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)
Psychiatrist Avram Mack testified as a rebuttal witness for the prosecution today that Lindsay Clancy was depressed, not psychotic, when she killed her three young children in Duxbury, Massachusetts in 2023. This is his entire cross-exam with defense attorney Kevin Reddington You can watch his 90 minute direct-exam testimony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_EXY-RqWD0 01:44 "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 101 24/7 observation. Would you agree with that?" "Yes." 03:20 "Did you talk to any of the nurses that she worked with? I mean, was she respected? Was she hard worker? Was she somebody that was ducking out early? Didn't want to work?" "I didn't talk to any of her colleagues. I'm aware that she had been there for some time, and I did not hear about any aspects in which her work was deleterious." 07:24 "You didn't come across any information that she didn't want to go back to work because she was lazy or just didn't want to work, right?" "No, I think she always wanted to work." 08:08 "She was anxious about the well-being and nurturance of her children as she went back to work. One being that the baby was not taking a bottle. Another that in that span between the point that her husband went back to work and she was expected to go back to wor. It was overwhelming to have three young children that she was caring for all by herself." 09:39 "So through my evaluation, what I understood was that there was ambivalence about having a nanny. That is to say, having somebody who helped. There was some degree of wanting to be able to handle the children on her own." "The other part of it is some ambivalence about other people, other than herself or perhaps her mother, caring. For the children, becauseI know that my evaluation discerned that she felt very positively about her ability to take care of her children, but also some ambivalence about other people taking care of the children." 11:37 "And would you consider a person who is a exercise aficionado, especially a woman who, for example, runs let's say a 5k or a five mile road race within about a couple of weeks after having a baby. Is that hyper exercise? Is that hypomanic?" "In of itself, it's not hypomanic. No." 17:27 "I've been active as a teacher and as a clinician over about 22 years, and I've been a full professor at Penn and Jefferson and Georgetown." 26:40 "And what's a cognitive bias? Just curious." "When you think about diagnoses, there's always a possibility that an individual is sort of guided to one diagnosis or another based on various forms of preconceptions or biases. So, a major part of this concept of patient safety is to prevent misdiagnosis, and there are a lot of techniques that are used in medicine, and in this case, in pediatric hospitals, and also in psychiatry, to try to make sure that the users or the diagnosticians' biases don't creep into making the wrong diagnosis." 34:24 "So, with your wealth of knowledge on women that are pregnant and suffering from postpartum psychosis, do you know whether or not Lindsay was ever diagnosed with postpartum depression?" "I believe that the various notes from the clinicians over the year of 2022, 2023 utilized the term unspecified mood disorder." "Right. How about postpartum depression?" "I don't think that appellation was used." 35:28 "Well, postnatal depression for a woman who's pregnant or had a baby recently is a heck of a lot different than some guy who's just depressed about his job, right?" "I don't understand your question." 37:39 "You know that she saw Dr. Tufts because she apparently was anxious, right?" "Yes." "Prior to that, other than having anxiety about public speaking as a nurse in nursing school, and after she had one of her children, she didn't have any psychiatric history medications, right?" "She had not taken medications, but she had had she had had a lifelong degree of anxiety. It hadn't been at the level of disorder." 40:50 "That's the only time that she indicates that she did not want to take except for benzos medication because she was breastfeeding, right?" "I don't agree. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but my understanding is that she described that she genuinely did not want to take medication. Benzodiazepine..." 45:18 "There is a syndrome that's been proposed called postpartum psychosis. So I would differentiate that from the idea that the person of psychosis in a postpartum period. The syndrome, proposed syndrome of postpartum psychosis, has not been included, and I am not aware that it is going to be included." 54:58 "So, would you agree with me, sir, that the way that women are treated postpartum, after having babies, prior to having babies in Europe is a heck of a lot different than we treat--- " objections sustained