A jury is to determine whether Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible for killing her three children in 2023 in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She was being treated for postpartum mental health issues when she killed the children: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, who was 8 months old. Plymouth County Superior Court Judge William Sullivan is presiding over the jury trial, which began on July 27 and is expected to last six to eight weeks.
Curated by: Meghann Cuniff (223 videos)
The lead prosecutor in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial followed up on the defense cross-exam of psychiatrist and rebuttal witness Avram Mack by asking if he considered himself an investigator. "Do you see your role as an investigator when you're retained to do these evaluations?" asked Shanan Buckingham, an assistant district attorney in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. "No." "And in fact, you are evaluating for a specific question, correct?" "That's correct." Mack works at Nemours Children's Health in Delaware and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He reviewed Clancy's medical records and criminal case at the request of prosecutors. He testified she had major depression but showed no signs of psychosis before she killed her three children on Jan. 24, 2023. Mack began testifying on Friday and finished today (Monday, August 22, day 19). 02:23 "I would say that the initial discussion about it was at the end of 2024. I am not exactly sure when Commonwealth or the District Attorney's Office exactly made the retention happen, but I understand it to be early 2025." "And you were provided a significant amount of information after you were retained, correct?" "Yes." "And that information continued to come to you up until the point that you were going to meet with the defendant in April of 2026, is that fair to say?" "That's correct." "And were you able to set up that interview with her on your own?" "No." "Is it your understanding that it had to be with the permission of the court and the parties?" "That's my understanding." 03:55 "When you're retained on cases, this case and any other, you're paid for your time and your work, regardless of what your ultimate opinion is. Correct?" "That's right." 05:15 "Youu were asked some questions about Dr. Halburn, and I think last week on Friday you indicated that you didn't know him prior to working on this case. Is that correct?" "Correct. I had never met him." "And so, you-is he a name that was familiar to you in your area of general psychiatry?" "I knew that he was another expert ... but I had never met him." "And in fact, he's not in your-he's not a general psychiatrist, is he?" "I believe he's a psychologist." "Okay. "And so your focus is different than his focus, Correct?" "To some degree, yes." "Now, why was it? How did it come about that you and Dr. Heilbrun ended up going to Tewkesbury at the same time?"" My memory is that, to the extent that he also had been retained, that there was a need to be that there was only going to be one opportunity for an examination by the prosecution, and so rather than create two different sets of interviews for Ms. Clancy, it was better to overlap them and have them happen concurrently." 12:00 "on Friday you directed Attorney Reddington to a particular part of the bipolar and related disorder chapter, having to deal with specifiers. Do you remember that?" "Yes." "And you directed him to page 173, which referred to the specifier with peripartum onset. Can you just explain to us first what is a specifier when we're talking about the DSM?" "Specifiers are a way in which the DSM allows a diagnostician to highlight certain details of the individual's presentation, but as I was mentioning the other day, psychiatric classification nowadays refers to the larger presenting symptoms that the individual has, and specifiers can be added on. So, a person can have a severe mood disorder, and then one can add on the specifier of with postpartum onset or atypical features or other specifiers that have been defined." 14:11 "Bipolar disorder is a disorder of mood. Abnormal mood is what the diagnostician observes and is aware of, and if there is a way to determine that it's a major depressive episode, or a bimanic episode, or a hypomanic episode, that will help to determine if this severe mood condition is bipolar or major depressive disorder." "And so, in that regard, the same specifier is also part of the major depressive category, correct?" "As I said, specifiers provide detail, but they are not the, so to speak, the major element of the diagnosis. The major element of the diagnosis. In DSM, are the observable major symptoms and signs." 17:07 "And so, in this case, you came to the conclusion that the defendant presented with a major depressive episode, right?" "Correct." "And you relied on diagnostic criteria in the major depressive disorder category is that fair to say?" "Yes, that was the diagnostic criteria that I used to support that diagnosis." 19:28 "So a lot of the the symptoms that counsel read to you are symptoms that are in the category of a major depressive disorder. Is that correct?" "Yes, this is the method of making the diagnosis of a major depressive episode."