PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The jury in postpartum mom Lindsay Clancy’s captivating murder trial asked to see a knife and pill bottles Friday before they were sent home for the weekend with no verdict reached yet.
The jurors — nine women and three men — have deliberated for over 10 hours over the course of Thursday afternoon and Friday, when they were let go and told to return Monday morning.
They have only asked a single question — to see two pieces of evidence: the knife Clancy used in her suicide attempt after she strangled her three kids and some of her prescription medication bottles.
The panelists must decide if they buy Clancy’s defense that she shouldn’t be held criminally liable because she was experiencing severe postpartum psychosis and hallucinated a voice telling her to kill the kids and herself.
Prosecutors claim the 36-year-old Duxbury, Mass., mother carefully planned to send her husband away on errands so she could strangle Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023.
Immediately after, she cut her wrists and neck, downed some of her meds and jumped out of the second-floor window of her bedroom. She was paralyzed in the fall and is now wheelchair-bound.
Clancy was motivated by wanting to get out of taking care of the kids and not wanting to leave them behind when she took her own life, prosecutors claimed.
In the four months leading up to the slayings, Clancy was suffering with debilitating insomnia, anxiety, depression and thoughts of killing herself and harming her kids, jurors learned.
During that time, she sought help from a psychiatrist, entered a perinatal clinic and even checked herself into a mental institution for five days, according to testimony.
She was also prescribed 13 powerful psychiatric medications which she believed made her mental health struggle worse.
If Clancy — who has been held at Tewksbury Hospital during her case — is found guilty, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
If the jury is persuaded by her defense and finds her not criminally responsible, then Clancy would be institutionalized indefinitely at a mental health facility.
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