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 final defense witness in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial was a forensic psychiatrist who also testified in the 2006 trial of Andrea Yates, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in Texas after she drowned her six children in a bathtub. Phillip Resnick also worked on the cases of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Resnick testified this morning (Friday, August 21, day 18) remotely via video. Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington questioned him in direct-examination. 06:09 "Alight. In the course of this case, sir, did I reach out to you and ask if you would assist me in evaluating Lindsay Clancy?" "Yes, you did." 06:34 "Abut four months after the crime, I did a personal evaluation of Lindsay and her parents to gain information, and I spent three hours interviewing her on that on that date." "And how long did you spend interviewing third-party contacts of her parents?" "An hour and 50 minutes." "And this would be in May of 2023." "That's right." 07:58 "At the time, of course, she had suffered major injury and was paralyzed. So that was the setting. So during the examination, she did not have control of the lower part of her body. During the interview, she appeared somewhat matter of fact, but at the time she was still grieving." "The nurses told me that she was crying daily about the loss of her three children, and she was also medicated at that time, she was fully cooperative, and and gave me a detailed account of her recollections of the critical events." 11:07 "After I prepared my report, I was aware that there were three experts employed by the prosecution, and I was able to review their reports in detail." 12:37 "the results showed no evidence for faking." 17:43 "Can you tell the jurors, in your opinion, sir, with your years of experience in the issue of filicide, working for just the government on a number of cases and the defense, and your evaluation of Lindsay, can you tell this jury your opinion as to whether or not, at the time of the killings, that she was suffering from a disease or defect that impaired her ability to substantially appreciate and/or conform her conduct to the requirements of the law?"' 18:27 "Let me begin with the issue of whether she had a mental disease or a defect. Ms. Clancy had a severe depression. There is a book called the DSM or Diagnostic Manual prepared by the American Psychiatric Association, which lists criteria for various diseases. So, in the Diagnostic Manual, for example, there are one needs to have five out of symptoms to make a diagnosis of major depression, and and Miss Clancy, as she approached the date of the crime, actually had seven of the nine symptoms and was severely depressed." 19:20 "In addition to that, she has some earlier evidence of what's called a mild mania, and that fits together in what's called bipolar two. So, in other words, it's a type of bipolar illness, where there is more frank depression, severe depression, but the manic aspects are not as severe." "So my final diagnosis of her was called bipolar polar two with a severe depression on January 24 2023, and from reading the reports of all the experts that are that will be testifying, no one failed to diagnose a major mental disease on the day of the crime." 20:50 "Ms. Clancy had a history of anxiety and difficulty with each of her children. It was minor with her first child, more significant with her second child, and on the occasion of Callan's birth, things went well for the first three months. But then Ms. Clancy became very anxious and depressed, and it took quite a toil on her." 25:19 "Yes. If we take first of all a hallucination is simply hearing a voice, and the voice can be benign, or it can be more malignant. So a voice may just simply say, "Open the window. About 1/3 of voices are called command hallucinations. That is an instruction to do something, and the majority of those commands are benign." 26:49 Judge Sullivan calls sidebar then instructs jury 28:17 "There are two arms to the test for criminal responsibility, one has to do the defendant's ability to control their conduct, and the other has to do with their knowledge of the wrongfulness of their acts." "My opinion is that Ms. Clancy was, due to her mental disease, unable to conform her conduct was to the requirements of the law on the day that she took the lives of her children, and let me give you the basis that opinion. First of all, she was hearing a voice which was commanding her to engage in the killing behavior, and she did not feel any sense of control. She felt that she had to obey the instructions she was receiving. It was a matter where she was just following the command rather than being able to make any decision to do it or not." 41:15 cross-exam 52:05 "Were you aware from the Tewksbury records that on page 1136 it says Ms. Clancy has been clinically stable since her admission." 59:23 no-re-direct