Lindsay Clancy's Prosecutors Dropped WHAT Before Trial?!

[00:00:00]This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brussi.

[00:00:03]Here now, Tony Brussi.

[00:00:07]>> On July 20th, the morning jury selection began in the Lindseay Clansancy trial.

[00:00:13]The prospective jurors had not yet entered the courtroom. The cameras were rolling and before a single person was called from the pool, the prosecution was on its feet with a motion to exclude defense expert witnesses.

[00:00:28]the argument.

[00:00:30]According to Boston 25's reporting from inside the courtroom, "These people aren't really experts." Kevin Readington pushed back. He told Judge William Sullivan that one of the challenged witnesses is a doctor he consults with regularly. Sullivan allowed the motion, but called it premature, saying it could be renewed at a later point. It's not a denial, that's a postponement. The motion sits open through the entire trial and the prosecution can raise it again at any moment, including the minute before the defense expert is scheduled to take the stand. Jury selection got underway later that morning. But the motion was not the first time in the span of 11 days that the Commonwealth moved to limit who gets to speak for Lindsey Clancy's defense.

[00:01:13]who gets to put perspective, educate jurors on mental health and postpartum psychosis.

[00:01:22]It seems that Massachusetts doesn't really want an informed jury. Doesn't really want an informed public. They they just want their narrative. The one where she's an evil, bad, horrible person who wanted to take her children off the planet and jump out a window and ruin everyone's life.

[00:01:38]Yeah, that seems to make sense. has nothing to do with the 13 medications that she was ramped up on, taken off of.

[00:01:45]Put back on. Add that one. Mix this one in a little bit. Take that one with a granola bar. Don't take that with orange juice. Have a little water with this one here. Let's take this one back. Let's add a little bit more to this. Oh, that one's not working. Let's Oh, this doctor prescribed you that. We're not going to talk to that doctor because we don't like to see what everyone's doing and have any sort of cohesive medical plan to help you through this postpartum psychosis, which we're misdiagnosing the whole time. And when [ __ ] goes horribly wrong and you end up doing what you're saying, you have a fear of doing and the medication's not working, we're going to blame you.

[00:02:19]And those experts you want to bring in, those other women who've gone through this exact same horrible thing. Yeah.

[00:02:24]Here in Massachusetts, that's all that's witchery. We don't want to we don't want to have those witches come in and testify.

[00:02:34]Kind of feels like it, doesn't it? It kind of feels like we might be back in witchcraft days.

[00:02:39]You know, [laughter] the Salem witch trials, witchery, sorcery that you're bringing in. This stuff where you you hear voices, that's of the devil. That's of that ain't no, we're just going to have these old white men tell you exactly how you feel and how this all works. And uh if you don't like it, well, welcome to Massachusetts, [laughter] where where justice doesn't really have a name cuz it doesn't necessarily exist in a lot of cases.

[00:03:08]We're of course talking about Ducks, Massachusetts, where in January 24th of 2023, Cora was five, Dawson was three, Ken was 8 months old, their mother killed them with exercise bands in the basement of the family home, and then she cut herself and jumped out a second story window. you know, like sane plotting people do. She survived. She's paralyzed now. She's been held without bail at Truxberry Hospital.

[00:03:34]Lindsay Clancy has never denied doing it. Her attorney, Kevin Readington, has conceded at an open court. She has pled not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, and nobody in that courtroom is being asked to decide whether she did it.

[00:03:49]If a jury convicts her, the sentence is mandatory.

[00:03:54]life in prison, no parole, no discretion for the judge. If a jury finds her not criminally responsible, she goes to a locked state psychiatric hospital and gets evaluated on a schedule and she walks free only if authorities someday decide she's not a threat.

[00:04:12]She's already said she wants to be locked away for the rest of her life.

[00:04:15]It's kind of an amazing feat when when you if you think about this story and you think about if you yourself were in it. If you had been in a psychotic state and and did that to your children, I'm kind of amazed the woman's even still alive cuz I think I might have found a way or ate to take myself off this mortal coil at this point had I done that. It's probably only because of the situation that she's in and the care that she's under that that has not happened as of yet.

[00:04:52]Not saying I'd want her to do that. Not saying that she should, but yeah. Coming out of that psychotic state, making that my god, my god. And then saying, yeah, I was like that was not this is hor I and everybody going yes and you should burn for it too. Even though our system failed you catastrophically every step of the way, we gave you all these drugs, didn't work correctly together, and we didn't we didn't really do our homework to make sure we were giving you the right drugs in the first place. And when we screwed up, we still blamed you.

[00:05:26]You evil woman, you who really has no track record or history of doing anything to harm children. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You've dedicated your life and career to helping children as a neonatal nurse, but now we're a bunch of ignorant [ __ ] that don't pay attention and don't understand psychology in any way, shape, or form and refuse to educate ourselves and just say, "Evil, evil woman, you."

[00:05:51]That's the case in a nutshell.

[00:05:55]In my opinion, ignorant, uneducated, not wanting to face the reality that some women very readily and face in reality in such a level that thank God if you don't understand it, you never have to.

[00:06:22]And then everybody else over here who's either been affected by something like this directly or indirectly going, "Yeah, that shit's real."

[00:06:34]Why this is a question of if it's science fiction versus fact in 2026 is beyond me.

[00:06:43]It is beyond me.

[00:06:47]Yes, this exists. Just like there's wind in the air that you can't see. What is that? It's not God coughing.

[00:07:00]Every fight in this trial is about one thing. Who gets to explain her mind to 18 strangers and what those strangers are allowed to hear?

[00:07:09]On July 13th, one week before jury selection, Readington filed a motion to call lay witnesses at trial. not experts, women. Women who survived postpartum psychosis and heard command voices telling them to hurt their own children. He argued that a woman who lived through it could tell a jury what a command hallucination actually feels like from the inside. Prosecutors objected, you know, because we don't want, you know, people to have context or understanding from other real human beings. They argued on two grounds.

[00:07:36]First, the motion was a discovery violation. And according to CourtTV's reporting, Readington identified the proposed witnesses only by initials with no witness statements and no detail about what they would say. Second, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprag argued that allowing them would open the door to women who suffered the same illness and did not do this to their children, the ones who locked themselves in a room, the ones who got in a car and drove away. Then it becomes a trial within a trial, she said. Sullivan denied the motion. his reasoning for Court TV. Experts on both sides agree postpartum psychosis is real and lay witnesses would have no evidence to offer that relates specifically to the Clansancy case. He said he did not see what testimony they could give that expert witnesses could not already provide. That ruling is legally defensible, but what it does is specific. The only people alive who can describe a command hallucination from the inside, who can say what the voice sounds like and whether you can fight it, are now the only people in this case who don't get to speak.

[00:08:38]The jury learns about postpartum psychosis exclusively from professionals who studied it, not from anyone who survived it.

[00:08:46]There's a reason the prosecution has been able to strip the defense bench this way. It it has to do with who carries the burden in Massachusetts. And it's the opposite of what most people assume before. But but but before that, go back 11 days earlier because the pattern starts with a filing that looked like mercy and was actually not. On July 9th, prosecutors filed a null uh prosky.

[00:09:13]Uh I'm probably saying that wrong, my attorney friends, on three counts of strangulation. All three charges are now gone. 11 days before trial, both Stone and a spokesperson for the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office said the strangulation charges would be subsumed into the murder charges and are therefore redundant. Redundant is a legal word and it means the same conduct is already covered by a more serious charge. On its face, dropping redundant charges is is unremarkable housekeeping.

[00:09:45]Prosecutors do it routinely and most of the time nobody writes a story about it.

[00:09:49]But the timing matters. 11 days before trial, after years of pre-trial hearings, after Readington has built a defense around a full charge sheet, and the Boston Globe reported the move as a deliberate shift to focus the jury's attention on the murder charges alone because three counts of strangulation sitting alongside three counts of first-degree murder give the jury something uh prosecution does not want them to have options. A juror who can't bring herself to vote for life without parole might land on the strangulation conviction instead. A juror who's tormented by the evidence but cannot call this woman a murderer might find somewhere in the middle to put her conscious. Drop those charges and the middle disappears. The only verdicts left on the table are first-degree murder, life mandatory, or not criminally responsible. two doors, nothing in between them where reality actually lives. And every con conflicted juror in that room has to pick one.

[00:10:52]It's not a concession, it's architecture. The prosecution built a corridor with no exits. Three moves, 11 days. Charges trimmed on July 9th to eliminate the space between the two verdicts. lay witnesses blocked on July 13th to keep anyone who lived through the illness off the stand. Defense experts challenged on the morning of July 20th before a single juror was seated.

[00:11:21]Every one of those moves points the same direction. The Commonwealth is narrowing who gets to explain this woman's mind and what that jury is allowed to hear about it. Massachusetts calls it lack of criminal responsibility. Once evidence of insanity is introduced, the burden flips. The Commonwealth has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lindseay Clansancy was criminally responsible.

[00:11:43]That means proving she had substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of what she did or to conform her conduct to the law. Readington does not have to prove she was sick. Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz's office has to prove she could have stopped.

[00:12:00]That burden is precisely why the prosecution can afford to play this kind of game on the offense.

[00:12:08]When you're the side that has to prove something, you need to control what the jury hears. Every witness who gets blocked is one fewer voice complicating your your your proof. Every expert who gets challenged is one fewer opinion the jury has to to weigh against yours.

[00:12:25]those icky intrusive thoughts, those other opinions, other voices, education on the matter. Why would we want to Why would we want informed jurors? What who who wants that?

[00:12:38]Every charge that gets trimmed is one fewer place a juror can land. That isn't your verdict. The prosecution is not breaking any rules. It is managing the landscape within the rules of what it can do. And Readington knows it. At the July 13th hearing, he asked Sullivan to add an instruction before defense opening tells the jury that the burden of proof sits on the Commonwealth, not the defense. He told the court it's not the defendant's burden to prove she lacked criminal responsibility, but the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was not acting as a result of mental disease or defect.

[00:13:13]Prosecutors objected. Sprag argued it would be inappropriate to mention any affirmative defense regarding insanity before either expert testimony or the defendant herself formally makes the claim. Sullivan did not grant it. So, the jury walks into the trial not knowing the burden is reversed. The jurors will learn it eventually, but the prosecution gets to build its case first and the order it chooses with the witnesses it selects before anyone explains the rule that says they are the ones who have to prove something.

[00:13:43]Readington asked the judge to tell the jury the rules before the game started.

[00:13:46]The prosecution said, "Let us play first and then judge and and the judge let them. [laughter] Let's play a game. We're not going to tell you the rules or how you have to evaluate this stuff until after the fact." That sounds fair and smart. You guys do this really well in Massachusetts.

[00:14:05]At the same hearing, Readington asked for the jury to be sequestered, citing extensive pre-trial publicity. He had already tried to move the trial from Plymouth to Boston and had been denied.

[00:14:16]Sullivan denied sequestration as well, saying he would ask prospective jurors about their exposure and instruct them daily to avoid media coverage and social media. Sullivan also confirmed that he plans to seed 18 jurors instead of the standard 12 plus four alternatives. 12 deliberating six alternatives.

[00:14:34]Readington told Court TV that in his decades of trying cases, he's never had 18. Sullivan, he said, obviously recognizes the unusual nature of this one. So, as jury selection moves forward, here's what Readington has left to work with. His own expert witnesses, assuming they survive the prosecution's challenge, which Sullivan left open, and which the Commonwealth can renew at any point. The roughly 50 witnesses on his list, most of them friends, family, and colleagues who can testify to Lindseay Clancy's behavior and her decline in the months before January 24th. Patrick Clansancy who appears on both witness lists and testifies for the defense.

[00:15:10]According to the witnesses list that was obtained by People, the civil complaint and the medication chain his office puts at 13 drugs, the 17-minute psychiatric appointments alleged in her lawsuit. The four days she spent on a locked unit at MLAN hospital over a holiday weekend waiting for a doctor who didn't come until the holiday was over. Don't want to bother the doctor.

[00:15:36]What he does not have women who live through postpartum psychosis, possibly his own experts, depending on a motion that hasn't been resolved. Any instruction telling the jury who carries the burden before the prosecution's case and chief is already underway. And any room on the verdict she chief between life without parole and locked hospital.

[00:15:57]Readington told Court TV on July 13th that this is probably the most emotionally disturbing and challenging case of the decades he spent trying them. He also said he may seek permission to keep his client out of the courtroom for the worst of the testimony, including the autopsy photographs. He told reporters he doesn't understand how she's going to have the strength to sit through it. The prosecution is not doing anything illegal here. Every motion was filed within the rules. Every ruling is defensible on the law. Individually, none of these decisions is remarkable.

[00:16:30]Charges get consolidated. Lay testimony gets excluded. Expert qualifications get challenged. But the pattern is the argument. When you lay all three on the table in order, the picture is specific.

[00:16:41]This is a prosecution that understands it carries the heaviest burden burden in criminal law and is systematically reducing the number of voices that could give the jury reason to doubt. The strangulation charges gave jurors a place to compromise. Gone. The women who survive gave jurors a way to feel what the defense describes. Gone. The defense experts give jurors a professional opinion that contradicts the Commonwealth doctors under challenge on day one with a motion parked and reloadable.

[00:17:14]By the time the jury deliberates, the version of Lindseay Clansy's mind they carry into that room will have been shaped as much by who they did not hear as by whom they did.

[00:17:25]Cora was 5 years old, Dawson was three, Ken was 8 months old and fought for 3 days before he died. None of the three of them gets a version of where any of it comes out. Okay. A courtroom full of adults spent the opening hours of this trial arguing about who gets to talk.

[00:17:44]The argument will take four to eight weeks and the children at the center of it will never say a word.

[00:17:52]You can. So use your voice in the comments section.

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[00:18:42]Until next time, my name's Tony Bruski.

[00:18:45]We'll talk again real soon.

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