Massachusetts mother on trial in killings linked to postpartum psychosis

Jury selection began in Plymouth Superior Court on July 20 in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, a 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, as her lawyers prepared to argue that postpartum issues, including postpartum psychosis, left her not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children. Opening statements were scheduled for July 27.

Clancy is charged in connection with the January 24, 2023 deaths of the children in Duxbury. Prosecutors had originally brought three strangulation charges, but those charges were dropped before trial. The case has become one of the most closely watched Massachusetts homicide proceedings in recent years because it asks jurors to separate a medical crisis from the legal standard for criminal responsibility.

That distinction sits at the center of the defense. Reporting tied to the case says Clancy’s mental health collapsed after the birth of her third child, and that she sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders before the killings. Her lawyers are expected to argue that postpartum psychosis, or another severe postpartum mental illness, affected her ability to understand or control her actions in a way that could meet Massachusetts’s not criminally responsible standard.

The court has already set limits on how that defense can be presented. A judge denied Clancy’s request to call witnesses who had personal experience with postpartum psychosis, narrowing the testimony the jury may hear about the condition. The same judge restricted public posting of some of the most disturbing evidence, including Patrick Clancy’s 911 call and autopsy photographs, while still allowing that material to be used in court.

Patrick Clancy, the children’s father, asked the public to forgive his wife, and he may testify during the trial. The case has drawn frequent comparisons to Andrea Yates, the Texas mother whose killings became a landmark postpartum psychosis case in public discussion, underscoring how the Plymouth jury will be asked to decide not only what happened in the home in Duxbury, but whether a severe psychiatric episode can alter criminal culpability under the law.