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Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is daily Crime Injustice
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from Calaroga Shark Media powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. Monday,
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August seventeenth, twenty twenty six. There is a note on
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Lindsey Clancy's phone. She created it on December twenty second,
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twenty twenty two. She modified it for the last time
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on January twenty third, twenty twenty three. The next day Cora,
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Dawson and Callen were dead. That note says medication stole
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her motherhood and her life. It says prescription medication stole
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her from her own body. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts put
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that into evidence. The prosecution read it to the jury
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because in their theory of this case, that note shows
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a woman who was thinking clearly, who could construct a sentence,
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who knew what she was doing and had a grievance
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about it. And Kevin Reddington will argue that same note
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is the single best piece of evidence his client has,
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that is the whole trial. Same words, two completely opposite meanings.
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Twelve people are going to have to pick one. Today
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Thursday in Plymouth, when the state finally showed the jury
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what was on Lindsay Clancy's devices, and Reddington looked at
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their star digital witness and asked, that's it. Then, something
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I've been chewing on all weekend, which is what's happening
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outside that courtroom. Because social media has decided this trial
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has a villain and it is not the woman who
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killed three children. There are TikTok montages tracking what a
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prosecutor wears in her hair. I have thoughts about that,
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and you may not like all of them. Then New
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York on Friday, Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court
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with no deal and no promises, and within minutes his
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lawyers moved to blow up the state murder case. We
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covered the plea in a bulletin today What Happens Next,
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and in Las Vegas this morning at nine thirty opening statements.
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Thirty years after Tupac Shakur was shot at a red light,
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twelve jurors and four alternates are about to hear the case.
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I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime and Justice Court.
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Clancy was five, Dawson Clancy was three, Callan Clancy was
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eight months old. Their mother strangled them with exercise bands
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in the basement of the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts,
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on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three. She admits it.
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She is pleaded not guilty to three counts of first
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degree murder on the ground that she was not criminally
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responsible and she is presumed innocent. Court was dark Friday.
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Testimony resumes this morning, so Thursday is where we pick up,
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and Thursday was the day the prosecution went digital. Massachusetts
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State Police Sergeant Kyle Pavau testified about a Microsoft surface
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pro in the Clancy house on August twenty third, twenty
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twenty two, at nine forty in the morning. That device
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was used to search for a singer named Tom Hall
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who died by suicide in twenty twenty one, and from
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there it navigated to a website about suicide methods. That's
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the evidence, planning research months in advance. And then Kevin
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Reddington stood up, that's it, that's your testimony. That's why
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you're here today. And then he did the thing that mattered.
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He had. The trooper confirmed two facts to the jury. One,
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the surface pro belonged to Patrick Clancy, the husband. Two,
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Lindsey Clancy wasn't home. She was at a doctor's appointment
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for Dawson when that search happened. Look, I'm gonna be
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honest with you. If you are the Commonwealth and you
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are building a premeditation case and your digital evidence expert
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has to sit there and agree that the search was
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on somebody else's computer while your defendant was at a
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pediatrician's office, that is a bad afternoon. Then came Trooper
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Timothy Chiappini, who analyzed the extraction from Lindsay Clancy's own phone,
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and this is stronger. Three days before the killings, she
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searched can you Treat a sociopath? And they read her journal.
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The first entry was created October twenty fifth, twenty twenty two,
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modified November three. In it, she writes that she's sad
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and depressed, that she stopped breastfeeding and doesn't feel as
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connected to Callen. That she thinks she resents her other
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children because they prevent her from treating the baby the
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way she treated her first, and that she knows that
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isn't fair to them. She writes that she wants to
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feel love and connection with all of her kids. She
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writes about an internal conflict because her whole life she
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wanted a lot of children. In another version read to
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the jury, she writes that she's struggling because she wanted
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to parent each of her kids the way she parented
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her first, and since she can't, that's depressing, and she
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calls it the root cause of all their problems, and
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then she writes that she's going to try her best today.
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The second note is the one from December twenty second,
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modified January twenty third. Medication stole my motherhood and my life.
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Prescription medication stole me from my own body. Then the
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state put up an Apple map search, plotting distance and
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travel time from the Clancy house to the restaurant and
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the CBS where she sent Patrick that night their argument.
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She measured how long she had that's goal directed thinking,
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that's intent. That is a real piece of evidence, and
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I'm not going to wave it away. Timing how long
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your husband will be gone is not something a person
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does by accident, and the sociopath search is worse because
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of what it implies about self awareness. Three days out,
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she is asking whether a condition characterized by an absence
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of conscience can be treated. The state will say that's
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a woman who knew something was wrong with her and
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was researching it clinically. The defense will say it's a
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woman terrified of what was happening inside her own head,
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googling at two in the morning, the same way she
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googled hallucinations five days later, and intrusive thoughts the day
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after that. I don't know which of those it is.
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Neither do you. That's the point of a trial. But
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watch what Reddington did with the rest of that phone.
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He walked the trooper through January twenty fourth, the day
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of and he had him confirmed. There was a photograph
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on that phone that Lindsey Clancy took of Cora and
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Dawson with a snowman they'd built, and Patrick's replied to it,
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you're a good mama. That's on the same device same day.
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Then Reddington went after what the prosecution had left out.
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Because the state showed the jury a suicide methods website
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and a sociopath search, Reddington showed them the searches the
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state skipped. On January nineteenth, she searched hallucinations. On January twentieth,
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she searched intrusive and in between the medication searches and
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the psychiatric symptom searches, there she is looking up pre
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made goodie bags. On New Year's Eve best kids movies.
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That's the picture the defense wants that jury holding a
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woman googling her own symptoms in the same week she's
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googling party favors for her children. The prosecution says, the
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journal proves she was lucid and resentful. The defense says,
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the journal proves she was drowning and knew it and
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wrote it down and asked for help. Anyway, both sides
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are reading from the same page. And here's what strikes
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me about those entries, having now read them a few times.
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They are not the writing of somebody building an alibi.
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Nobody constructs a fake insanity defense by writing that they
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resent their own children and then adding that they know
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that isn't fair to them. That's not a person performing.
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That's a person taking inventory of herself and not liking
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what she finds. It's also, and this cuts the other way,
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evidence of a woman who was capable of sustained, organized,
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self aware thought in the weeks before she killed three people.
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Prosecutors will hammer that psychosis, they will argue, does not
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write coherent paragraphs about breastfeeding and internal conflict. The defense
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answer to that is going to come from experts, and
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it's going to be that postpartum psychosis is not a
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permanent fog. It waxes, it waves. A person can be
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organized on a Tuesday and gone on a Thursday. Whether
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this jury buys that is the entire case. One more
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thing from earlier in the week, because it belongs with this.
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When Reddington caught a discrepancy in doctor Jennifer Tuff's own
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notes in the medical record and pressed her on it,
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Tuffs got frustrated and told him she knows what she meant.
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Judge Sullivan had already had to remind her to let
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him finish his questions before she answered, I know what
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I meant. That's a psychiatrist defending her own documentation in
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a murder trial, where the documentation is the evidence. The
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Commonwealth is close to resting. Testimony resumes this morning, and
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then finally we hear from the defense. We'll be right
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back now. The thing I've been chewing on. Something is
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happening around this trial that has not happened in any
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comparable case. I can remember. When Susan Smith drowned her sons,
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the public wanted her destroyed. When Casey Anthony was tried,
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the public wanted her destroyed. Those two women became shorthand
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for monstrousness in this country for thirty years. Lindsey Clancy
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has admitted to killing three children, and the Internet has
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largely lined up behind her, and not just behind her
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against the prosecutors. There's a TikTok user calling the prosecutors
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in this case not just bad at their jobs, but
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disgusting human beings. A forensic scientist with an audience saying
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the state is going to lose this jury. A woman
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testified for the defense request who called the prosecution of
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this case an abomination. Court TV took this to two
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defense attorneys, and I want to give you both because
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they don't agree. Mark Iglarsh, a Florida defense lawyer and
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former prosecutor, said the thing, the thing that surprised him
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is how fast people went from thinking there might be
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a legitimate mental health explanation to deciding Lindsey Clancy is
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innocent and the prosecution is the villain. He said, those
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are very different conclusions. He also said he thinks the
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prosecutors are doing an effective job, that they're prepared and
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they know their evidence. David Bruno, a New Jersey defense
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attorney and former prosecutor, disagreed. On the tactics. He thinks
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calling the medical examiner was a mistake, given that it
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left Clancy sobbing and forced the state to clean up
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its own witness. He also thinks the state got ahead
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of its skis by taking on the sanity question before
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the defense is even opened, and in doing so handed
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Reddington the chance to start laying bricks early. Both of
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them agree on the endgame, though this case comes down
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to the experts defense, case in chief prosecution rebuttal, whoever
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the jury finds more credible. Now here's the part I
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need to talk about, because it is the ugliest piece
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of this and nobody is saying it plainly. Assistant District
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Attorney Shane and Buckingham has worn a bow in her
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hair every day of this trial. In her opening statement,
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she told the jury about Cora, that Cora had just
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turned five, that she was sweet and silly and smart,
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that she loved sparkly dresses and wearing bows in her hair.
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And every day since Buckingham has worn one. There are
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people online making montage videos cataloging each bow. There are
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people calling it a cheap gimmick, a manipulation of the jury,
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torture of the defendant the lawyer's court TV asked had
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real concerns about it, and they're not frivolous ones. Bruno
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called it improper and said an appellate court could have
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a problem with it if that's why she's wearing them,
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because it injects the prosecutor's emotions into the case. Egglarsh
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called it a courtroom optics problem, said the prosecutor's job
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is to present evidence rather than visually reinforce it, and
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made the fair point that if a defense lawyer wore
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a symbol representing postpartum psychosis, the state would call it
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emotional manipulation. Those are legitimate professional criticisms, and I'm not
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dismissing them. If it's a jury tactic, it's a bad
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one and it could cost the commonwealth on appeal. But
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I want you to sit with what we're actually looking at.
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In a triple child homicide, the thing generating the most
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online outrage is that a prosecutor is wearing a hair
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ribbon for a five year old girl who was strangled
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in a basement. Cora Clancy loved bows in her hair.
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That is a real fact about a real child who existed.
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She was five. She liked sparkly dresses. Her preschool teacher
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said she was sweet and loved her little brother and
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played with barbies. And in three weeks of testimony about
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medications and screening scales and telehealth appointments and Edinburgh scores,
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that beow may be the only thing in that courtroom
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that has consistently reminded anybody that Cora was a person.
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I've spent three weeks on this show tellelling you the
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system failed Lindsey Clancy, because I believe the evidence shows
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that turned away from women and infants a twenty three
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out of thirty. Her prescriber never saw four providers, none
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of them talking. All of that is real, and I'm
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not walking any of it back. But there are three
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children in this case, and lately they have become a detail.
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The story has become a woman and a healthcare system
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and a prosecutor's accessories. Cora, Dawson and Callen have almost
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disappeared from it. Somebody has to say their names. If
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it takes a ribbon, then let her wear the ribbon.
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And one more thing about the online jury. Those people
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are not in that courtroom. They have not sat through
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fourteen days of testimony. They are watching clips edited to
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a point chosen because they provoke. Meanwhile, twelve actual jurors
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are sitting there with no phones, hearing all of it
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in order, including the parts that don't make anybody's feed. Whatever,
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those twelve decide they will know things the internet does not,
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and I'll say the uncomfortable part. The reason this case
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is broken differently than Susan Smith or Casey Anthony is
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not only that we understand postpartum illness better now, though
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we do. It's also that Lindsey Clancy is sympathetic in
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ways those women were not permitted to be. She was
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a labor and delivery nurse. She has a paper trail
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of asking for help. She is in a wheelchair in
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that courtroom. All of that is real, and none of
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it is evidence of what was in her mind on
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January twenty fourth. A jury is supposed to decide criminal
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responsibility on the evidence, not on how much a defendant
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deserves our compassion. Those can point the same direction, they