Aug. 27, 2026
Killer Mom Trial, Prosecution Closing Arguments: Lindsay Clancy Killed Her Kids To End Her Own Misery
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RSS Feed The prosecution began its closing arguments by acknowledging Lindsay Clancy was mentally ill, but pointed out that she had an “abundance of help” and was in a privileged position. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague told jurors that Clancy lied to health care providers, lied to her husband, friends and family., telling them she was getting better. Sprague at one point, even made a comparison to Andrea Yates, saying Yates tried to commit suicide twice to try and protect her children, until the judge intervened. The prosecution ended by saying Clancy left her children “discarded on the basement floor, like broken toys, because she was done playing the game.”
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Thursday, August 27th. The prosecution has now given its closing argument in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial. And they wrapped up by playing on morality. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. I want to start with the end, the last sentence. I couldn't even tell Robes that she was wrapping up. Why did she want to go with that line about, you know, to a moral certainty she is guilty? What did that mean?
00:00:39
Speaker 2: She's trying to play on the juror's individual sense of right and wrong and emphasizing that Lindsay Clancy knew right from wrong.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: Yes, it's strange.
00:00:51
Speaker 2: She didn't talk about legally responsible, but morally responsible.
00:00:56
Speaker 1: We almost had a mistrial because of this type of stuff coming up.
00:00:59
Speaker 2: She went for it again, though, in her closing arguments. And right before she said that, she told the jurors.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: And it's interesting.
00:01:07
Speaker 2: I don't know if she's trying to continually, because she made a direct reference to Andrea Yates, but if she's continually trying to make the comparison between Andrea Yates and And Lindsay Clancy by saying, because we know Andrea Yates lovingly, you could say, put her children's... bodies on the bed and had the baby or the little six month old in one of the children's arms and she lovingly kind of displayed their bodies and I think many people remember that.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: I didn't. Is she expecting the jurors to remember that?
00:01:38
Speaker 2: I think she is absolutely drawing a stark comparison because she described what Lindsay Clancy did as discarding her children on the basement floor like broken toys because she was done playing the game. That is a direct contrast to what we know of Andrea Yates and what she did after she drowned her children.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: That comparison is something I wouldn't have remembered that myself and her making this comparison, but Robes, that was the moment. And this is a major no, no, you don't interrupt closing argument of the opposing attorney judges. I have seen absolutely rip into other attorneys. Shut up. This is a closing argument. This ain't your time to object anything. However, Robes, that was a little disturbance.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: Kevin Reddington objected when she started talking about Andrea Yates. And she said Andrea Yates, after she was hearing voices and she continually heard voices before she ended up killing her kids, she.
00:02:38
Speaker 3: Committed herself five times.
00:02:41
Speaker 2: She tried to kill herself twice. So again, I think she is concerned that the jury is going to liken Lindsay Clancy.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: to Andrea.
00:02:51
Speaker 2: Yates and is trying to draw a contrast between the two women to make sure that jurors don't feel the same way about her that they may feel about Andrea Yates.
00:03:02
Speaker 1: Forgive me for this lack of, this is not an eloquent way to say it. Is she really telling this jury? No, this is what crazy looks like when you kill your kids. And that's not what Lindsay Clancy... Right?
00:03:17
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:03:17
Speaker 3: A crazy woman who loves her kids... Does this.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: She's just saying Lindsay Clancy is a selfish woman who only cared about herself.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: She's using Andrea Yates as the example to compare her to. Yes. Oh, that is striking. But as we record, folks, the jury has the case. We should tell you that now. We're keeping an eye on this, but we are on verdict watch as we speak. This... That was made up of 18 robes is now officially down to 12. And you told me before it was 12 women. And you can explain why they do this and why they need so many jurors. But we knew what the original breakdown was. But now we know the breakdown of the folks who are deciding her fate.
00:03:59
Speaker 3: That's right.
00:04:00
Speaker 2: So initially, 18 jurors, and they sat through all five weeks of this gutting testimony. There were 12 women and six men. And then after closing arguments, we literally saw it was almost like a lottery, like they're picking lottery balls.
00:04:16
Speaker 1: Out of a box.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: They're literally picking juror numbers out of a box to officially seat the 12 that will deliberate on and decide Lindsay Clancy's fate. And that breakdown is now nine women and three men.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: What do you think?
00:04:33
Speaker 2: I said earlier that I felt like she might be given a better, I shouldn't say better, but there might be more sympathy from a man because he wouldn't know what it's like to be a mom. He wouldn't know what it's like to have all those hormones raging through him. He might not He might give her the benefit of the doubt, whereas a woman, if she has had children, and especially if she had any sort of postpartum depression and thought, well, I managed it, I was fine, I just would think a potentially harsher judge or juror would be a woman who has kids.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: Babe, you've been talking about this for five weeks. You said nobody is judging another woman harsher than another woman.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: It's true, and if you look at the online back and forth debate that's going on, the people who are writing op-eds and making comments about how they think she should go to prison for the rest of her life, that she has to pay for her crime, I've only seen women.
00:05:37
Speaker 3: I haven't seen men making comments like that.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Okay, but I also didn't see men out there in pink shirts. That's the other side of it. Are those nine women going to be more so in line with the ones out there in pink supporting her or the folks online saying, ain't no way?
00:05:53
Speaker 3: Because emotion was so much a part of this trial.
00:05:55
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be, I really do think it's going to depend on the lens that they view this evidence through. And I think it's so deeply personal. And I think it goes back to, do any of these women have friends, mothers, sisters, who if even they haven't gone through it, they've seen a woman suffer before? they've seen a woman pull through or whatever, it just, whatever their personal experience in their circle, in their bubble, I think will absolutely impact.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: Which expert they believe, which.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: Expert seemed like, seemed more credible to them because they'll see it through their experience. That's the problem with this case. It's not, did she do it or didn't she do it? what does the evidence prove? No, this is really which expert you believe more and for you not to bring in your personal experience would be impossible, I think.
00:06:51
Speaker 1: I don't, maybe you just, I don't know if the evidence proves she was one way or another criminally responsible. So I need to figure out which one of these guys I like better, which one of these guys I think is most credible. Robes, the evidence they keep pointing to is more of a collection of Well, yeah, that's possible. Well, she did that, so it could mean this. Well, yeah, she made the phone call, so I guess it could mean she was a... Robes, everything is, it could, it could. Well, maybe. Or that makes sense. I could see that. Well, that's likely. But proof? Robes, you just said it. Is this really? Are they really going to sit in there and go, I like this guy better than that guy?
00:07:31
Speaker 2: And I, well, yes, I think, I don't know if they're going to say it like that, but that's probably what's going in there.
00:07:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:07:36
Speaker 3: Going through their heads that.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: They believed someone more than the other, or they think someone has more credibility than the other. I think the one thing, look, the, the prosecutor definitely, I think chose a dangerous path. I mean, she really vilified Lindsay Clancy and as she's vilifying Lindsay Clancy, you actually can see her And she's not making some big scene about it. She's quietly wiping tears. She's turning her head. She's taking her hands to her face and literally clearing her face of tears when she starts being thrown under the bus by the prosecutor. That is hard not to be impacted by, to see this woman in a wheelchair crying softly and quietly as her character is being completely maligned by this prosecutor.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Is she doing that because she knew what she's hearing is correct? Is she doing that because she knows right from wrong? Is she doing that because she knows she did wrong? I don't know how anybody reads this, Rose, but this was a theme of the closing argument. She went a little over 50 minutes. They went about the same amount of time.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: They did.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: In their closings. But Robe's theme for her was this is a woman who knew what she was doing, she was calculated in what she was doing, and Robe, so much of what she talked about goes to the timing. She spent so much time on the timing of the killings. How long she went down there, which kid she killed first, and how long the kids were strangled. She spent a lot of time, Robe, suggesting that at least the story she was putting together suggests that this was a woman who was in complete control.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Yes, and who was cruel and vicious and callous and indifferent to her children's suffering. That's where I have a little, well, not a little, I have a lot of difficulty agreeing with her on that. The picture she painted of this woman who had every resource available to her, she really played on that for any jury. She had a nanny. She had a mom in her beck and call. She had a country.
00:09:41
Speaker 3: Club to go off to.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: She had doctors and nurses and a loving husband. And she was surrounded with people who supported her and loved her and wanted the best for her.
00:09:51
Speaker 3: And what did she do to them? She lied.
00:09:54
Speaker 2: She told them she was getting better. She told them she was sleeping. She defied her doctor's orders. And as a nurse, she should know better. She chose what medicines to take and how much to take. She didn't follow instructions because she wanted to do it her way. The picture they're painting of this woman is not the woman who was described by all the people.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: Who know her, including her ex-husband.
00:10:17
Speaker 2: So That's where it feels like it's a stretch, and it feels like she's telling me to believe something that I actually, after having seen and heard everything, don't believe to be true.
00:10:29
Speaker 1: But was she taking the risk, Robes, because you got nine women on this jury now? Is she taking the risk that when you tell women, presumably some mothers on this jury, that this woman had every resource... You didn't have.
00:10:46
Speaker 3: She's playing on that for sure.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: She had a nanny, great health care. Look at all these doctors. She had all this stuff you don't have. You managed your life just fine, didn't you? Is that?
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:10:59
Speaker 1: But you say that's a risk.
00:11:01
Speaker 3: I think it's.
00:11:01
Speaker 2: Risky because what the picture she is painting of Lindsay Clancy is not a is not the Lindsay Clancy I feel like was described by everyone who knows her. So it's like, was she putting on this great ruse for most of her life?
00:11:18
Speaker 3: For me, it was hard. I understand why she said what she said.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: The only thing to me that really landed that I would think would give jurors a pause, would give me pause, is the idea of just, yes, the timing and how deliberate she was, how much she planned it, how calculated that all was, the calling to CVS ahead of time to make sure it was in stock, to make sure her husband would stay there long enough. You could also just look at it as a desperate woman who.
00:11:49
Speaker 3: Had a plan.
00:11:50
Speaker 2: Now, if I'm curious, if you don't believe that she heard a voice commanding her to do it, could she still be so mentally unstable.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: That she still isn't criminally responsible?
00:12:06
Speaker 2: Like, how important is it that this voice told her to do it? That's where I'm a little bit confused and I don't know what to think about that. And then you've got the prosecution telling the jury that They don't believe this voice thing, that it was made up after the fact, that beforehand she had never heard a voice, afterwards she never heard a voice, and how.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: That's so unusual, and this is a convenient.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: After-the-murderers explanation of why she did it. Some of that could make a little sense to me, and I do question a little bit, but I... I don't know.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:12:44
Speaker 1: But, babe, you just made, I would love, and where were we watching the... Well, the case out in Vegas right now with the.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: Tupac trial.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: They're allowed. That jury is allowed to ask questions. I would have loved to have been able for this jury to ask questions. Are you really telling me? Rose, remember the breakdown of if the voice was internal or external? Even that, I don't know. So you're telling me if it came from the outside, she's in psychosis. But inside, it's just her and vice versa. So, Robes, that's the thing. Maybe this jury has a better handle on it than we do, but the arguments that I'm hearing, Robes, and the ones they keep saying, it really does break down to, and maybe that's why Reddington spent so much time discrediting, even in his closing. Yeah, this guy, he's looking up at the sky. Yeah, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. These guys are a mess. He was kind of just dismissive of them, like literally dismissed. They're not even relevant.
00:13:41
Speaker 2: Yes, and I do think that was incredibly effective because that is the crux of this case because just as I was asking this question about how important is this voice thing to her overall mental wellness and did she need to hear a voice for her to not be responsible criminally for the crimes? Could she just still not be responsible because she was so mentally ill? How important was this voice to the whole thing?
00:14:09
Speaker 3: And to hear.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: To hear the experts get up on the stand and all disagree with each other and say different things is super confusing.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: And I feel like that.
00:14:19
Speaker 2: Does help the defense because the point being, nobody knows. Like what psychiatrist can tell me or tell a juror what makes somebody psychotic or in a state of psychosis based on if the voice.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: Is from the inside or the outside, if it's often, if it's once, if it's all the time. Do they even really know? That's my question.
00:14:44
Speaker 1: Okay. You just hit it, baby. They just proved they don't know. So what am I supposed to do as a jury? They don't know.
00:14:54
Speaker 3: I believe that they don't know.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: So what are we supposed to do with Lindsay Clancy?
00:14:59
Speaker 2: I think you have to go with your gut. I think really this is an emotional trial. It's like none I've ever seen before. I guess Andrea Yates is the only other trial like this that you could point to because she's not denying that she did it.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: That's the problem.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: But that first jury put her in prison. A second jury came back and said she was not guilty by reason of insanity. I have no idea. What's about to happen in this case. But stay here, folks. We are going to share with you some quotes from the prosecutor during the closing argument and robes. We're going to start with after this break. The quote from the prosecutor that make it seems like she's watching a different case than the rest of America. We continue here on Amy and TJ as the jury continues to deliberate. We're recording this as the jury has been deliberating about an hour and a half at least. I suppose the Lindsay Clancy, I am so close to Andrea Yates, Andrea Yates every time, but you understand why.
00:16:12
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Robes, so much of this has been about, every single time we've done anything having to do with Lindsay Clancy, we always say, you know what, no matter what, this has put a focus on the lack of care for women after they have babies, in particular their mental health. Robes, this case is not about our mental health system, so says the prosecutor in the closing statement. This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women. That's a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an issue, but that's not the issue on trial here. I kind of get it, but that seemed so flippant and dismissive. We said at the beginning, Robes, when she started, all you had to say was, yeah, this has highlighted some real issues and flaws. And even we need to update some of the textbooks. But that's on the side and not what you have to decide here. Robes, she said it in such a way, it turned me off.
00:17:16
Speaker 2: She invalidated a lot of what many women have said they've experienced. And she could have still validated those real issues and the real lack of understanding and resources that have been given to women's mental health, especially postpartum. She could have acknowledged all of that. And if any of those women, see, they don't know. And I don't know the voir dire. I don't know the questions.
00:17:39
Speaker 3: They were asked. I don't know how these jurors were vetted.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: But the idea that nine women who are now going to make this decision among the 12th If any of them have had an experience or know or loved somebody who had an experience, she invalidated it.
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I mean, she can feel that. I just don't know how many... That's just... It doesn't seem like... Yes, our mental health system is on trial here. It is.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: And so here's the problem. Well, it might not be a problem, but here was the issue, and she tried to answer it. I'm curious about how you think she answered it. So if it wasn't the mental health industry... If it wasn't her doctors failing her, if it wasn't the system failing her, if it wasn't her family and friends failing her, then why didn't Lindsay Clancy kill her kids?
00:18:28
Speaker 3: So the prosecutor, Jennifer Sprague, answered it for the jury. And I don't know if it worked.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: She said Lindsay Clancy killed her kids because she was upset, because she was done, because she wanted to end her life.
00:18:46
Speaker 3: Her misery.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: She said the kids were keeping her from ending her misery, so she had to remove them. She said she had to remove the protective factor. I didn't really, the protective factor thing seems strange to me.
00:19:03
Speaker 1: She was, the only reason she was still alive is because she had to protect her kids. So if you no longer have to protect your kids.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: There you go.
00:19:14
Speaker 1: She's saying she needed permission to kill herself. And the only way she could get permission was to eliminate the only reason she was still on Earth. And that was the kids. I don't know, baby. That sounds like mental illness to me, but she's suggesting this woman who did have mental illness, that mental illness was not the cause of her doing this.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: She made it very clear, the prosecutor, that it was a choice and that Lindsay Clancy made a lucid, sane choice. But to your point, If you believe your only choice to ending your misery is to kill your kids, that doesn't sound like a sane person.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: Here you go. Defense wants you to believe. So this is I'm quoting her again. Defense wants you to believe this woman is begging for help. She was asking for help, but she wanted to get better on her own terms. It's kind of dismissive of she's put the onus completely on her. It almost sounds like, yeah, I agree she was mentally ill, but it's her fault she was.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she refused to get better because she was a trained nurse and she knew better.
00:20:18
Speaker 3: I don't buy that. I don't buy that.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Look, if anyone listening has been in a hospital and has been really sick, whether it was physical or mental, I have been hospitalized for almost three weeks. And I can tell you right now it's a shit show in hospitals. They're oftentimes understaffed. If you have a complicated, I had a complicated physical situation, they're throwing everything at you. They don't know what they're doing and you feel like a guinea pig and it's overwhelming and you don't even trust the care you're getting because it's so overwhelming and disjointed oftentimes, especially if they can't figure out how to fix you. So I don't believe this is a woman who wanted to do it on her terms. I think she was a woman who was left in a situation where no one knew how to help her. And she was let down by an industry that hasn't done enough research, that hasn't provided enough resources, and hasn't taken this particular issue seriously enough. And I do believe she wanted to get better, and I don't think she thought.
00:21:22
Speaker 3: She knew how. better than anyone else.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: I think she knew that when she took certain drugs, anyone who's been put on drugs, I had, I'm talking about headaches.
00:21:30
Speaker 3: I had lots of headaches.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: They start throwing beta blockers and antidepressants and antipsychotics and all this stuff at you. And then you get all these side effects and it's horrific. And you're like, I'm not taking these drugs anymore. And you just dump them. I know so many people and I've had a personal experience where you're just like, forget these drugs. They might fix one thing, but they cause 12 other problems. And so it's not worth it.
00:21:53
Speaker 1: Who on that jury has had that experience and can understand? Exactly. Because the last thing they heard from the prosecutor was everything you said was bullshit. Everything you just said was nope. Quote, it was a choice. She could have kept trying. She could have moved down to her mother's. She could have killed herself and left her kids alive. It's a choice. We don't want to think about a mother doing this because it doesn't make us feel safe or comfortable in this world. That's how she explained everything you just said.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: So my reaction to that was I felt incredible anger towards the prosecutor. I felt incredible anger towards the prosecutor in that moment. She lost me in that moment. I felt angry on behalf of Lindsay Clancy in that moment. I thought it was wildly insensitive. And my thought was, how do you.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: Know, lady?
00:22:38
Speaker 3: How do you know?
00:22:38
Speaker 1: I don't know, babe. I want to. That's the thing. I want to say this was all in good faith. But what has been pointed out plenty of times, Robes, is manipulation. There are times that the prosecutor, I have felt, was manipulating my emotion or manipulating facts in this case. And so credibility is an issue throughout, Robes. And so to hear this, I thought that might have been the most damning and dismissive thing. All she had to do was go to her mom's.
00:23:12
Speaker 2: She even got quiet when she was saying it, like sheepish a little, because I think she knew what she was saying was so awful.
00:23:18
Speaker 3: When she said she could have just killed herself. And look, I get that. I understand that.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: But sort of the jurors and just the way she said it, it was just so flippant.
00:23:28
Speaker 3: And it was so like, yeah, she had plenty of choices.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: What do you think about the quarters?
00:23:33
Speaker 3: Well, when she picked up.
00:23:35
Speaker 2: The quarters that he laid down, if I were her, I wouldn't have wanted to play into his game.
00:23:40
Speaker 3: That was his thing.
00:23:41
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have even wanted to act like, oh, challenge accepted. That made it seem more like a competition that she was going to win.
00:23:49
Speaker 3: And I didn't like it.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: I didn't.
00:23:52
Speaker 1: And you know what? It wasn't also authentic to her.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: No.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: It seems so staged. I don't know. She's doing the best she can. She's doing what she thinks is right, and I have to give her grace for that.
00:24:02
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:24:03
Speaker 1: Because we don't know these women at all. Jennifer L. Sprague, I would guess. That's her last name.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: Attorney Sprague.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: Five weeks. That might be my favorite moment. But anyway, we can talk about that later, what he did. Well, that was two or three days ago. It was pretty incredible. The last thing I do want to mention, Robes, about... She still, do they think she tried to kill herself or not? This is another one, Rose, where they make this argument where we never said it wasn't a serious suicide. She says this in the beginning. Rose, she gets to the end and says she landed the wrong way. The idea of jumping out of a 12-foot window is going to kill you, but not necessarily. She was dismissive of it again. This is what I mean, babe.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: She couldn't even kill herself right, but she killed the kids correctly. And I think that was kind of her point, that she was able to kill these kids, and even though maybe she wanted to die, she still, like, human instinct kicked in and she couldn't quite do it right because she actually didn't really want to die. But she tried to, but not that hard. It was a little confusing. I'm not exactly sure what she was trying to get there. by saying that?
00:25:18
Speaker 1: Um, they have nothing else to say. It's done. There's no more testimony. There's nothing else they can say to a juror. They have said everything. They have done everything they can. You got 12 people in there, nine women and three men sitting there trying to figure out if this woman is criminally responsible for doing one of the most atrocious things. Well, we've seen women kill the kids before, drive them off into the Susan Smith kind of a thing. I think the Yates thing is the, I'm trying to, am I missing a case?
00:25:49
Speaker 2: Casey Anthony with her daughter, but she chloroformed her to death.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Okay. Am I missing one? Robes, these are two of the most horrific crimes this country's ever seen.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: Right?
00:26:00
Speaker 1: We can talk about mass shootings and things. Robes, mother strangling kids, drowning kids methodically. This is some of the worst stuff we've ever seen. Somebody going out of a window in Las Vegas and shooting a crowd because he's disgruntled. That's different for us. We, this is atrocious, baby. We don't get this.
00:26:19
Speaker 3: This is against nature. This is against human nature.
00:26:23
Speaker 2: And that's why these few, thank God they're few, and far between.
00:26:29
Speaker 3: But that's.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: Why these cases, you know, those women's names, Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Casey Anthony, and now Lindsay Clancy. And yes, we may be forgetting some, but those are names that if you lived through those trials and those crimes, you will never forget because it is not typical and it's really hard to understand.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Jury has the case now, folks. The verdict clock, as they say, is a ticking, so we are keeping a close eye. He could come down. He's been letting them go at 4 o'clock every day, but he can have them stay longer if they want to stay. The judges usually ask. We have no idea how long this is going to go today, but tomorrow would be expected to be a full day of deliberation if we get to that. Either way, we're on it. Appreciate you, as always, for hanging with us. We will talk to you soon. I'm TJ on behalf of my dear Amy Robach.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Thursday, August 27th. The prosecution has now given its closing argument in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial. And they wrapped up by playing on morality. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. I want to start with the end, the last sentence. I couldn't even tell Robes that she was wrapping up. Why did she want to go with that line about, you know, to a moral certainty she is guilty? What did that mean?
00:00:39
Speaker 2: She's trying to play on the juror's individual sense of right and wrong and emphasizing that Lindsay Clancy knew right from wrong.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: Yes, it's strange.
00:00:51
Speaker 2: She didn't talk about legally responsible, but morally responsible.
00:00:56
Speaker 1: We almost had a mistrial because of this type of stuff coming up.
00:00:59
Speaker 2: She went for it again, though, in her closing arguments. And right before she said that, she told the jurors.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: And it's interesting.
00:01:07
Speaker 2: I don't know if she's trying to continually, because she made a direct reference to Andrea Yates, but if she's continually trying to make the comparison between Andrea Yates and And Lindsay Clancy by saying, because we know Andrea Yates lovingly, you could say, put her children's... bodies on the bed and had the baby or the little six month old in one of the children's arms and she lovingly kind of displayed their bodies and I think many people remember that.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: I didn't. Is she expecting the jurors to remember that?
00:01:38
Speaker 2: I think she is absolutely drawing a stark comparison because she described what Lindsay Clancy did as discarding her children on the basement floor like broken toys because she was done playing the game. That is a direct contrast to what we know of Andrea Yates and what she did after she drowned her children.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: That comparison is something I wouldn't have remembered that myself and her making this comparison, but Robes, that was the moment. And this is a major no, no, you don't interrupt closing argument of the opposing attorney judges. I have seen absolutely rip into other attorneys. Shut up. This is a closing argument. This ain't your time to object anything. However, Robes, that was a little disturbance.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: Kevin Reddington objected when she started talking about Andrea Yates. And she said Andrea Yates, after she was hearing voices and she continually heard voices before she ended up killing her kids, she.
00:02:38
Speaker 3: Committed herself five times.
00:02:41
Speaker 2: She tried to kill herself twice. So again, I think she is concerned that the jury is going to liken Lindsay Clancy.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: to Andrea.
00:02:51
Speaker 2: Yates and is trying to draw a contrast between the two women to make sure that jurors don't feel the same way about her that they may feel about Andrea Yates.
00:03:02
Speaker 1: Forgive me for this lack of, this is not an eloquent way to say it. Is she really telling this jury? No, this is what crazy looks like when you kill your kids. And that's not what Lindsay Clancy... Right?
00:03:17
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:03:17
Speaker 3: A crazy woman who loves her kids... Does this.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: She's just saying Lindsay Clancy is a selfish woman who only cared about herself.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: She's using Andrea Yates as the example to compare her to. Yes. Oh, that is striking. But as we record, folks, the jury has the case. We should tell you that now. We're keeping an eye on this, but we are on verdict watch as we speak. This... That was made up of 18 robes is now officially down to 12. And you told me before it was 12 women. And you can explain why they do this and why they need so many jurors. But we knew what the original breakdown was. But now we know the breakdown of the folks who are deciding her fate.
00:03:59
Speaker 3: That's right.
00:04:00
Speaker 2: So initially, 18 jurors, and they sat through all five weeks of this gutting testimony. There were 12 women and six men. And then after closing arguments, we literally saw it was almost like a lottery, like they're picking lottery balls.
00:04:16
Speaker 1: Out of a box.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: They're literally picking juror numbers out of a box to officially seat the 12 that will deliberate on and decide Lindsay Clancy's fate. And that breakdown is now nine women and three men.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: What do you think?
00:04:33
Speaker 2: I said earlier that I felt like she might be given a better, I shouldn't say better, but there might be more sympathy from a man because he wouldn't know what it's like to be a mom. He wouldn't know what it's like to have all those hormones raging through him. He might not He might give her the benefit of the doubt, whereas a woman, if she has had children, and especially if she had any sort of postpartum depression and thought, well, I managed it, I was fine, I just would think a potentially harsher judge or juror would be a woman who has kids.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: Babe, you've been talking about this for five weeks. You said nobody is judging another woman harsher than another woman.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: It's true, and if you look at the online back and forth debate that's going on, the people who are writing op-eds and making comments about how they think she should go to prison for the rest of her life, that she has to pay for her crime, I've only seen women.
00:05:37
Speaker 3: I haven't seen men making comments like that.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Okay, but I also didn't see men out there in pink shirts. That's the other side of it. Are those nine women going to be more so in line with the ones out there in pink supporting her or the folks online saying, ain't no way?
00:05:53
Speaker 3: Because emotion was so much a part of this trial.
00:05:55
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be, I really do think it's going to depend on the lens that they view this evidence through. And I think it's so deeply personal. And I think it goes back to, do any of these women have friends, mothers, sisters, who if even they haven't gone through it, they've seen a woman suffer before? they've seen a woman pull through or whatever, it just, whatever their personal experience in their circle, in their bubble, I think will absolutely impact.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: Which expert they believe, which.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: Expert seemed like, seemed more credible to them because they'll see it through their experience. That's the problem with this case. It's not, did she do it or didn't she do it? what does the evidence prove? No, this is really which expert you believe more and for you not to bring in your personal experience would be impossible, I think.
00:06:51
Speaker 1: I don't, maybe you just, I don't know if the evidence proves she was one way or another criminally responsible. So I need to figure out which one of these guys I like better, which one of these guys I think is most credible. Robes, the evidence they keep pointing to is more of a collection of Well, yeah, that's possible. Well, she did that, so it could mean this. Well, yeah, she made the phone call, so I guess it could mean she was a... Robes, everything is, it could, it could. Well, maybe. Or that makes sense. I could see that. Well, that's likely. But proof? Robes, you just said it. Is this really? Are they really going to sit in there and go, I like this guy better than that guy?
00:07:31
Speaker 2: And I, well, yes, I think, I don't know if they're going to say it like that, but that's probably what's going in there.
00:07:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:07:36
Speaker 3: Going through their heads that.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: They believed someone more than the other, or they think someone has more credibility than the other. I think the one thing, look, the, the prosecutor definitely, I think chose a dangerous path. I mean, she really vilified Lindsay Clancy and as she's vilifying Lindsay Clancy, you actually can see her And she's not making some big scene about it. She's quietly wiping tears. She's turning her head. She's taking her hands to her face and literally clearing her face of tears when she starts being thrown under the bus by the prosecutor. That is hard not to be impacted by, to see this woman in a wheelchair crying softly and quietly as her character is being completely maligned by this prosecutor.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Is she doing that because she knew what she's hearing is correct? Is she doing that because she knows right from wrong? Is she doing that because she knows she did wrong? I don't know how anybody reads this, Rose, but this was a theme of the closing argument. She went a little over 50 minutes. They went about the same amount of time.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: They did.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: In their closings. But Robe's theme for her was this is a woman who knew what she was doing, she was calculated in what she was doing, and Robe, so much of what she talked about goes to the timing. She spent so much time on the timing of the killings. How long she went down there, which kid she killed first, and how long the kids were strangled. She spent a lot of time, Robe, suggesting that at least the story she was putting together suggests that this was a woman who was in complete control.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Yes, and who was cruel and vicious and callous and indifferent to her children's suffering. That's where I have a little, well, not a little, I have a lot of difficulty agreeing with her on that. The picture she painted of this woman who had every resource available to her, she really played on that for any jury. She had a nanny. She had a mom in her beck and call. She had a country.
00:09:41
Speaker 3: Club to go off to.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: She had doctors and nurses and a loving husband. And she was surrounded with people who supported her and loved her and wanted the best for her.
00:09:51
Speaker 3: And what did she do to them? She lied.
00:09:54
Speaker 2: She told them she was getting better. She told them she was sleeping. She defied her doctor's orders. And as a nurse, she should know better. She chose what medicines to take and how much to take. She didn't follow instructions because she wanted to do it her way. The picture they're painting of this woman is not the woman who was described by all the people.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: Who know her, including her ex-husband.
00:10:17
Speaker 2: So That's where it feels like it's a stretch, and it feels like she's telling me to believe something that I actually, after having seen and heard everything, don't believe to be true.
00:10:29
Speaker 1: But was she taking the risk, Robes, because you got nine women on this jury now? Is she taking the risk that when you tell women, presumably some mothers on this jury, that this woman had every resource... You didn't have.
00:10:46
Speaker 3: She's playing on that for sure.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: She had a nanny, great health care. Look at all these doctors. She had all this stuff you don't have. You managed your life just fine, didn't you? Is that?
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:10:59
Speaker 1: But you say that's a risk.
00:11:01
Speaker 3: I think it's.
00:11:01
Speaker 2: Risky because what the picture she is painting of Lindsay Clancy is not a is not the Lindsay Clancy I feel like was described by everyone who knows her. So it's like, was she putting on this great ruse for most of her life?
00:11:18
Speaker 3: For me, it was hard. I understand why she said what she said.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: The only thing to me that really landed that I would think would give jurors a pause, would give me pause, is the idea of just, yes, the timing and how deliberate she was, how much she planned it, how calculated that all was, the calling to CVS ahead of time to make sure it was in stock, to make sure her husband would stay there long enough. You could also just look at it as a desperate woman who.
00:11:49
Speaker 3: Had a plan.
00:11:50
Speaker 2: Now, if I'm curious, if you don't believe that she heard a voice commanding her to do it, could she still be so mentally unstable.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: That she still isn't criminally responsible?
00:12:06
Speaker 2: Like, how important is it that this voice told her to do it? That's where I'm a little bit confused and I don't know what to think about that. And then you've got the prosecution telling the jury that They don't believe this voice thing, that it was made up after the fact, that beforehand she had never heard a voice, afterwards she never heard a voice, and how.
00:12:28
Speaker 3: That's so unusual, and this is a convenient.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: After-the-murderers explanation of why she did it. Some of that could make a little sense to me, and I do question a little bit, but I... I don't know.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:12:44
Speaker 1: But, babe, you just made, I would love, and where were we watching the... Well, the case out in Vegas right now with the.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: Tupac trial.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: They're allowed. That jury is allowed to ask questions. I would have loved to have been able for this jury to ask questions. Are you really telling me? Rose, remember the breakdown of if the voice was internal or external? Even that, I don't know. So you're telling me if it came from the outside, she's in psychosis. But inside, it's just her and vice versa. So, Robes, that's the thing. Maybe this jury has a better handle on it than we do, but the arguments that I'm hearing, Robes, and the ones they keep saying, it really does break down to, and maybe that's why Reddington spent so much time discrediting, even in his closing. Yeah, this guy, he's looking up at the sky. Yeah, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. These guys are a mess. He was kind of just dismissive of them, like literally dismissed. They're not even relevant.
00:13:41
Speaker 2: Yes, and I do think that was incredibly effective because that is the crux of this case because just as I was asking this question about how important is this voice thing to her overall mental wellness and did she need to hear a voice for her to not be responsible criminally for the crimes? Could she just still not be responsible because she was so mentally ill? How important was this voice to the whole thing?
00:14:09
Speaker 3: And to hear.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: To hear the experts get up on the stand and all disagree with each other and say different things is super confusing.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: And I feel like that.
00:14:19
Speaker 2: Does help the defense because the point being, nobody knows. Like what psychiatrist can tell me or tell a juror what makes somebody psychotic or in a state of psychosis based on if the voice.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: Is from the inside or the outside, if it's often, if it's once, if it's all the time. Do they even really know? That's my question.
00:14:44
Speaker 1: Okay. You just hit it, baby. They just proved they don't know. So what am I supposed to do as a jury? They don't know.
00:14:54
Speaker 3: I believe that they don't know.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: So what are we supposed to do with Lindsay Clancy?
00:14:59
Speaker 2: I think you have to go with your gut. I think really this is an emotional trial. It's like none I've ever seen before. I guess Andrea Yates is the only other trial like this that you could point to because she's not denying that she did it.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: That's the problem.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: But that first jury put her in prison. A second jury came back and said she was not guilty by reason of insanity. I have no idea. What's about to happen in this case. But stay here, folks. We are going to share with you some quotes from the prosecutor during the closing argument and robes. We're going to start with after this break. The quote from the prosecutor that make it seems like she's watching a different case than the rest of America. We continue here on Amy and TJ as the jury continues to deliberate. We're recording this as the jury has been deliberating about an hour and a half at least. I suppose the Lindsay Clancy, I am so close to Andrea Yates, Andrea Yates every time, but you understand why.
00:16:12
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Robes, so much of this has been about, every single time we've done anything having to do with Lindsay Clancy, we always say, you know what, no matter what, this has put a focus on the lack of care for women after they have babies, in particular their mental health. Robes, this case is not about our mental health system, so says the prosecutor in the closing statement. This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women. That's a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an issue, but that's not the issue on trial here. I kind of get it, but that seemed so flippant and dismissive. We said at the beginning, Robes, when she started, all you had to say was, yeah, this has highlighted some real issues and flaws. And even we need to update some of the textbooks. But that's on the side and not what you have to decide here. Robes, she said it in such a way, it turned me off.
00:17:16
Speaker 2: She invalidated a lot of what many women have said they've experienced. And she could have still validated those real issues and the real lack of understanding and resources that have been given to women's mental health, especially postpartum. She could have acknowledged all of that. And if any of those women, see, they don't know. And I don't know the voir dire. I don't know the questions.
00:17:39
Speaker 3: They were asked. I don't know how these jurors were vetted.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: But the idea that nine women who are now going to make this decision among the 12th If any of them have had an experience or know or loved somebody who had an experience, she invalidated it.
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I mean, she can feel that. I just don't know how many... That's just... It doesn't seem like... Yes, our mental health system is on trial here. It is.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: And so here's the problem. Well, it might not be a problem, but here was the issue, and she tried to answer it. I'm curious about how you think she answered it. So if it wasn't the mental health industry... If it wasn't her doctors failing her, if it wasn't the system failing her, if it wasn't her family and friends failing her, then why didn't Lindsay Clancy kill her kids?
00:18:28
Speaker 3: So the prosecutor, Jennifer Sprague, answered it for the jury. And I don't know if it worked.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: She said Lindsay Clancy killed her kids because she was upset, because she was done, because she wanted to end her life.
00:18:46
Speaker 3: Her misery.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: She said the kids were keeping her from ending her misery, so she had to remove them. She said she had to remove the protective factor. I didn't really, the protective factor thing seems strange to me.
00:19:03
Speaker 1: She was, the only reason she was still alive is because she had to protect her kids. So if you no longer have to protect your kids.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: There you go.
00:19:14
Speaker 1: She's saying she needed permission to kill herself. And the only way she could get permission was to eliminate the only reason she was still on Earth. And that was the kids. I don't know, baby. That sounds like mental illness to me, but she's suggesting this woman who did have mental illness, that mental illness was not the cause of her doing this.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: She made it very clear, the prosecutor, that it was a choice and that Lindsay Clancy made a lucid, sane choice. But to your point, If you believe your only choice to ending your misery is to kill your kids, that doesn't sound like a sane person.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: Here you go. Defense wants you to believe. So this is I'm quoting her again. Defense wants you to believe this woman is begging for help. She was asking for help, but she wanted to get better on her own terms. It's kind of dismissive of she's put the onus completely on her. It almost sounds like, yeah, I agree she was mentally ill, but it's her fault she was.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she refused to get better because she was a trained nurse and she knew better.
00:20:18
Speaker 3: I don't buy that. I don't buy that.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Look, if anyone listening has been in a hospital and has been really sick, whether it was physical or mental, I have been hospitalized for almost three weeks. And I can tell you right now it's a shit show in hospitals. They're oftentimes understaffed. If you have a complicated, I had a complicated physical situation, they're throwing everything at you. They don't know what they're doing and you feel like a guinea pig and it's overwhelming and you don't even trust the care you're getting because it's so overwhelming and disjointed oftentimes, especially if they can't figure out how to fix you. So I don't believe this is a woman who wanted to do it on her terms. I think she was a woman who was left in a situation where no one knew how to help her. And she was let down by an industry that hasn't done enough research, that hasn't provided enough resources, and hasn't taken this particular issue seriously enough. And I do believe she wanted to get better, and I don't think she thought.
00:21:22
Speaker 3: She knew how. better than anyone else.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: I think she knew that when she took certain drugs, anyone who's been put on drugs, I had, I'm talking about headaches.
00:21:30
Speaker 3: I had lots of headaches.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: They start throwing beta blockers and antidepressants and antipsychotics and all this stuff at you. And then you get all these side effects and it's horrific. And you're like, I'm not taking these drugs anymore. And you just dump them. I know so many people and I've had a personal experience where you're just like, forget these drugs. They might fix one thing, but they cause 12 other problems. And so it's not worth it.
00:21:53
Speaker 1: Who on that jury has had that experience and can understand? Exactly. Because the last thing they heard from the prosecutor was everything you said was bullshit. Everything you just said was nope. Quote, it was a choice. She could have kept trying. She could have moved down to her mother's. She could have killed herself and left her kids alive. It's a choice. We don't want to think about a mother doing this because it doesn't make us feel safe or comfortable in this world. That's how she explained everything you just said.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: So my reaction to that was I felt incredible anger towards the prosecutor. I felt incredible anger towards the prosecutor in that moment. She lost me in that moment. I felt angry on behalf of Lindsay Clancy in that moment. I thought it was wildly insensitive. And my thought was, how do you.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: Know, lady?
00:22:38
Speaker 3: How do you know?
00:22:38
Speaker 1: I don't know, babe. I want to. That's the thing. I want to say this was all in good faith. But what has been pointed out plenty of times, Robes, is manipulation. There are times that the prosecutor, I have felt, was manipulating my emotion or manipulating facts in this case. And so credibility is an issue throughout, Robes. And so to hear this, I thought that might have been the most damning and dismissive thing. All she had to do was go to her mom's.
00:23:12
Speaker 2: She even got quiet when she was saying it, like sheepish a little, because I think she knew what she was saying was so awful.
00:23:18
Speaker 3: When she said she could have just killed herself. And look, I get that. I understand that.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: But sort of the jurors and just the way she said it, it was just so flippant.
00:23:28
Speaker 3: And it was so like, yeah, she had plenty of choices.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: What do you think about the quarters?
00:23:33
Speaker 3: Well, when she picked up.
00:23:35
Speaker 2: The quarters that he laid down, if I were her, I wouldn't have wanted to play into his game.
00:23:40
Speaker 3: That was his thing.
00:23:41
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have even wanted to act like, oh, challenge accepted. That made it seem more like a competition that she was going to win.
00:23:49
Speaker 3: And I didn't like it.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: I didn't.
00:23:52
Speaker 1: And you know what? It wasn't also authentic to her.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: No.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: It seems so staged. I don't know. She's doing the best she can. She's doing what she thinks is right, and I have to give her grace for that.
00:24:02
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:24:03
Speaker 1: Because we don't know these women at all. Jennifer L. Sprague, I would guess. That's her last name.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: Attorney Sprague.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: Five weeks. That might be my favorite moment. But anyway, we can talk about that later, what he did. Well, that was two or three days ago. It was pretty incredible. The last thing I do want to mention, Robes, about... She still, do they think she tried to kill herself or not? This is another one, Rose, where they make this argument where we never said it wasn't a serious suicide. She says this in the beginning. Rose, she gets to the end and says she landed the wrong way. The idea of jumping out of a 12-foot window is going to kill you, but not necessarily. She was dismissive of it again. This is what I mean, babe.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: She couldn't even kill herself right, but she killed the kids correctly. And I think that was kind of her point, that she was able to kill these kids, and even though maybe she wanted to die, she still, like, human instinct kicked in and she couldn't quite do it right because she actually didn't really want to die. But she tried to, but not that hard. It was a little confusing. I'm not exactly sure what she was trying to get there. by saying that?
00:25:18
Speaker 1: Um, they have nothing else to say. It's done. There's no more testimony. There's nothing else they can say to a juror. They have said everything. They have done everything they can. You got 12 people in there, nine women and three men sitting there trying to figure out if this woman is criminally responsible for doing one of the most atrocious things. Well, we've seen women kill the kids before, drive them off into the Susan Smith kind of a thing. I think the Yates thing is the, I'm trying to, am I missing a case?
00:25:49
Speaker 2: Casey Anthony with her daughter, but she chloroformed her to death.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Okay. Am I missing one? Robes, these are two of the most horrific crimes this country's ever seen.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: Right?
00:26:00
Speaker 1: We can talk about mass shootings and things. Robes, mother strangling kids, drowning kids methodically. This is some of the worst stuff we've ever seen. Somebody going out of a window in Las Vegas and shooting a crowd because he's disgruntled. That's different for us. We, this is atrocious, baby. We don't get this.
00:26:19
Speaker 3: This is against nature. This is against human nature.
00:26:23
Speaker 2: And that's why these few, thank God they're few, and far between.
00:26:29
Speaker 3: But that's.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: Why these cases, you know, those women's names, Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Casey Anthony, and now Lindsay Clancy. And yes, we may be forgetting some, but those are names that if you lived through those trials and those crimes, you will never forget because it is not typical and it's really hard to understand.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Jury has the case now, folks. The verdict clock, as they say, is a ticking, so we are keeping a close eye. He could come down. He's been letting them go at 4 o'clock every day, but he can have them stay longer if they want to stay. The judges usually ask. We have no idea how long this is going to go today, but tomorrow would be expected to be a full day of deliberation if we get to that. Either way, we're on it. Appreciate you, as always, for hanging with us. We will talk to you soon. I'm TJ on behalf of my dear Amy Robach.