By Jacki Thrapp
Contributing Writer
Jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial started on Thursday after five weeks of testimony.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is accused of killing her three young children while her now-ex-husband was running errands in January 2023.
The 36-year-old mother faces three counts of first-degree murder, one for each child: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.
Judge William Sullivan gave the jury the option to instead consider second-degree murder or manslaughter.
Only a few hours of deliberations happened before Sullivan ordered a recess until 9 a.m. on Friday at the Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
No verdict was reached on Thursday.
In his closing argument on Thursday, defense attorney Kevin Reddington urged jurors to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, alleging that “her mind was gone” during the killings and said she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.
“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect, as his honor instructed you,” Reddington told jurors in closing arguments. “And they’re not going to be able to prove otherwise.”
Clancy admitted to strangling her kids with exercise bands in the basement of their home in a coastal Boston suburb, slicing her wrists and neck with a knife, and jumping out of a window in a failed suicide attempt, which left her paralyzed.
Her now-ex-husband, Patrick, said that months before the incident, the mother told him she was having thoughts of suicide and harming their kids.
Clancy was also prescribed medications and checked into a psychiatric hospital ahead of the incident.
Her then-husband testified that Clancy had a “normal” demeanor when he left to run errands that day.
When he returned, he found his injured wife, who informed him that the kids were in the basement.
Clancy detailed what happened in a call with him a week after the incident, he said.
“She heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do it now, she would lose her chance or something like that,” he testified.
Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy suffered from mental health issues but said she carried out the killings while knowing it was wrong.
“This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women,” Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors. “That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here.”
Clancy faces life in prison with no possibility of parole if she is convicted on any of the first-degree murder charges she faces.
Reuters contributed to this report.
