Lindsay Clancy's Psychiatrist Cross-Examined, 14 Telemedicine Visits and Never in the Same Room, Sarah Boone's 13th Lawyer Won't File

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is daily crime and Justice from Calaroga Shark Media powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. Tuesday, August eleventh, twenty twenty six. There is a question that got asked in a Plymouth, Massachusetts courtroom yesterday morning that I have not been able to stop thinking about. A defense attorney named Kevin Reddington was standing in front of a psychiatrist named doctor Jennifer Tuffs. Doctor Tufts treated Lindsay Clancy for four months. She was the last doctor to see her before three children died, and Reddington asked her about an advertisement a professional bio posted online in which doctor Tuft's described an interest in women's mental health and paranatal psychiatry from pregnancy through two years postpartum, and then he asked her how long she had been practicing independently when that bio went up. So he asked the obvious question, You advertise expertise in postpartum care with a month of experience, isn't that negligence? She said she did not believe she had been negligent. Look, I'm gonna be honest with you.

1:14 I don't know what a jury does with that doctor Tuff's is not on trial in Plymouth. Lindsey Clancy is. The question in front of those jurors is not whether Lindsay Clancy's doctors were good enough. It's whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, when she took Cora, Dawson and Callen into the basement of their Duxbury home and strangled them with exercise bands. But you cannot separate those two questions cleanly, and the defense knows it, and yesterday the defense spent the whole morning proving it. Today, week three of the Lindsay Clancy trial, and the cross examination that packed a courtroom. Then down in Florida, a woman named Sarah Boone is serving life for a killing that was recorded on her own phone, and her appeal has been sitting in limbo for two years across thirteen different lawyers. The current one has told her in writing that he is not filing anything else.

2:09 I'm Garrett Fisher. This is daily crime and justice. Before we get to yesterday, you need Friday because the cross examination only makes sense if you understand what the state put on the record first, and before any of that, the names. Cora Clancy was five years old, Dawson Clancy was three, Callen Clancy was an infant. They were healthy kids. Their pediatrician told the jury that Callen had no health issues at all, that Dawson had a peanut allergy and Cora had asthma, and that was the extent of it. Cora's preschool teachers described her as a sweet little girl who loved her little brother and liked to play with barbies.

2:53 Dawson had started having harder drop offs at school in the fall of twenty twenty two, but nobody saw a reason for concern. Their mother has admitted that she killed them. What she has pleaded not guilty to is criminal responsibility. She faces three counts of first degree murder, and under Massachusetts law and under the law of every state in this country, she is presumed innocent until a jury says otherwise. That has not happened. Nothing you hear in the next twenty minutes changes that. On Friday, the Commonwealth called two psychiatrists. Both of them had treated Lindsay Clancy in the weeks and months before her children died. Both of them are also named defendants in the civil malpractice lawsuits that Clancy and her former husband Patrick have filed hold on to that because it matters. The first was doctor Aliah Goodhart from McLain Hospital, where Clancy admitted herself in early January of twenty twenty three for about five days. Goodheart testified that Clancy wanted to be weaned off an antipsychotic because it was interfering with her sleep, and that nobody at McLain observed signs of psychosis on cross Reddington pushed hard on what happened when Clancy walked out the door. Goodheart said the discharge was not against medical advice, that Clancy was urged to follow up with outside providers, and that she did exactly that. She made an appointment with doctor Tuffs.

4:16 Reddington also asked Goodheart a question that is going to keep coming up in this trial, whether you are supposed to prescribe an SSRII, specifically sertraline to a patient who has bipolar disorder. Goodheart's answer was that it depends on what you're seeing when you see the patient. That's a real answer, and it's also exactly what a defense attorney wants to hear, because the theory in this case is that Clancy had an underlying bipolar illness nobody caught, and that the medication she got for depression made her worse instead of better. Then the state called doctor Jennifer Tuffs. Tuffs began treating Clancy in September of twenty twenty two.

4:57 Clancy found her through an online search. She came in for anxiety about going back to work after Callen was born. That's how this started. A labor and delivery nurse at mass General for years, scared about returning to a job she was good at. What follows is four months of treatment record and the state walk the jury through all of it. September Zoloff prescribed therapy recommended a week later, she reports she hasn't taken it, but feels better anyway. October still significant symptoms. Tufts documents that she's depressed. Adavan added as needed. Later that month, a switch is proposed to boost par and hydroxyzine because those are considered safer and better tolerated. Clancy is apprehensive, but agrees November she's too afraid to start the bus par. Still on the adavan, mood documented as neutral and calm, no suicidal ideation, no psychosis.

5:52 By the end of the month. She's enrolled at a perinatal health clinic on the South Shore. She's starting prozac and she's taking adavan and benadryl to sleep. Tuffs doesn't know whether the auta antaper they discussed is actually happening. December first, she's not doing better. The taper isn't working. She's now taking medications prescribed by the other clinic, transidone. She's tried remaran and been given sarah Quell, but hasn't started it. On the remarund she reports intrusive thoughts, a feeling that she was going to die. She denies active suicidal ideation, but she says she is close to it and that she feels very hopeless. And this is the part of the Friday testimony that I want you to hear, because Tuffs wrote it in her notes as a direct quote from her patient. Clancy said, I think it's my problem.

6:38 I keep reaching out to different people. She was apologizing she was sitting in a psychiatric appointment, medicated, hopeless, describing intrusive thoughts, and she was apologizing for asking too many people for help. Tuffs suggested that one person should be managing her medications, which is the correct clinical instinct. Whether it happened is a different question Uestionin mid December, she's worse. Tuffs suggests a partial hospitalization program. On the sixteenth, Clancy reports she's very depressed during the day and has started having suicidal ideation. She goes to the emergency room at Mass General and declines impatient treatment. She tells Tough she has no plan to hurt herself, that what she has is a fear of never getting better. Lamc Tall is added. January, she goes to mclin to get off the Saraquell safely because she has become convinced the Saraquell is what's making her worse. She comes out on trazodone, adavan, and melatonin.

7:35 No suicidal thoughts, no homicidal thoughts, no psychosis, but she says she feels numb and Tufft's testified that concerned her. She was still very depressed. The plan was to raise the trazodone and watch. January sixteenth, Clancy tells her doctor that bonding with her baby feels forced. January twenty third, the last appointment testified that Clancy's speech and dress and behavior were all appropriate. No deficits in her thinking, no suicidal statements, no homicidal statements, no psychosis, nothing that would have justified an emergency hospitalization under Massachusetts law. Tuffs also testified that Clancy's mood and effect had been documented the week before as depressed and flat. The next day, Cora, Dawson, and Callen were dead. That is the record the Commonwealth put in front of the jury, and you can read it two completely different ways, which is exactly why this trial is going to run another month. The prosecution reads it as here is a woman who was seen by a psychiatrist fourteen times over four months, who was asked at every single appointment whether she had thoughts of hurting herself or anyone else, who said no every single time, and who, on the day before she killed her children, presented as depressed but organized, coherent and appropriate, not psychotic depressed.

8:57 The defense reads it as here is a woman who spent four months telling everybody who would listen that she was drowning, who was cycled through ten or more medications, who was so worried about being a burden that she apologized for asking for help, and who was still not better on the day she walked out of her last appointment. Both of those readings are supported by the same set of notes. That's the whole problem. One more thing from Friday, and it's not testimony. Before the afternoon session, with the jury out of the room, Reddington told the judge he had heard a prosecutor picked up on a hot microphone the day before, saying, in reference to his client, shut her up. That was Thursday, the day the medical examiner testified about Callen's autopsy, the day a court officer wheeled Lindsey Clancy out of the room while she sobbed. The judge wanted to handle it at sidebar. Reddington did not.

9:49 He said so out loud in open court. Emotions in that room are running high, and they are running high in both directions. We'll be right back Monday morning, Plymouth Superior Court, Day ten. The line to get into that courtroom was longer than it had been on any day since Patrick Clancy testified. And Patrick Clancy is the father of the three children who died. That tells you what people understood was about to happen. Kevin Reddington got up to cross examine doctor Jennifer Tuffs, and he did not start with January twenty third, He did not start with the medications. He started with her resume. When did you become a doctor? When was your residency? When did you get board certified? Here's what came out. Tufts completed a four year residency at Boston Medical Center twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two. She was board certified in September of twenty twenty two. She started at a practice called Astor Mental Health that August. Lindsey Clancy became her patient in September.

10:59 So Reddington asked the arithmetic question, you had been practicing as a psychiatrist for a little more than a month, and Tuffs corrected him carefully. She said she had been practicing independently with her full credentials for about a month, and she added that the training before that in residency was immense. That is a fair correction. By the way, a physician finishing a four year residency is not a rookie. She had been treating patients for years. What she had not been doing for years was making the call by herself. Reddington kept going, how many patients with postpartum depression had she treated in that month and a half at Astor Before Lindsey Clancy walked in answer, maybe a couple, but many during the residency. He pressed on that number. She said about fifty to four years at Boston Medical Center, and then he brought up the advertisement. Doctor Tuffs has a professional bio describing a particular interest in women's mental health and paranatal psychiatry, pregnancy through two years postpartum. That's how patients find a specialist. That's how Lindsey Clancy found her online search matching bio appointment made so. Reddington asked whether advertising yourself is an expert in postpartum care with a month of independent experience was negligence. She said she did not believe she was negligent. Then he moved to the thing that I think may actually stick with this jury longer than the credentials. Fourteen appointments four months. Every

12:31 single one of them was telemedicine. Reddington put it to her, plainly, until you walked into this courtroom, you had never seen Lindsay Clancy in person, and doctor Tuff said, yes, that's correct. Fourteen video calls a patient with worsening depression, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, a fear of never getting better, cycling through a pharmacy's worth of medication, and the psychiatrist managing that had never been in a room with her. Now, I want to be careful here because I'm not going to stand up and tell you tell amedicine is the villain. Tell a psychiatry is how an enormous number of Americans get any mental health care at all. And for a mother with three kids under five, a video appointment may have been the only kind she could actually attend. The alternative to a video visit is very often no visit. But there is a difference between a tool and a substitute, and a jury in Plymouth is now going to sit with the image of a woman seen fourteen times by a specialist she found on a website through a screen, and never once in the same room. Reddington then asked her what therapy she actually provided, Not medication therapy her answer, and I'm quoting it because paraphrasing it would be unfair to her. I listen to her, listen to her concerns, provided hope. I'm not going to pretend that's nothing. Listening to a patient and giving her hope is a real part of the job. And any clinician who has sat with someone in the worst months of the will tell you it matters, but it is also and Reddington knew

14:04 this a sentence a jury hears as thin. He asked what treatment she gave. She described a posture. There was one more line of attack, and it's the most technical and possibly the most damaging. Reddington asked about a specific postpartum screening instrument. Tufts testified she did not administer that one, that she used a different depression screening tool instead, and that she was not aware the postpartum screening had been given to Clancy elsewhere and had come back showing severe depression. That is the whole defense case compressed into one exchange. A result existed, it showed severe depression, and the psychiatrist managing her medications did not know about it. Now Here is the part that a lot of the coverage is going to scape past, and I don't think we should.

14:51 Doctor Tufts and doctor Goodhart are not neutral witnesses. They are not disinterested experts flown in to explain a concept. They are the treating physicians. And they are both named defendants in civil malpractice lawsuits filed by Lindsay Clancy and by Patrick Clancy over these same four months of care. A criminal defense attorney in Massachusetts who is not involved in this case made the point publicly, and she's right. If you are a doctor facing a malpractice claim and you take the witness stand in the criminal trial, the version of events that helps you is the version where the patient was stable, appropriately medicated, and showing no warning signs. That's not an accusation of lying. It's a description of incentive.

15:35 Every witness in every courtroom has one. Juries are entitled to know what it is. So when you hear a treating psychiatrist testify that there were no signs of imminent danger, you are hearing testimony from a witness who is also in a different courthouse defending herself against the claim that she missed the signs. That's not a conspiracy. That's the structure, and that's why cross examination exists. Here's what I can keep coming back to. There is no version of this case where somebody comes out looking good. If the jury decides Lindsey Clancy was criminally responsible, then a mother who asked for help fourteen times over four months killed her three children anyway and will die in prison. If the jury decides she was not criminally responsible, then she goes to a state psychiatric hospital, and the finding is essentially that the system had four months and every warning it needed and let it happen. Nobody was paying attention to her.

16:31 That's the defense argument. And the uncomfortable thing about the last two weeks of testimony is how much of the state's own evidence sounds like it. Cross examination of doctor Tuff's was still underway when we recorded this. Judge William Sullivan told the jury to expect a full day. We'll have the rest of it for you more in a moment. Porgey Torres Junior died on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty inside an apartment in Orange County, Florida, in the Orlando area.

17:12 He was found dead inside a suitcase. He had been in that suitcase for hours. We have not covered this case on this show before, so let me give you the whole thing, and let me start where I always start, which is with the man who died. Jorge Torris Junior was somebody's son. He shares his father's name. He had a family that sat in an Orlando courtroom in twenty twenty four and had to listen to a recording of the last minutes of his life because his girlfriend filmed them on her phone. Sarah Boone and Jorge Torres had been together for years. On the night of February twenty third, twenty twenty, according to what Boone told investigators, they had been drinking and playing hide and seek. Torres hid in a suitcase. Boone zipped it shut. Two videos on her phone captured what happened next. Torres inside the bag in the dark, telling her he couldn't breathe begging to be let out, and Boone on the other side of the zipper laughing at him, taunting him. She told police she went upstairs to bed and fell asleep. She left him in there. In the morning, she called nine one one, and on that call she told the dispatcher he was purple.

18:20 Prosecutors also said that when he pleaded to be released, she beat the suitcase with a baseball bat while he was inside it. Boone's defense at trial was battered spouse syndrome, and it was not an argument made out of thin air. Deputies testified about prior domestic calls to that apartment. The jury saw body camera footage from a twenty eighteen incident. A neighbor testified she had seen Boone with injuries. A psychologist testified Boone met the criteria for battered spouse syndrome along with anxiety and PTSD. I want to be precise about that, because domestic violence is real, and battered spouse syndrome is a legitimate doctrine that exists. Because the law spent of very long time refusing to understand why people don't just leave. The jury heard all of it, deliberated, and convicted her of second degree murder in October of twenty twenty four. Here's why, and it isn't complicated. Self defense is about immediacy. It's about a threat you are facing right now with no way out. The man in the suitcase was zipped inside a piece of luggage, unable to move, begging whatever came before in that moment. The only person in that apartment who was in danger was him, and the jury had the tape. That's not a mistake, that's a choice. She had hours. All she had to do was pull a zipper. Days before trial, prosecutors had offered her a deal plead to manslaughter fifteen years. She turned it down. She had already gone through nine attorneys

19:50 before the trial even started. Enough of them with drawing over her conduct that a judge ruled she had forfeited her right to counsel. Her ninth lawyer, James Owens, volunteered to take the case after seeing an advertisement she had written from jail looking for a lawyer. She took the stand in her own defense. She demonstrated for the jury how she zipped the suitcase. She was asked whether she had done anything at all to help Jorge Torres get out. She said no. In December of twenty twenty four, she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. She told the court she hoped everyone could forgive her the Torres family most of all. Now here's where it gets strange. Since that sentencing, Sarah Boone has been through four more attorneys.

20:34 Number ten was appointed right after sentencing and withdrew within days without explanation. Number eleven stopped doing a pellet work. Number twelve took a new job. In November of twenty twenty five, the court appointed David Maldonado thirteen, and Maldonado has now told her in writing that he has finished court. TV obtained a handwritten letter Boone sent to the court last month, dated July twenty second, she had been told by the appellate Court not to write to it directly, to go through her lawyer. Her letter says, in her own words that she has to ignore that instruction because she does not know who else to turn to. Attached to her letter is a print out of a message from Maldonado. In it, he tells her he does not have the time or resources to schedule another call about the brief, that the brief speaks for itself, and that he made the best arguments he could. He also tells her he will not file a reply brief no matter what the state says, and he will not request oral argument because he doesn't think it's necessary and appellate Court's rarely granted on matters like this. Boone's response in her letter is that her counsel decided in advance not to respond regardless of what the state filed. That, she writes, restricts any new argument and prejudices her appeal. So let's talk about who's right on the law. Maldonado is on solid ground. A reply brief is optional, oral argument and a routine criminal appeal is rarely granted in Florida and courts decide the overwhelming majority of these cases on the briefs.

22:08 An appointed appellet attorney is not obligated to file every document a client demands, or to raise arguments he considers frivolous and court appointed a pellet council in this country, Carrie caseloads for compensation that would embarrass you if I said it out loud. Not having the time or resources on a case is a sentence born of a system that underfunds indigent defense to the point of collapse. And also, Sarah Boone is serving life without parole. She is thirteen lawyers deep. Her direct appeal, the one shot she gets at review as of right, has been pending since December of twenty twenty four. Court TV reported on August sixth that the initial brief her attorney referenced in a May letter had not appeared on the public docket at that point, Though other trial watchers have reported a brief was filed in the spring and that the state has responded, we could not independently confirm which is accurate. Read that again.

23:04 It is August of twenty twenty six, and the public record on a life sentence is unclear enough that people who follow this case for a living disagree about whether the opening brief exists. Here's what I actually think about this. I have very little sympathy for Sarah Boone. I've watched a lot of defendants blow up their own cases, and she's near the top of the list. Nine attorneys before trial, a judge finding she'd forfeited her right to counsel through her own behavior, a fifteen year offer she rejected to go for broke and lost. She is not a victim of the process. She is, in large measure the author of her own predicament, and a court said so, none of that matters. Appellet review is not a reward for being a pleasant client. It is not a privilege that gets revoked when you become annoying. It is the mechanism by which we find out whether a trial was conducted properly.

23:57 If we only bother to run that check onto fans who are polite, then we are not checking anything. We're grading personalities. And there is a real appellate issue buried in this case, whether or not Sarah Boone is capable of articulating it. Her trial expert on battered spouse syndrome was so hemmed in by objections that he could only speak in hypotheticals and was not permitted to address her case specifically. Whether that was correct is precisely the kind of question a direct appeal is built to answer. Instead, we have a woman writing Longhand letters from a prison to a court that told her to stop writing letters about a lawyer who told her to stop calling him regarding a brief nobody can locate. There's a playbook for this, and the playbook is exhaustion. You outlast the person. You wait until they run out of lawyers, or the deadlines run out on them, or they simply give up. Accountability doesn't have a legal department, but apparently the appeal doesn't either.

24:57 Orge Torres Junior is still dead. Nothing that happens at Florida's District Court of Appeal brings him back. And if his family never has to hear his name in a courtroom again, I understand why they'd want that. But a conviction that never gets reviewed isn't a stronger conviction. It's just an older one. Do better. In two cases today in Plymouth, Week three of the Lindsey Clancy trial opened with Kevin Reddington cross examining doctor Jennifer Tuffs, the psychiatrist who treated Clancy across fourteen telemedicine appointments and saw her the day before Cora, Dawson and Callen were killed. Reddington went after her experience, her advertised specialty, the fact that she never met her patient in person, and a postpartum screening result showing severe depression that she testified she did not know about. Clancy is pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. That trial continues. In Florida, Sarah Boone is serving life without parole for the second degree murder of Jorge Torres Junior, who died in a zip suitcase while she filmed him. Her appeal is in the hands of her thirteenth attorney, who has told her in writing that he will not file a reply brief or seek oral argument.

26:07 If today's episode was worth your time, send it to somebody, one person. That's how this show grows, and word of mouth beats an algorithm every time. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment. Tell me what you think about the telemedicine question, because I don't know where the line is on that one, and I'd like to hear from the nurses and clinicians who listen to this show you know things I don't tomorrow more from Plymouth and whatever else the court's hand us. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime Injustice from Calaroga Shark Media Disclaimer. This program covers active criminal proceedings and is based on court testimony, court filings, and reporting available at the time of recording.

26:50 Lindsey Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first degree murder and is presumed innocent. She has acknowledged causing her children's deaths and assert she was not criminally responsible. No jury has ruled. Testimony described here is public record and paraphrased. Cross examination of doctor Jennifer Tuffs was still in progress at the time of this recording and had not concluded. Details reported here reflect the morning session only. Outlets differ on callan Clancy's agent death, reported variously as seven months and eight months. Court TV's trial summary lists three counts of murder, while multiple other outlets specify first degree murder. Nothing said here should be taken as a finding about the quality of any physician's care. Doctor Tuffts and doctor Goodhart are named defendants, and civil malpractice suits that have not been tried, and both deny wrongdoing. In the Florida matter, Sarah Boone was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. Her appeal remains pending.

27:51 Sources conflict on the current status of her initial appellate brief. Court TV reported on August sixth that the brief reference in her attorney's correspondence had not appeared on the public dockets, while other case watchers have reported the brief was filed in spring of twenty twenty six and that the state has responded. We could not independently verify which is correct. Sources also differ on which Florida District Court of Appeal has jurisdiction over the case. Reporting on the location of the apartment varies between Orlando and Winter Park, both within Orange County. This episode discusses postpartum mental illness, suicide, and domestic violence. If you are someone you know is struggling with postpartum mood symptoms, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential and available around the clock. Call or text one eight three three TLCMAMA. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text nine to eight eight to reach the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline. If you are experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at one eight hundred and seven nine ninety seven two three three icolm