Psychiatrists clash as Lindsay Clancy defense rests

Lindsay Clancy’s lawyers rested their case Friday in her Massachusetts murder trial after presenting testimony that she was psychotic when she strangled her three young children, setting up a prosecution rebuttal focused on whether she understood her actions were wrong.

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan at the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. Her defense does not dispute that she killed the children, but argues she should not be held criminally responsible because she was overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors allege she planned the killings and then faked a suicide attempt.

The defense’s final witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick, testified by Zoom after technical problems delayed his appearance. Resnick, who testified in the Andrea Yates case, told jurors he evaluated Clancy about four months after the killings, spending three hours interviewing her and also speaking with her parents. He said he has been involved in about 80 cases in which mothers or fathers allegedly killed their children and has consulted on high-profile cases including Jeffrey Dahmer, the Unabomber and Casey Anthony.

Resnick said Clancy appeared “somewhat matter-of-fact” and “muted,” but that nurses told him she cried daily over the loss of her children. He also said he reviewed a psychological test administered by the government and found “no evidence of faking psychiatric symptoms.”

“She was clearly psychotic on that day,” Resnick testified, saying Clancy was under the influence of a “command hallucination.”

“Not only did she hear a command, but she felt that her body was taken over by an external force where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body,” he said. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.”

Resnick said Clancy may have believed she was helping her children. “She was obsessional about caring for her children,” he said. “She believed that she would be doing her children a favor by having them go to heaven with her rather than remain on Earth without her doing the mothering. Her mind was very distorted like that.”

On cross-examination, prosecutor Jennifer Sprague noted that Resnick had written in an article titled “Faking It” that command hallucinations are easy to fabricate and that people often ignore dangerous commands. She also drew contrasts with Yates, who drowned her five children in Texas in 2001 and was found not guilty by reason of insanity after a 2006 retrial. Sprague said Yates had committed herself to a hospital five times and tried to kill herself twice after hearing voices before killing her children.

After the defense rested, prosecutors called forensic psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack as their first rebuttal witness. He said he interviewed Clancy in April, found she likely suffered from a major depressive episode and anxiety, but saw no evidence she was ever bipolar in a manic state.

“She described feeling miserable, not wanting to be alive,” Mack testified.

Mack said Clancy told him she heard a loud male voice late in the afternoon on the day of the killings. “The voice said, to the effect of, ‘you should kill the kids this is your last chance so that you can kill yourself,’” he said. He testified that Clancy described strangling the children and saying aloud, “go to God.”

“My opinion is that she retained the capacity required for having criminal responsibly for these actions,” Mack said. He also said, “I can appreciate that she felt side effects and a degree of change from the medications that she took. I don’t know that that feeling or belief is necessary psychotic.”

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington challenged Mack’s investigation, pressing him on the fact that he relied on interviews with Clancy while she was medicated in a psychiatric hospital and reviewed records, rather than interviewing people from her life. “So you’re in a mental institution investigating or questioning a woman who’s on medication, who is there because she’s suicidal and under 24/7 operation… and you get the history from her?” Reddington asked. “Yes,” Mack replied.

Judge William F. Sullivan said closing arguments could be held Monday if testimony ended Friday; if testimony resumes Monday, closings would likely take place Tuesday. If convicted of first-degree murder, Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If jurors find her not criminally responsible, she will be sent to a Massachusetts state psychiatric hospital.