Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial Closing Arguments: ‘She Was Reaching Out for Help’

Closing arguments in the case against Lindsay Clancy , the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children to death in 2023, were delivered on Thursday, the 22nd day of trial.

Clancy is facing three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her three children — Cora, five; Dawson, three; and eight-month-old Callan — in January 2023. She has pleaded not guilty. While Clancy has not denied killing the children, the trial is expected to determine whether she was legally responsible for her actions. Clancy jumped out of a window after strangling the children to death and was paralyzed in the fall. She now uses a wheelchair and has been held at a state hospital since the incident.

Clancy’s mental health treatment has been a prominent focus of the trial. She did not testify. On Thursday, closing arguments began in a courtroom packed with Clancy supporters, the Associated Press reported . Hundreds more supporters gathered outside, many wearing pink. Clancy’s veteran defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington, told jurors his client suffered from postpartum psychosis — a relatively rare diagnosis that can cause women to develop delusions and even hallucinations, according to the National Institutes of Health .

In his folksy, booming style that’s earned him a fandom on social media, Reddington blasted prosecutors for presenting what he called a “repulsive” case built on “manipulation.” He argued the evidence showed Clancy was a devoted mother whose postpartum depression spiraled into postpartum psychosis amid heavy medication.

Holding up a colorful chart, Reddington walked jurors through more than a dozen prescriptions written by Clancy’s psychiatrist, including Ativan, Zoloft, Valium, trazodone and buspirone. Clancy also saw other medical professionals, obsessively googled treatments, called suicide hotlines, and checked herself into a hospital that released her three weeks before the killings, he said. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

“She was reaching out for help, and she was not getting it,” he said. At various points, he slammed quarters down on a table like a pool-hall challenge to make sense of the prosecution’s case. “This is a prosecution that has ripped the soul out of this girl,” he argued, pointing to Clancy, who was seated in her wheelchair. He showed jurors enlarged photos of the smiling Clancy family before the killings, then contrasted them with an image of Clancy in a hospital bed.

“How does this turn into this? How?” he asked. “Because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care she got.”

He faulted the American psychiatric community’s diagnostic system for using a four-week cutoff to classify a disorder as having peripartum onset. He contrasted that with the World Health Organization’s longer window and said many experts believe postpartum psychiatric conditions can emerge months after childbirth, even within the first year, and require specialized treatment.

“This young lady did nothing wrong in her life,” Reddington said.