The Lindsay Clancy Trial: A Cruel and Tone Deaf Prosecution

A prosecutor decides not only what to prove but how to speak about the person sitting at the defense table. In the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Commonwealth told the jury in its opening statement and again in closing that she was a murderer who coldly wanted to see her own children dead. It called witnesses who testified that her injuries were consistent with an insincere attempt to die by suicide. Massachusetts law permitted both choices.

Those decisions were cruel, they were tone deaf, and they were a serious tactical error that the Commonwealth is now paying for.

Clancy, of Duxbury, is charged with murdering Cora, age five, Dawson, age three, and Callan, age eight months, in January 2023. After the killings she cut her neck and wrists and went out a second-story window. She survived. She is paralyzed, and the jury in Plymouth Superior Court has watched her follow the trial from a wheelchair.

The defense is lack of criminal responsibility. Kevin Reddington argued that postpartum psychosis produced command hallucinations, and the defense forensic psychiatrist testified that Clancy heard a voice directing the killings and felt no sense of control. The Commonwealth argued that she planned the deaths, arranged for her husband to be out of the house, understood that what she was doing was wrong, and did not have the condition the defense described.

As of Friday, September 4, the jury has deliberated for seven days. It has twice reported that it cannot reach agreement.

What the Law Allowed the Commonwealth to Argue

Massachusetts uses the standard adopted in Commonwealth v. McHoul, 352 Mass. 544 (1967). A person is not criminally responsible if, as a result of mental disease or defect, that person lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of law.

Once the defense is raised and the evidence would permit a reasonable doubt, the Commonwealth must prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Keita, 429 Mass. 843, 849 to 850 (1999). The Supreme Judicial Court has described what that burden requires the Commonwealth to disprove: that the defendant had no mental disease or defect, and, failing that, that no mental disease or defect deprived the defendant of substantial capacity. Commonwealth v. Lawson, 475 Mass. 806 (2016).

Lawson also identifies how a prosecutor may carry that burden. The Commonwealth may rely on the circumstances of the offense, including evidence that the defendant planned the offense, acted on a rational motive, made rational decisions during the offense and in avoiding capture, and attempted to conceal what happened. It may also rely on the defendant’s words and conduct before, during, and after the offense, including evidence of malingering.

So the Commonwealth in this case did what the case law invites a prosecutor to do. The planning argument, the timing argument, and the suggestion that Clancy overstated her condition all sit within Lawson. The question is not whether those arguments were permitted. The question is whether making them at that volume, to this jury, about this defendant, served the Commonwealth’s interest in a conviction.

A Cruel and Tone Deaf Posture

Sympathy is not an element of any offense, and no juror is asked to weigh it. But jurors are people, they sit ten feet from the defendant for weeks, and they form a judgment about whether the account they are being given matches the person in front of them. Whether a particular jury will accept a hard argument is something a trial lawyer begins assessing during jury selection, long before the evidence closes.

Lindsay Clancy is an obviously sympathetic defendant. She lost all three of her children. She attempted to die by suicide and survived. Her mental illness was documented before the killings by the medications she had been prescribed and the treatment she had sought. She has been left paralyzed. Whatever a juror concludes about criminal responsibility, none of that is in dispute.

Against those facts, telling a jury that this woman coldly wanted her own children dead asks it to accept something that does not correspond to what it can see. The Commonwealth made that argument at the opening of the trial, before the jury had heard any evidence about her illness, and made it again at the close. In the assessment of Attorney Joe Serpa, the Commonwealth misread the courtroom it was standing in. Jurors notice cruelty, and they hold it against the party who displays it.

When the Commonwealth must disprove a mental illness defense beyond a reasonable doubt, it needs the jury to accept its account completely. An account that strikes even one juror as unfair to the defendant does not get accepted completely. It invites that juror to hold out, which is what appears to have happened here.

The Suicide Attempt

The most costly decision was the treatment of the suicide attempt. The Commonwealth called witnesses who testified that her injuries were consistent with an insincere attempt to die by suicide, and argued that Clancy killed her children because they were the reason she was still alive. Reddington answered that she had made a very significant suicide effort, and told the jury that the Commonwealth had taken the soul out of his client.

That testimony is the clearest instance of the same error. A woman who cut her own neck, cut her wrists, and then went out a second-story window did not make an insincere attempt to die by suicide. Asking twelve jurors to find otherwise requires them to disbelieve the one piece of evidence that is visible from the jury box, because the wheelchair was in front of them every day of the trial.

A jury that concludes the Commonwealth is being unfair about one thing will wonder what else the Commonwealth is being unfair about. The doubt does not stay confined to the point that produced it.

What a More Measured Prosecution Looks Like

The Commonwealth could have conceded everything that was not in dispute. It could have acknowledged the severity of the illness, accepted the suicide attempt as real, and expressed regret for what happened to this family. It could then have argued the one issue that decides the case: that even a genuinely and severely ill person may retain substantial capacity to appreciate wrongfulness, and that the evidence of planning showed she retained it here.

That version of the case gives up nothing the Commonwealth needed. It concedes facts the jury was going to accept anyway, and it spends the credibility saved on the single contested question. A prosecutor who is visibly fair about the parts that hurt is far more persuasive on the part that matters, and a closing argument built that way is harder for a defense lawyer to answer. Attorney Serpa believes a prosecution presented that way would have had a better chance of the verdict the Commonwealth wanted.

Where the Case Stands

The jury remains deadlocked after seven days. The foreperson reported a dispute about one juror, and after an in camera hearing on September 4 the judge neither excused nor disqualified that juror. Those developments are covered in the firm’s post on when Massachusetts law permits removal of a deliberating juror.

A mistrial is not an acquittal, and the Commonwealth ordinarily may retry a case that ends in a deadlocked jury. A second trial would begin again with pretrial motions and evidentiary rulings. If this case is tried again, the Commonwealth will have the same evidence, the same law, and one advantage it did not have the first time. It will know how a jury responded to the way it chose to talk about Lindsay Clancy.

This post is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It is based solely on public court proceedings, public reporting, and published decisions and does not reflect any non-public information. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. This may constitute attorney advertising.