Aug. 27, 2026
Killer Mom Trial: Closing Arguments Set To Begin; Judge Rules Jurors Can Consider Manslaughter Vs Murder
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RSS Feed After listening to 85 witnesses over the past five weeks, it appears Lindsay Clancy’s fate will be in the hands of the jury by mid-day, in a trial that has captivated the country. This morning, we will hear closing arguments from both the defense and prosecution and then jurors will be able to choose one of five verdicts, including manslaughter. Testimony concluded on Wednesday with an FBI forensic psychiatrist who testified Clancy is criminally responsible for the strangling deaths of her three young children.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Thursday, August 27th, and the jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial doesn't have the case just yet, but they will soon. But even so, Lindsay Clancy has already scored a pretty major victory. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. This is huge. This is huge, what the jury is now going to be able to consider. when they go into that jury room. This was a major victory for her.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Uh, that is true because there are actually going to be five total options for jurors. And the big addition was manslaughter. And to be able to consider that as one of the verdicts is significant because now it's not all or nothing because obviously first degree murder is on the, uh, on the table. That is premeditated or extreme atrocity or cruelty. And that is what prosecutors are trying and have been trying to present to the jury.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: But Robes, they had the option. Everything we've heard, we know this woman was ill and had problems. You're giving this jury that has been emotional for five weeks. That's been emotional testimony. Robes have been in tears. They had to take breaks because people were so emotional. So now you're telling that group, you know what? You don't have to send her to prison for the rest of her life. It's almost Robes. It's given them a way out if they're torn in some way. Robes, how could this not be the option?
00:01:31
Speaker 2: I mean, it's got to be considered. Look, and the defense is hoping that they're going to go with the other extreme, which is not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility or insanity or postpartum psychosis. whatever you want to put on the end of it. That's what they want. But certainly having this manslaughter option where you are acknowledging basically that, yes, she is suffering from mental illness and that is a part of it. And that's why it absolves her of some of the responsibility, but it doesn't absolve her of all the criminal responsibility.
00:02:05
Speaker 1: And the prosecutors pushed back on this. They didn't want this included necessarily. I guess you can understand why, but it's... I didn't think about it ahead of time, or we didn't talk about it that much ahead of time. This is so tough on these jurors. They had the option of either putting this woman in prison for the rest of her life, or making the determination that she's ill. If you're not convinced one way or another, Robes, and it feels like that's fair, that you're not convinced that either one is the right thing to do.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: It is fair, because think about it. They listened to 85 witnesses over five weeks ago. That is a tremendous amount of testimony. And as you pointed out, a lot of it was very emotional. We heard from Patrick Clancy, her husband.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: That was five weeks ago.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: He was the first witness. Damn, girl. He was.
00:02:54
Speaker 2: And then you've got her mother, her sister, her mother-in-law, her coworkers, her friends, Patrick's friends. And then you have all the psychologists and psychiatrists. And even though that was technical, scientific... research-based it was still emotional because you're still talking about strangling three young children i don't think there was a boring witness in the sense that yes in law enforcement too we heard from them but everything that every witness had to add packed a punch and there was an emotional element to.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: All of it do i have right does this seem do i have right all the experts were at the end Do we have one early on? It seems like the last week has been just back to back.
00:03:39
Speaker 2: To back to back. I think it's hard to remember. I don't know what they, you know what they had? They had doctors. They had her doctors in there early on. Dr. Jennifer Tufts, we heard from the clinicians.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: She was early?
00:03:50
Speaker 2: Tufts was earlier? Yes, fairly early. on from the prosecution because they were, yes, establishing the doctors who directly treated her were at the beginning. And then the forensic psychiatrists and psychologists who study these cases who have decades of experience then analyzed her particular case in its totality.
00:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, their decades of experience really came through in this testimony. It is pretty striking that in a case this big, The best experts you can find to say she was sane or insane have virtually zero experience treating a woman with postpartum psychosis. It's remarkable. People who have been in the game for 40, 50 years say, yeah, I treated maybe two ladies 30 years ago.
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Right. It was all single digits. No one that I can remember or recall admitted to, testified to, could prove that they treated women with postpartum psychosis... More than they could count on one hand. I mean, that is just the truth. And that's striking. And as a juror, you have to take that into account because, yes, they could be extremely well-versed and experienced and have all the academic accolades you could want. But if they haven't individually treated a woman with this disorder, how could they possibly be an expert on it?
00:05:16
Speaker 1: That's crazy. You have to dig into the resumes because they look great. These resumes, all this stuff they've done, and the prosecution's asking the questions. This person seems like they are just the best in the field. And then Reddington gets up there and starts going through that same resume. And then you realize this person has no expertise. Some of them didn't even have expertise in treating women. They didn't even have a long history of treating women who had had babies.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Certainly women who've been pregnant.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: That's kind of discrediting to a certain degree. That would make you stop as a juror. I don't know what to do with this field.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: It makes me stop as a woman, to be honest. And we've complained about this collectively as a group that our health concerns, I mean, even look at breast cancer, all sorts of medical issues that involve women have the least amount of of research, the least amount of funding. And it's just been historically that way. And we've had to push and argue and yell and scream to get attention. Now add mental health to that and women, and then add pregnancy to that with all the hormones that any woman out there who's listening, who's been pregnant, that is real and it can be overwhelming. And yes, we're seeing here in this trial, at least according to the defense, it can be deadly.
00:06:32
Speaker 1: That point you just made was made best for me, at least Robes, Was it Avram Mack when Reddington had one of the prosecution psychiatrists up there? And he had this 1,000-plus page Bible of mental disorders that psychiatrists use. And he asked the guy, pointed, show me where it has anything to do with postpartum depression or psychosis. It was like a paragraph or two. And it didn't even specifically. Robes, that was striking of how little has been paid attention to this.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: And I think that's why you saw those hundreds of women dressed in pink outside of the Lindsay Clancy murder trial saying, listen to us, believe us, hear us, study us, do something about this because we have been forgotten, ignored, and maybe even brushed aside. And this case is putting that issue on the map. And proves the fact that it has not been given the attention it deserves. And yes, I know we're specifically talking about postpartum psychosis, but this also involves, and I think a lot of women who have spoken up and reacted to this case have also talked about postpartum depression and just how serious that is and how deadly that can be.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: And Rose, we were talking about this 20 years ago with Andrew Yates, this exact same thing. And we're going to get into, and we'll have an episode up, uh, It is striking the similarities between the Clancy case and the Andrea Yates case out of Texas. But Robes, you've been talking about, we have been talking about emotion. How this jury, what was the emotion like? As I've been going back and looking at that case, the jurors came out and they talked to the press. Baby, it was about emotion. It was emotional for them. How could it not be? And one of the last things they said, Robes, y'all need to do something to make sure this doesn't happen again. Wow.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: And here we are now, 20 years later.
00:08:23
Speaker 1: Almost a direct quote. They flat out were hooting and hollering, industry, everybody, do something. Do not have another woman in this position.
00:08:31
Speaker 2: And my God, I just got chills to hear you say that. And look, we ended testimony yesterday on Wednesday with an FBI forensic psychiatrist. Again, a phenomenal, impressive resume. He is with the most prestigious unit within the FBI. He is a doctor. He's a forensic psychiatrist, Gregory Satoff. And yes, gray hair. He looked the part. He has decades of experience. He treats prisoners. And to your point, when Reddington asked him how many women he has treated with postpartum psychosis, he said two or three women. And then he went over the cases, one in the 1980s and one in the 1990s.
00:09:12
Speaker 1: One was both teens, were they?
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Very, very young women.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: 18 and I believe early 20s. And he talked about how they were treated and then ultimately recovered. But this was striking after you heard him testify for the prosecution.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Their expert hasn't treated a woman like this in 40 plus years. And he's the expert. This is the best you got, huh?
00:09:37
Speaker 2: And he told jurors that he believed, and he was very, very descriptive, but also he kept things simple. And in layman's terms, he said it exactly the way jurors probably needed to hear it to fully understand it. He said, it is possible and common, common for people to engage in behaviors to avoid to do what a command hallucination is saying. So he's saying someone experiencing psychosis can still identify right and wrong. And he said, Lindsay Clancy had the capacity to appreciate right from wrong. He was saying even if she were, and he didn't believe she was, in a state of psychosis, that doesn't absolve her from knowing right from wrong. I don't remember anyone testifying to that up until him.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so my next question, or I would have raised my hands, like when would you say someone is not criminally responsible? He just said she's messed up in every way that they're saying she's messed up. However, I'm concluding that that doesn't mean she's not criminally responsible. I need somebody to explain to me, what's the line?
00:10:42
Speaker 2: I don't know what the line is, but he did get specific about saying that this voice, this command hallucination that she says she heard, she was still able to personally, because he said the voice didn't give her instructions. right? The voice just said, you know, kill the children while you still can. Now is your chance. Now is your last chance. He said, she's the one who made the specific decisions on how to kill her children, what to use to kill her children, where to kill her children, and then how to kill herself. And then in the middle of all of this, return a phone call to her husband, Patrick. And this all happened within like 18 minutes. And he just felt like all of those things, when you lay it out like that, proves that she was able to make decisions, and she was making them on her own beyond this voice.
00:11:34
Speaker 1: So then my next question is, is she only or can she only not be criminally responsible if the voice was very specific in its instructions? Is that what that means?
00:11:46
Speaker 2: It sounds like that's what he's saying, that if the voice was saying, now grab the exercise band. I don't know how these things work, but that was what he seemed to imply, that because the voice was just giving her a general instruction instruction or command. And she made all of these very specific choices in a very small window of time that she planned out ahead of time. He felt like that proved that she was in command of her body and making choices, knowing full well that what she was doing was illegal.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: This is, it's striking because I've been diving into the Andrea case. She had an hour window. She waited for her husband to leave. And someone else was coming to the house in an hour. She had an hour to do everything she needed. She was putting things in place. She was ruled insane. The similarities are so striking, baby. But yes, that thing now, if these jurors go back and read up on the Andrea Yates case.
00:12:44
Speaker 2: I don't know if they'd be allowed to.
00:12:45
Speaker 1: I don't think they're allowed to.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: I don't think they would because this would have to be, yes.
00:12:48
Speaker 1: This would impact them. Seeing what that, those cases are so similar. And we see the result of what happened with Yates. Oh my goodness, yes.
00:12:56
Speaker 2: You know, and it's just so interesting because upon cross-examination, Kevin Reddington was... obviously pushing the you've only treated two or three patients. He also has done this with all of the witnesses for the prosecution, having them lay out how they're paid, how they're compensated by the government to testify for the prosecution, thereby whittling away at least their impartiality. And then really driving home this point, and I do think this for a juror from an emotional standpoint and just even a logical one. This is a woman who called a suicide hotline twice, who repeatedly begged and asked for help, and she wasn't given help because she didn't have a plan to commit suicide. There are these specific things that if you had said this, then we would have given you help. Or if you had come to us a little earlier, we would have been able to designate you postpartum.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Have you heard this before? I've never in my life heard that you're limited in how much help You might get from a suicide hotline or a counselor. It's a big deal. You need to have a plan before they almost take you completely seriously.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to tell them how you think you're going to kill yourself and when. I didn't know that that was part of their, I guess, their mode of operation when they basically decide what the action needs to be. or not be in a certain case. But obviously the biggest moment for him at the end was that when Reddington read the prosecution's opening statement, he got the witness, Dr. Satov, to say, I think that statement you read really minimizes what she was going through. So it did show that the prosecution is overreaching, or at least it did. That is what I believe jurors would take away from that last moment of testimony.
00:14:44
Speaker 1: So that last moment, we might have said that thing after the prosecution opening statement. We kept saying, they don't seem to give any room for her being ill. Like, it's fine if you don't think she was responsible, but their entire time is setting up and building a narrative that flies in the face of the narrative of everybody knew this woman. They never just acknowledged that, you know what? Yeah, she was sick. Yeah, she had struggles. Yeah, we get it. The whole time, it was that cold, dismissive, yeah, she was calculated, she was this And their own guy, the last thing he says on the cross-examination is, yeah, prosecution's probably overreaching on that a little bit.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: And that was huge because this was a prosecution witness, yes, who was paid, who had said everything he had just said and then acknowledged, yeah, the prosecution. might be overreaching. So when we come back, we're going to talk about why this manslaughter option for the jury is such a big deal, what type of penalty she could be facing if they come back with any of five different verdicts, and what we're expecting this morning in Closing Arguments. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. What a big day in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial because, yes, we're going to hear first from the attorneys. They will give their closing arguments. The judge is going to give them each an hour, but we already heard from Kevin Reddington, I can get this done quickly. I only need 30 minutes. The prosecution said they would need an hour, so let's assume 90 minutes.
00:16:29
Speaker 1: What do you make of that? It only needs 30.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised by that.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: Eh, I can wrap this up. That means he's going to be effective. He's not going to wax poetic. He's not going to go on and on. He's going to be specific. Remember this. Think about this.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: And the jury might appreciate that. And actually, I think when you say less, when they've been, look, they have had to absorb, like I said, at the top of this, 85 witnesses, five weeks of testimony. That is a lot. So maybe even keeping it succinct and to the point with maximum effect, that will actually stay with the jurors than going on this long, meandering, hour-long.
00:17:05
Speaker 1: I get that.
00:17:05
Speaker 2: That's an effective strategy.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Defense goes first, right?
00:17:08
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, but I do believe, yes, the defense goes first. The prosecution gets to have the last word. But the jurors are going to now have five options. First-degree murder. which is premeditated or extreme atrocity or cruelty. And that would mean a mandatory life in prison sentence without the possibility of parole. They could also find her guilty of second degree murder, which is extreme recklessness without premeditation. That in the state of Massachusetts is also a mandatory life in prison sentence, but you would be eligible for parole within 15 to 25 years. They now have this manslaughter verdict that they can come to, which is suffering from mental illness, but not enough to absolve her of responsibility, that could be up to 20 years in state prison. Every state's different. That's Massachusetts. So it could be the minimum could be whatever the judge chooses, but up to 20 years.
00:18:03
Speaker 1: So she could go to prison. She would have to still get mental health treatment, correct? But if they just find her guilty... I mean, she's not going to a state institution.
00:18:11
Speaker 2: She's going to prison with manslaughter, I believe. That's what the state of Massachusetts, I looked it up.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: But then what, right? Doesn't she need continued mental health treatment? Is that correct?
00:18:24
Speaker 2: I would imagine so, yes. And then the fourth one, which is what the defense is asking for, not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, backslash insanity. And that would mean no prison time whatsoever for, but she could be committed to a psychiatric facility. So that's what that charge.
00:18:42
Speaker 1: And then it would be indefinite, right?
00:18:43
Speaker 2: It would be indefinite. And I think based on her doctor's recommendations and then they could, it doesn't seem likely or even possible. They could just flat out, give her a not guilty verdict, a complete acquittal. But even the, even the defense itself is acknowledging she killed her kids. So, yes, it's an option, but highly, almost impossible. It's not going to happen. But that would mean she could literally roll out of there. Yeah, without any sort of.
00:19:11
Speaker 1: We don't mean to be cute. She's literally in a wheelchair. So she would be. But no, we don't. Nobody is expecting that. And how long, babe? I mean, the jury is going to have this trial today, Thursday, got all day tomorrow. They'll have maybe half a day today. Is he going to tell them? You know what? Judges give them the option sometimes. Do you want to go home early? You want to stay a little late?
00:19:31
Speaker 2: Oh, they're going to stay and deliberate. There's no way they want to push this up on a Friday. I mean, if they can at least get started. Wouldn't you also, as a juror, just be desperate to know what your fellow jurors are thinking? You've been sitting there the whole time. You're not allowed to speak about the case. You're not allowed to indicate how you feel. And now for the first time, you get to see if... what you're thinking and what you're feeling aligns in any way with any of the other jurors.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: You know, sequester me, baby. We're going to sit here and we're going to work this out through the night. We ain't going home. Let's talk this through. Really, let's get our work done.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: I would not want to be on a jury with you. First of all, you'd be the foreman. And then, yeah, you would, what.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: Are you talking about? I'll probably be elected.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: You're a natural born leader, but then to someone to persuade you to think other than what you already think, I, that would be an impossible task.
00:20:22
Speaker 1: I listen, I, you know, I listen, I'm open to other people's ideas. I'm open to being convinced of things. I have no problem. I am. And I'm not, I feel a certain way. I am very open. I want to hear other people make arguments. that make me go, oh, I didn't consider that. Oh, that makes sense. Just like the psychiatrist, the last witness. Oh, I didn't think about it that way, the way he just put it. That's okay. That is okay. But man, what is this jury going to do?
00:20:49
Speaker 2: This will be fascinating.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: 9 a.m., they rarely start on time. But let's see, it goes exactly the way it's supposed to go. Closings should be done by 11. Yes. They've been taking morning breaks at 11 and coming back at 11.30-ish. When do they start with the jury instructions? He has to read every word, so he could be done 30 minutes or an hour. Yes, they will be deliberating immediately after the lunch recess, right?
00:21:11
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is fair to say. And we will be watching. And again, please stay tuned. I know TJ just mentioned the Andrea Yates comparison. After this episode, we're going to post an unbelievable comparison between these two cases. You were going crazy putting it together this morning, just saying this is actually so much more than I ever realized.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: The similarities are there in the cases, but Robes, they're also some of the same experts, right? testifying in both of these cases. And one connection to this Clancy case is the reason why Andrea Yates ended up not guilty by reason of insanity. It is a wild, wild connection. And yes, Robes, I was falling out of the chair in awe. But Robes, I don't know if you noticed, I had a moment over here. I had to get up just reading back about this case, Jesus Christ, with those five kids. It's hard stuff to be reminded of and the terror that those kids experience just reading through some of that stuff. We'll spare you some of that.
00:22:16
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's important, and this is in the spotlight now for a lot of women. It's long overdue, and so we will continue to follow this case, as we know so many of you are as well. We always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Thursday, August 27th, and the jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial doesn't have the case just yet, but they will soon. But even so, Lindsay Clancy has already scored a pretty major victory. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. This is huge. This is huge, what the jury is now going to be able to consider. when they go into that jury room. This was a major victory for her.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Uh, that is true because there are actually going to be five total options for jurors. And the big addition was manslaughter. And to be able to consider that as one of the verdicts is significant because now it's not all or nothing because obviously first degree murder is on the, uh, on the table. That is premeditated or extreme atrocity or cruelty. And that is what prosecutors are trying and have been trying to present to the jury.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: But Robes, they had the option. Everything we've heard, we know this woman was ill and had problems. You're giving this jury that has been emotional for five weeks. That's been emotional testimony. Robes have been in tears. They had to take breaks because people were so emotional. So now you're telling that group, you know what? You don't have to send her to prison for the rest of her life. It's almost Robes. It's given them a way out if they're torn in some way. Robes, how could this not be the option?
00:01:31
Speaker 2: I mean, it's got to be considered. Look, and the defense is hoping that they're going to go with the other extreme, which is not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility or insanity or postpartum psychosis. whatever you want to put on the end of it. That's what they want. But certainly having this manslaughter option where you are acknowledging basically that, yes, she is suffering from mental illness and that is a part of it. And that's why it absolves her of some of the responsibility, but it doesn't absolve her of all the criminal responsibility.
00:02:05
Speaker 1: And the prosecutors pushed back on this. They didn't want this included necessarily. I guess you can understand why, but it's... I didn't think about it ahead of time, or we didn't talk about it that much ahead of time. This is so tough on these jurors. They had the option of either putting this woman in prison for the rest of her life, or making the determination that she's ill. If you're not convinced one way or another, Robes, and it feels like that's fair, that you're not convinced that either one is the right thing to do.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: It is fair, because think about it. They listened to 85 witnesses over five weeks ago. That is a tremendous amount of testimony. And as you pointed out, a lot of it was very emotional. We heard from Patrick Clancy, her husband.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: That was five weeks ago.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: He was the first witness. Damn, girl. He was.
00:02:54
Speaker 2: And then you've got her mother, her sister, her mother-in-law, her coworkers, her friends, Patrick's friends. And then you have all the psychologists and psychiatrists. And even though that was technical, scientific... research-based it was still emotional because you're still talking about strangling three young children i don't think there was a boring witness in the sense that yes in law enforcement too we heard from them but everything that every witness had to add packed a punch and there was an emotional element to.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: All of it do i have right does this seem do i have right all the experts were at the end Do we have one early on? It seems like the last week has been just back to back.
00:03:39
Speaker 2: To back to back. I think it's hard to remember. I don't know what they, you know what they had? They had doctors. They had her doctors in there early on. Dr. Jennifer Tufts, we heard from the clinicians.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: She was early?
00:03:50
Speaker 2: Tufts was earlier? Yes, fairly early. on from the prosecution because they were, yes, establishing the doctors who directly treated her were at the beginning. And then the forensic psychiatrists and psychologists who study these cases who have decades of experience then analyzed her particular case in its totality.
00:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, their decades of experience really came through in this testimony. It is pretty striking that in a case this big, The best experts you can find to say she was sane or insane have virtually zero experience treating a woman with postpartum psychosis. It's remarkable. People who have been in the game for 40, 50 years say, yeah, I treated maybe two ladies 30 years ago.
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Right. It was all single digits. No one that I can remember or recall admitted to, testified to, could prove that they treated women with postpartum psychosis... More than they could count on one hand. I mean, that is just the truth. And that's striking. And as a juror, you have to take that into account because, yes, they could be extremely well-versed and experienced and have all the academic accolades you could want. But if they haven't individually treated a woman with this disorder, how could they possibly be an expert on it?
00:05:16
Speaker 1: That's crazy. You have to dig into the resumes because they look great. These resumes, all this stuff they've done, and the prosecution's asking the questions. This person seems like they are just the best in the field. And then Reddington gets up there and starts going through that same resume. And then you realize this person has no expertise. Some of them didn't even have expertise in treating women. They didn't even have a long history of treating women who had had babies.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Certainly women who've been pregnant.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: That's kind of discrediting to a certain degree. That would make you stop as a juror. I don't know what to do with this field.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: It makes me stop as a woman, to be honest. And we've complained about this collectively as a group that our health concerns, I mean, even look at breast cancer, all sorts of medical issues that involve women have the least amount of of research, the least amount of funding. And it's just been historically that way. And we've had to push and argue and yell and scream to get attention. Now add mental health to that and women, and then add pregnancy to that with all the hormones that any woman out there who's listening, who's been pregnant, that is real and it can be overwhelming. And yes, we're seeing here in this trial, at least according to the defense, it can be deadly.
00:06:32
Speaker 1: That point you just made was made best for me, at least Robes, Was it Avram Mack when Reddington had one of the prosecution psychiatrists up there? And he had this 1,000-plus page Bible of mental disorders that psychiatrists use. And he asked the guy, pointed, show me where it has anything to do with postpartum depression or psychosis. It was like a paragraph or two. And it didn't even specifically. Robes, that was striking of how little has been paid attention to this.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: And I think that's why you saw those hundreds of women dressed in pink outside of the Lindsay Clancy murder trial saying, listen to us, believe us, hear us, study us, do something about this because we have been forgotten, ignored, and maybe even brushed aside. And this case is putting that issue on the map. And proves the fact that it has not been given the attention it deserves. And yes, I know we're specifically talking about postpartum psychosis, but this also involves, and I think a lot of women who have spoken up and reacted to this case have also talked about postpartum depression and just how serious that is and how deadly that can be.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: And Rose, we were talking about this 20 years ago with Andrew Yates, this exact same thing. And we're going to get into, and we'll have an episode up, uh, It is striking the similarities between the Clancy case and the Andrea Yates case out of Texas. But Robes, you've been talking about, we have been talking about emotion. How this jury, what was the emotion like? As I've been going back and looking at that case, the jurors came out and they talked to the press. Baby, it was about emotion. It was emotional for them. How could it not be? And one of the last things they said, Robes, y'all need to do something to make sure this doesn't happen again. Wow.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: And here we are now, 20 years later.
00:08:23
Speaker 1: Almost a direct quote. They flat out were hooting and hollering, industry, everybody, do something. Do not have another woman in this position.
00:08:31
Speaker 2: And my God, I just got chills to hear you say that. And look, we ended testimony yesterday on Wednesday with an FBI forensic psychiatrist. Again, a phenomenal, impressive resume. He is with the most prestigious unit within the FBI. He is a doctor. He's a forensic psychiatrist, Gregory Satoff. And yes, gray hair. He looked the part. He has decades of experience. He treats prisoners. And to your point, when Reddington asked him how many women he has treated with postpartum psychosis, he said two or three women. And then he went over the cases, one in the 1980s and one in the 1990s.
00:09:12
Speaker 1: One was both teens, were they?
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Very, very young women.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: 18 and I believe early 20s. And he talked about how they were treated and then ultimately recovered. But this was striking after you heard him testify for the prosecution.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Their expert hasn't treated a woman like this in 40 plus years. And he's the expert. This is the best you got, huh?
00:09:37
Speaker 2: And he told jurors that he believed, and he was very, very descriptive, but also he kept things simple. And in layman's terms, he said it exactly the way jurors probably needed to hear it to fully understand it. He said, it is possible and common, common for people to engage in behaviors to avoid to do what a command hallucination is saying. So he's saying someone experiencing psychosis can still identify right and wrong. And he said, Lindsay Clancy had the capacity to appreciate right from wrong. He was saying even if she were, and he didn't believe she was, in a state of psychosis, that doesn't absolve her from knowing right from wrong. I don't remember anyone testifying to that up until him.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so my next question, or I would have raised my hands, like when would you say someone is not criminally responsible? He just said she's messed up in every way that they're saying she's messed up. However, I'm concluding that that doesn't mean she's not criminally responsible. I need somebody to explain to me, what's the line?
00:10:42
Speaker 2: I don't know what the line is, but he did get specific about saying that this voice, this command hallucination that she says she heard, she was still able to personally, because he said the voice didn't give her instructions. right? The voice just said, you know, kill the children while you still can. Now is your chance. Now is your last chance. He said, she's the one who made the specific decisions on how to kill her children, what to use to kill her children, where to kill her children, and then how to kill herself. And then in the middle of all of this, return a phone call to her husband, Patrick. And this all happened within like 18 minutes. And he just felt like all of those things, when you lay it out like that, proves that she was able to make decisions, and she was making them on her own beyond this voice.
00:11:34
Speaker 1: So then my next question is, is she only or can she only not be criminally responsible if the voice was very specific in its instructions? Is that what that means?
00:11:46
Speaker 2: It sounds like that's what he's saying, that if the voice was saying, now grab the exercise band. I don't know how these things work, but that was what he seemed to imply, that because the voice was just giving her a general instruction instruction or command. And she made all of these very specific choices in a very small window of time that she planned out ahead of time. He felt like that proved that she was in command of her body and making choices, knowing full well that what she was doing was illegal.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: This is, it's striking because I've been diving into the Andrea case. She had an hour window. She waited for her husband to leave. And someone else was coming to the house in an hour. She had an hour to do everything she needed. She was putting things in place. She was ruled insane. The similarities are so striking, baby. But yes, that thing now, if these jurors go back and read up on the Andrea Yates case.
00:12:44
Speaker 2: I don't know if they'd be allowed to.
00:12:45
Speaker 1: I don't think they're allowed to.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: I don't think they would because this would have to be, yes.
00:12:48
Speaker 1: This would impact them. Seeing what that, those cases are so similar. And we see the result of what happened with Yates. Oh my goodness, yes.
00:12:56
Speaker 2: You know, and it's just so interesting because upon cross-examination, Kevin Reddington was... obviously pushing the you've only treated two or three patients. He also has done this with all of the witnesses for the prosecution, having them lay out how they're paid, how they're compensated by the government to testify for the prosecution, thereby whittling away at least their impartiality. And then really driving home this point, and I do think this for a juror from an emotional standpoint and just even a logical one. This is a woman who called a suicide hotline twice, who repeatedly begged and asked for help, and she wasn't given help because she didn't have a plan to commit suicide. There are these specific things that if you had said this, then we would have given you help. Or if you had come to us a little earlier, we would have been able to designate you postpartum.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Have you heard this before? I've never in my life heard that you're limited in how much help You might get from a suicide hotline or a counselor. It's a big deal. You need to have a plan before they almost take you completely seriously.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to tell them how you think you're going to kill yourself and when. I didn't know that that was part of their, I guess, their mode of operation when they basically decide what the action needs to be. or not be in a certain case. But obviously the biggest moment for him at the end was that when Reddington read the prosecution's opening statement, he got the witness, Dr. Satov, to say, I think that statement you read really minimizes what she was going through. So it did show that the prosecution is overreaching, or at least it did. That is what I believe jurors would take away from that last moment of testimony.
00:14:44
Speaker 1: So that last moment, we might have said that thing after the prosecution opening statement. We kept saying, they don't seem to give any room for her being ill. Like, it's fine if you don't think she was responsible, but their entire time is setting up and building a narrative that flies in the face of the narrative of everybody knew this woman. They never just acknowledged that, you know what? Yeah, she was sick. Yeah, she had struggles. Yeah, we get it. The whole time, it was that cold, dismissive, yeah, she was calculated, she was this And their own guy, the last thing he says on the cross-examination is, yeah, prosecution's probably overreaching on that a little bit.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: And that was huge because this was a prosecution witness, yes, who was paid, who had said everything he had just said and then acknowledged, yeah, the prosecution. might be overreaching. So when we come back, we're going to talk about why this manslaughter option for the jury is such a big deal, what type of penalty she could be facing if they come back with any of five different verdicts, and what we're expecting this morning in Closing Arguments. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. What a big day in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial because, yes, we're going to hear first from the attorneys. They will give their closing arguments. The judge is going to give them each an hour, but we already heard from Kevin Reddington, I can get this done quickly. I only need 30 minutes. The prosecution said they would need an hour, so let's assume 90 minutes.
00:16:29
Speaker 1: What do you make of that? It only needs 30.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised by that.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: Eh, I can wrap this up. That means he's going to be effective. He's not going to wax poetic. He's not going to go on and on. He's going to be specific. Remember this. Think about this.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: And the jury might appreciate that. And actually, I think when you say less, when they've been, look, they have had to absorb, like I said, at the top of this, 85 witnesses, five weeks of testimony. That is a lot. So maybe even keeping it succinct and to the point with maximum effect, that will actually stay with the jurors than going on this long, meandering, hour-long.
00:17:05
Speaker 1: I get that.
00:17:05
Speaker 2: That's an effective strategy.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Defense goes first, right?
00:17:08
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, but I do believe, yes, the defense goes first. The prosecution gets to have the last word. But the jurors are going to now have five options. First-degree murder. which is premeditated or extreme atrocity or cruelty. And that would mean a mandatory life in prison sentence without the possibility of parole. They could also find her guilty of second degree murder, which is extreme recklessness without premeditation. That in the state of Massachusetts is also a mandatory life in prison sentence, but you would be eligible for parole within 15 to 25 years. They now have this manslaughter verdict that they can come to, which is suffering from mental illness, but not enough to absolve her of responsibility, that could be up to 20 years in state prison. Every state's different. That's Massachusetts. So it could be the minimum could be whatever the judge chooses, but up to 20 years.
00:18:03
Speaker 1: So she could go to prison. She would have to still get mental health treatment, correct? But if they just find her guilty... I mean, she's not going to a state institution.
00:18:11
Speaker 2: She's going to prison with manslaughter, I believe. That's what the state of Massachusetts, I looked it up.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: But then what, right? Doesn't she need continued mental health treatment? Is that correct?
00:18:24
Speaker 2: I would imagine so, yes. And then the fourth one, which is what the defense is asking for, not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, backslash insanity. And that would mean no prison time whatsoever for, but she could be committed to a psychiatric facility. So that's what that charge.
00:18:42
Speaker 1: And then it would be indefinite, right?
00:18:43
Speaker 2: It would be indefinite. And I think based on her doctor's recommendations and then they could, it doesn't seem likely or even possible. They could just flat out, give her a not guilty verdict, a complete acquittal. But even the, even the defense itself is acknowledging she killed her kids. So, yes, it's an option, but highly, almost impossible. It's not going to happen. But that would mean she could literally roll out of there. Yeah, without any sort of.
00:19:11
Speaker 1: We don't mean to be cute. She's literally in a wheelchair. So she would be. But no, we don't. Nobody is expecting that. And how long, babe? I mean, the jury is going to have this trial today, Thursday, got all day tomorrow. They'll have maybe half a day today. Is he going to tell them? You know what? Judges give them the option sometimes. Do you want to go home early? You want to stay a little late?
00:19:31
Speaker 2: Oh, they're going to stay and deliberate. There's no way they want to push this up on a Friday. I mean, if they can at least get started. Wouldn't you also, as a juror, just be desperate to know what your fellow jurors are thinking? You've been sitting there the whole time. You're not allowed to speak about the case. You're not allowed to indicate how you feel. And now for the first time, you get to see if... what you're thinking and what you're feeling aligns in any way with any of the other jurors.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: You know, sequester me, baby. We're going to sit here and we're going to work this out through the night. We ain't going home. Let's talk this through. Really, let's get our work done.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: I would not want to be on a jury with you. First of all, you'd be the foreman. And then, yeah, you would, what.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: Are you talking about? I'll probably be elected.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: You're a natural born leader, but then to someone to persuade you to think other than what you already think, I, that would be an impossible task.
00:20:22
Speaker 1: I listen, I, you know, I listen, I'm open to other people's ideas. I'm open to being convinced of things. I have no problem. I am. And I'm not, I feel a certain way. I am very open. I want to hear other people make arguments. that make me go, oh, I didn't consider that. Oh, that makes sense. Just like the psychiatrist, the last witness. Oh, I didn't think about it that way, the way he just put it. That's okay. That is okay. But man, what is this jury going to do?
00:20:49
Speaker 2: This will be fascinating.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: 9 a.m., they rarely start on time. But let's see, it goes exactly the way it's supposed to go. Closings should be done by 11. Yes. They've been taking morning breaks at 11 and coming back at 11.30-ish. When do they start with the jury instructions? He has to read every word, so he could be done 30 minutes or an hour. Yes, they will be deliberating immediately after the lunch recess, right?
00:21:11
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is fair to say. And we will be watching. And again, please stay tuned. I know TJ just mentioned the Andrea Yates comparison. After this episode, we're going to post an unbelievable comparison between these two cases. You were going crazy putting it together this morning, just saying this is actually so much more than I ever realized.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: The similarities are there in the cases, but Robes, they're also some of the same experts, right? testifying in both of these cases. And one connection to this Clancy case is the reason why Andrea Yates ended up not guilty by reason of insanity. It is a wild, wild connection. And yes, Robes, I was falling out of the chair in awe. But Robes, I don't know if you noticed, I had a moment over here. I had to get up just reading back about this case, Jesus Christ, with those five kids. It's hard stuff to be reminded of and the terror that those kids experience just reading through some of that stuff. We'll spare you some of that.
00:22:16
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's important, and this is in the spotlight now for a lot of women. It's long overdue, and so we will continue to follow this case, as we know so many of you are as well. We always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk soon.