criminally responsible, she will not walk free. She would be committed to a psychiatric facility. If found guilty, she faces life in prison.
The case has ignited a national conversation about postpartum psychosis, which affects 1 to 2 per 1,000 women, about overmedication, and about whether a jury trial is the right instrument for a psychiatric question.
The prosecution rested after arguing Clancy planned the killings. The defense rested after arguing she was in the grip of psychosis.
Now 18 jurors will decide.
The court will reconvene for closing arguments Monday morning. The trial is expected to be livestreamed on the Plymouth County court feed and Law&Crime Network.
