PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The protection rested its case Friday within the Lindsay Clancy homicide trial after eliciting a number of days of testimony about her psychological state earlier than and after she strangled her three younger youngsters.
Prosecutors then started calling rebuttal witnesses within the trial, which is probably going getting into its last days. Closing arguments are anticipated subsequent week.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not responsible to homicide costs within the deaths of her youngsters Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to five years outdated. They had been discovered within the basement of the household’s residence in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window after strangling the kids and stays paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and supply nurse, deliberate the killings.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, hasn’t disputed that she killed the kids however says she shouldn’t be held criminally accountable as a result of she had postpartum psychosis, a uncommon psychological sickness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal adjustments that observe childbirth.
He sought to bolster that protection by having the jury hear from extra of Clancy’s members of the family, who detailed her worsening psychological well being and makes an attempt to repair it by way of psychiatric therapy and drugs earlier than the January 2023 killings. The jury additionally heard from a psychologist and a hospital chaplain who met with Clancy after the killings.
The protection’s last witness additionally testified on the trial of Texas mother Andrea Yates
For his last witness on Friday, Reddington known as Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and professional in filicide, or the killing of a kid by a mother or father.
Resnick testified that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her youngsters and was not accountable for her actions.
“It was virtually like she was a puppet and another person was pulling the strings,” stated Resnick, who testified for the protection within the 2006 trial of Andrea Yates, the Texas mom who drowned her 5 youngsters in 2001.
Resnick stated he spent hours interviewing Clancy 4 months after the killings and believed she tended to reduce moderately than exaggerate her signs. He stated she suffered from extreme despair, confirmed proof in step with bipolar dysfunction and reported listening to a voice commanding her to kill her youngsters.
Resnick described a number of classes of filicide, together with killings involving abuse. Others contain psychosis or what he calls “altruistic” filicide – a killing dedicated “out of affection moderately than hostility.” He stated he discovered Clancy’s case concerned each of the latter classes, however he did not discover proof of abuse.
Resnick stated Clancy had a delusional perception that if social providers took the kids or if she killed herself, her youngsters would undergo with out her, and believed that they might be higher off dying along with her and going to heaven.
“She believed that she was doing what was proper for her youngsters,” he stated.
Below cross-examination by prosecutor Jennifer Sprague, Resnick acknowledged that Clancy didn’t disclose ideas of harming her youngsters to medical suppliers who requested, however stated that was “quite common as a result of individuals concern their youngsters will likely be taken away.”
“So it is higher to kill them than have them taken away?” Sprague requested.
The choose struck the query.
Prosecutors say Clancy wasn’t affected by psychosis or bipolar dysfunction
Prosecutors argue that Clancy contrived to get her husband out of the home the day of the killings. They’ve tried to point out that whereas she was getting therapy for anxiousness, insomnia and despair, she wasn’t affected by psychosis or bipolar dysfunction.
After the protection rested, prosecutors known as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack as a rebuttal witness. Mack agreed that Clancy suffered from a serious depressive episode however stated he discovered no proof of mania or hypomania to help a bipolar prognosis – or of psychosis – main as much as the killings.
Mack stated Clancy recounted the killings to him, saying she heard a loud male voice telling her to kill the kids so she might kill herself. She recalled strangling the kids and saying “go to God” as she did so, he instructed jurors.
Mack stated Clancy was experiencing extreme psychological sickness when she killed her youngsters however that it was a continuation of the despair she had skilled for months through which she was capable of management impulses and distinguish proper from flawed.
He additionally stated, “There is no purpose that psychosis in and of itself inhibits an individual’s capacity to know proper from flawed.”
In case you or somebody you already know is battling ideas of suicide, name or textual content 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential assist is out there 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. You aren’t by yourself.
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