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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, this is Daily Crime and Justice.
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I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Thursday, August sixth, twenty twenty six.
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Before we get into it, a word about today's show.
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We are going to talk about the deaths of three
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young children, a suicide attempt, a strangling, and a young
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woman shot in the chest in her own living room.
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If that is not where you are today, skip this one.
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We will be here tomorrow. Three stories today, and once
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you line them up next to each other, they turn
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out to be about the same thing, what a person
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says about themselves and what the record says about them.
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In Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Lindsey Clancy murder trial reached its
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seventh day of testimony, and something happened this week that
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got almost no attention outside that courtroom. Her own attorney
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stood up on the record and told the judge the
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defense is not contested, the government's case, not the blood,
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not the DNA, not the bands, none of it. Let
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me walk you through what that actually means, because it
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changes the shape of everything that comes after it. In Orlando,
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a judge sentenced a man to death for a murder
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committed twenty four years ago. When his lawyer stood up
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and said his client wish to address the court. She
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told him no, he had already had that chance back
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in June, and he used it to tell her he
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was innocent. And in Cincinnati, a twenty three year old
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man is going to prison for killing a twenty three
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year old woman during what everybody involved keeps calling a game.
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Her parents stood up in that courtroom and forgave him.
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I want to spend some time on what that costs them.
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I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime and Justice. Clancy
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Trial Day seven. The defense stops arguing about the facts.
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We have been with this trial since jury selection, and
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if you have been riding along with us all week,
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you already know the shape of it. But let me
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set the table for anyone joining today, because the details matter.
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January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, Duxbury, Massachusetts. A house
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on a quiet street. Lindsey Clancy, a labor and delivery
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nurse thirty two years old at the time, strangled her
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three children in the basement with exercise bands. Cora was five,
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Dawson was three, Callen was eight months old. Then she
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cut her wrists in her neck and went out a
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second story window. She survived. She is paralyzed from the
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waist down. She has been held without bail at Tewkesbury
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State Hospital, where she continues to receive treatment. She is
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now thirty five, and she is charged with three counts
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of first degree murder. Here's the part people keep getting
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wrong when they talk about this case at work or
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in the comments. She is not claiming she did not
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do it. She has never claimed that. Her defense is
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that she cannot be held criminally responsible because she was
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in the grip of hostpartum psychosis when it happened in Massachusetts.
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That is the standard, not whether she did it, whether
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she was capable of knowing what she was doing and
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conforming her conduct to the law. So this trial was
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never going to be a hoo done it. And on Tuesday,
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her lawyer said so out loud. Kevin Reddington stood up
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outside the presence of the jury and told Judge William
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Sullivan that he wanted it on the record again that
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the defense has not been contesting the government's case in chief.
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Then he agreed to a stipulation covering chain of custody,
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the blood, the bodily fluids, the bands, the DNA all
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of it conceded. Reddington told the court the alternative was
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dozens of witnesses, maybe more, testifying for days about who
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handled which evidence bag and when Lindsey Clancy herself spoke,
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briefly telling the judge she agreed with her attorney's decision.
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That is not nothing a defendant in a first degree
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murder trial personally confirming on the record that she is
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not fighting the state's physical evidence. That stipulation could shorten
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this trial significantly. But it does something else, and this
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is the part I want you to hold on to.
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It strips the case down to one question and one
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question only, not what happened. Everyone in that room agrees
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on what happened. The only thing left is what was
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going on inside her head when it happened, and that
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will be decided by dueling psychiatrists weeks from now, Which
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makes what the prosecution spent Tuesday and Wednesday doing very
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interesting because they are not building towards the psychiatrists. They
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are trying to get out in front of them. Let
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me walk you through this. On Tuesday, prosecutors called eight witnesses.
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One of them was Sherry Crook, who works for the
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Massachusetts State Police. Crime lab, and she testified about the
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blood in the master bedroom. Patrick Clancy, the children's father,
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had described that room as covered in blood when he
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came home. Krook told the jury there is no evidence
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that blood ever sprayed into that room. The drips and
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the puddles she examined were more consistent, she said, with
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someone standing still and letting blood run down onto the
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floor than with someone opening an artery. Then came doctor
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Christina Carpio, a surgeon at South Shore Hospital who treated
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Clancy after the jump. She described the neck and wrist
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injuries as superficial. She said there were no deep cuts
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on the wrists. She also testified that Clancy suffered complex
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fractures in her spine. And on Wednesday, Day seven, a
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half day, the jury out by one o'clock. The state
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kept going. Aton Negri, who was working as a physician
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assistant at Brigham and Women's Hospital in twenty twenty three,
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testified that he treated Clancy in Boston. Multiple lacerations on
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the wrists, superficial lacerations on the neck. You see what
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they are building. The prosecution has argued from the beginning
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that the self inflicted injuries were not as serious as
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they could have been, and that Clancy never truly intended
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to die. Three separate witnesses in two days, from a
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crime lab and from two different hospitals, all pointing the
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same direction. Shallow, not arterial, not the wounds of a
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person committed to the outcome. I want to be careful
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here because this is exactly the kind of moment where
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a show like this one can get sloppy. That is
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the state's argument. It is not a finding, and it
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sits uncomfortably next to the undisputed fact that this woman
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went out a second story window hard enough to break
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her spine in multiple places and will never walk again.
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The jury is going to have to hold both of
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those things at the same time, and I do not
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envy them. The other thing prosecutors did this week was
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count pills. On the night of the killings, a Massachusetts
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State Police officer named Joseph Rabbit recovered four pill bottles
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from the kitchen of the Clancy home. Detectives testified they
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found a kitchen cabinet full of them. Then, on February sixth,
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twenty twenty three, about two weeks later, Patrick Clancy brought
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investigators nine more bottles in a pharmacy bag. He came
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with his lawyer thirteen bottles prescriptions for lazapam, sertralene, Busperoni, hydroxyzine,
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and clonazepam, all of them prescribed in the months before
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her children died. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague walked rabbit through them,
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one at a time. How many pills were in each
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bottle when the prescription was filled, how many were left
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when it was handed over. That is a very deliberate
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piece of theater, and both sides want it. Prosecutors have
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suggested Lindsay Clancy stop taking a number of her prescriptions,
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which would cut against the argument that the medication did
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this to her. Patrick Clancy testified earlier that her prescriptions
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were constantly being adjusted or terminated depending on how she
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reacted to them, which cuts the other way. Kevin Reddington's
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position has been consistent from opening statements. His client tried
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to get help, She went and asked for it, and
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the people she asked responded by medicating her instead of
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treating her. Then, on Wednesday, the state called a forensic
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toxicologist named Justin Brower from NMS Laboratories, and this is
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where it got quietly significant Brower testified that his lab
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was asked to test Clancy's blood samples for four specific
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prescription drugs. He gave the jury the concentrations he found.
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He described the four by what they do. One is
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normally an anti seizure medication that can also treat bipolar disorder.
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One is an antidepressant, One is an antipsychotic that can
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also be used for insomnia, and the fourth is another antidepressant.
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And then he said that only one of the four
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appeared to be, in his words, a little elevated beyond
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normal therapeutic levels. A little elevated. That is the state
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saying to this jury in the driest possible language, that
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the chemistry does not explain it, that she was not
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swimming in these drugs, that whatever happened in that basement,
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the blood work is not going to hand you. In answer,
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the defense will have something to say about that. And
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here is what I expect it to be. The question
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was never whether any single drug was above the line
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on a lab report. The question is what happens to
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a specific human being with a specific underlying illness when
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you stack five prescriptions on top of each other and
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adjust them over and over across a matter of months
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while she is not sleeping. A toxicology screen measures concentration,
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It does not measure what that combination did to a mind.
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That argument is coming, It is not here yet. This
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trial is expected to run several more weeks. One more thing,
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and I think it is the single most misunderstood fact
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about this case. If this jury acquits Lindsey Clancy, she
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does not walk out of that courthouse. She goes to
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a state psychiatric hospital, and she comes up for periodic
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review to determine whether she can ever safely live in
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the community. That is what an acquittal means here, not freedom,
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a different kind of cust for an undetermined length of time,
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decided by doctors and judges instead of a jury. And
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I keep coming back to something that has been circling
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this trial from the outside. Illinois is the only state
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in this country that has a law giving specific legal
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consideration to mothers suffering postpart of mental illness who kill
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their children, and even that one only applies at sentencing
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after a guilty finding. Massachusetts has considered something similar, so
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have other states. None of them have done it. So
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this jury is going to answer a twenty first century
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medical question using a legal framework that predates almost everything
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we know about perinatal mental illness. That is not a
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criticism of the jury, That is a description of the
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tools we handed them. Cora Clancy was five years old,
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Dawson Clancy was three. Callan Clancy was eight months old
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and had been alive for less than a year. Whatever
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this jury decides about the woman who is on trial,
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those are the three people who are not here. Kora
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would be starting fourth grade this fall. Someone has to
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say your name when we come back. A man who
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spent twenty four years avoiding accountability for a murder in
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Orlando finally ran out of road, and when he asked
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for one more chance to talk, the judge said, no.
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Let me tell you about Teresa an Green. She was
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thirty eight years old. She lived in an apartment building
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in the College Park section of Orlando, where a lot
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of her neighbors worked at the same hospital. She had
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a son, Octavius, who was thirteen at the time and
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staying with her. Memorial Day weekend two thousand and two,
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Octavia spent a night at a friend's house. When he
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came home on May twenty seventh, there were holes in
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the wall the place was a wreck. The contents of
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his mother's purse were dumped out across her bed. His
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mother did not show up for work. Police took a
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missing person report that evening. Officers in Sandford found her
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car in a Walgreens parking lot. Her body was in
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the trunk, wrapped in fabric. The medical examiner ruled it
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a homicide by manual strangulation. Someone put their hands around
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Teresa Green's throat and squeezed until she was dead, and
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then folded her into the trunk of her own car
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and left it in a parking lot like an abandoned
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shopping cart. The last person seen with her was a
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man from her building. He had been at the same
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party she had been at, hosted by neighbors. Witnesses saw
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the two of them tumble down a flight of stairs
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on the way out, get up, and go into her apartment.
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Hours later, that man came back to the neighbor's door
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and asked the husband for a favor. Drive this van
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behind me. He drove Green's car to the Walgreens, left
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it and got in the van. When the neighbor asked
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why they were leaving the car, he said he had
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done something really bad. The neighbor said he did not
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want to hear any more about it, and that was
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the end of the conversation. The man's name was Demorris
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Andy Hunter. Everybody in that building knew him by a
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different name. He had told Teresa Green a different name too,
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along with a different past. The real past was this.
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In January of nineteen eighty five, when Hunter was eighteen
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years old, he shot and killed an eighteen year old
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named Cesar Guzman in California. For that killing and for
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two other shootings, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty
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four years. He was paroled in nineteen ninety seven. Five
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years after that parole, a woman in Oakland was dead,
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and roughly two months after that, Teresa Green was dead
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in Orlando, killed by a man who was already running.
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He was picked up in Houston. California got him first,
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tried him for the Oakland killing, and sentenced him to
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one hundred and ten years. That is where he sat
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until twenty fifteen, when Florida finally extradited him to face
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charges for Teresa Green, and then Florida took another eleven
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years to get him to trial. There were delays for
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00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:02.399
the pandemic. There was a heart attack. Twenty four years
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00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:05.759
total between the day Octavius Hayes walked into that ruined
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00:14:05.799 --> 00:14:08.840
apartment and the day a jury heard the case. That
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00:14:08.960 --> 00:14:12.600
jury convicted Hunter a first degree murder and theft in April.