Lindsay Clancy Defense Takes Hit After Hit — Paramedics Describe the Horror (Trial Day 3)

[00:00:00] Lawyer Lee: Today was a brutal day for Lindsay Plancy and her defense attorney. She has a very savvy defense attorney, and he tried everything he could to minimize how bad today would be for the case. But there was no denying that today was a tremendous score for the prosecution, and the defense took hits all day long. Because today was the day that the paramedics and EMTs and police officers who came to the scene talked about what happened on the day that Lindsay Plancy admits she committed an unspeakable act. Hi, I'm Lawyer Lee, and great news. Tomorrow, the new cable system is being installed with upgraded internet, so hopefully we can be back live tomorrow night. It was going to be a rough day for Lindsay Plancy's defense, no matter what. The story is just unsurpassingly tragic. Three kids in a basement, Lindsay Plancy's own kids, bands around their necks, their distraught father, Lindsay's husband, and Lindsay Plancy, who threw herself from a window after she attacked the kids and now is paralyzed for life. Now, this case is about two competing theories. For the prosecution, they believe that what happened was so horrible, so unspeakable, that Lindsay Plancy must be held accountable. And today was all about that. For the defense, they believe that Lindsay Plancy tried very hard to get mental health help, and she was not criminally responsible for what occurred. She tried to get help. She could not get help, and she was unable to understand that what she was doing was wrong. She was powerless to do anything different. So they will take turns, and today was the prosecution's turn. Today was the prosecution's day and tough for Lindsay. But the defense lawyer, as I said, is very savvy. We're going to talk about a couple of techniques he used to try to soften the blow and about whether or not they worked. You know, we know right off the bat that the first thing he tried did not work. He filed a motion asking the court to limit the number of these scene witnesses that the prosecution could call. He said, we don't need them all, Judge. You know, we've got, we don't need every police officer, every EMT, every firefighter. That's just repetitive. It's cumulative. And if you put enough of them all together, it's prejudicial to the client. There's no need for that. A couple of them can tell what the jury needs to know. But the judge said, no, the Commonwealth gets to try its case as it wants to try its case. These witnesses were there at the scene on the night that the children died. And what they say can be helpful to the jury. That's what the judge said. But as I say, Lindsay's attorney, Kevin Reddington, is a great defense attorney. So he did the next best thing. And it was really kind of a surprise. He did everything in his power to cut the day short. So if you're going to have, think of it this way. If you're going to have a really, really bad day, wouldn't you rather have a really, really bad four-hour day instead of a really, really bad eight-hour day? So what Kevin Reddington did is he asked literally nothing of the first half dozen witnesses or so. In fact, here is everything he said with the first couple of witnesses. [00:03:41] Speaker 2: Thank you for your incredible service. [00:03:44] Lawyer Lee: That's it. Thank you for your incredible service. And then he just said he had no questions for most of the witnesses today. That was really brilliant. It accomplished two different things. First of all, it cut down on the very painful period that all of this would keep coming at the jury. We ended before lunchtime, and they got in a lot of witnesses, even in that short amount of time. I don't know how many more they intend to bring, but it sounded like we had heard from the majority in something around four hours, maybe even less. Now, the second thing that Kevin Reddington accomplished by asking no questions was he made a statement that the jury can trust that he will not waste their time. So he held off until the last few witnesses. And then he finally stood up and asked a handful of questions. What that meant was that by the time he actually stood up, everyone was ready to listen to him because they knew he was not going to ask questions or waste their time. If he's asking a question, it must be something he thinks is important. Very wise, I think. But even so, it was a brutal four hours for Lindsay Clancy because there is just no getting around the fact that what happened to those children is wrong on every possible level. So today, the prosecution wanted to make two primary points. We're going to look at the clips that show that. First was how completely terrible this event was. It was the killing of three young children by the person who was their primary caretaker. The person they would have expected to love and protect them more than anyone else in the world, except perhaps for their father. Secondly, the prosecution wanted to show that Lindsay Clancy was not really in postpartum psychosis. That what she did that supposedly was an attempt at taking her own life was really faint, that she really didn't have the injuries she pretended to cut herself. She didn't really do that. And the jury, therefore, shouldn't believe her. When she says she was in postpartum psychosis, when she says that she heard this voice, no one should believe her because she's inventing all of this to try to get out of a penalty for what she did. Now, those were two critically important points, and let's start with the first one. The prosecution showing the jury how terrible the event was. It really, frankly, was not very hard. We have very dramatic descriptions from cops, EMTs, who you would assume will be hardened after years and years of seeing such things. But nonetheless, it was so horrific as they described it. There was one cop wiping tears from his eyes. It was emotional, even without any effort, just because of what happened. We heard a description of just how desperate and how frantic Lindsay's husband, Patrick, was. The jury has already heard the 911 call. We didn't get to hear it. But we heard a description. Here's a first person, Brian Josephine from the Duxbury Police Department, about Patrick. [00:07:06] Speaker 3: Upon his observation of us, myself and Officer Hall, he proceeded to head in our direction, leaving that room. And at that point, he looked up and he screamed she killed the kids. [00:07:20] Speaker 4: And after he said that, where did you go? [00:07:24] Speaker 3: Once he cleared himself from the doorframe, we were able to look inside the room where we observed what appeared to be a child laying motionless on the floor. [00:07:33] Speaker 4: And did you later learn his name was Dawson Clancy? [00:07:36] Speaker 3: Yes, I did. [00:07:37] Lawyer Lee: Now, a small point you're about to hear, and I want to just point it out as we're listening. There has been talk about whether or not the children were on their backs or not. I'm going to talk about why my guess is that that's important. But the witness is going to say Dawson was on his back, which is something the prosecution, I think, wants. I'll explain why. [00:07:57] Speaker 3: He was laying on his back, kind of close to the gym bag for reference of that. [00:08:04] Speaker 4: Showing Elizabeth 93 again, the reference of the gym bag. Is that the bag to the left of the child's toy? [00:08:13] Lawyer Lee: Yes. So it's the juxtaposition, I think. You've got the death and children's toys, two things that really just should never go together. And the prosecution wanted to get all of this in before the jury goes to view the home where the Clancies were living and where all of these events occurred. The jury has now seen, like in the picture you just saw, they have seen the place where the children were found. And now they're going to see that exact place when they go on the view tomorrow. So we had witness after witness come and, despite the attempt of the defense to cut this off, and the defense raised again the motion from before, but the judge said no. But we heard this same story or a variation of it from multiple people. So next, Vincent Cahill of the Duxbury Police. [00:09:11] Speaker 4: Do you hear, or did you hear, loud screaming? Yes. And as a result of that, did you go inside the home? Yes. And did you go to the basement area? [00:09:21] Speaker 5: Yes. [00:09:22] Speaker 4: And when you went down the basement stairs, did you go to the right or the left? [00:09:26] Speaker 5: I initially went to the right, and I was following the father. [00:09:29] Speaker 4: So as you're going down the stairs, you say the father, is that Patrick Clancy? Yes. Do you see him as you're going down the basement stairs? Yes. And where is he coming from, and where is he going to? He's coming from my left, heading to my right. And what is his demeanor? [00:09:44] Speaker 5: He was screaming. [00:09:46] Speaker 4: And as you came down the stairs, did he point in a direction? [00:09:50] Speaker 5: Yes. [00:09:50] Speaker 4: Where did he point to? [00:09:51] Speaker 5: To the left side. [00:09:52] Speaker 4: And is that where you headed? [00:09:53] Speaker 5: Yes. [00:09:54] Speaker 4: And when you went to the left, did you see two children on the floor in that area of the basement? [00:09:59] Speaker 5: Yes. [00:10:00] Speaker 4: And what did you do? [00:10:02] Speaker 5: I checked the pulse of the five-year-old girl and passed that information along. And then when fire came on scene, I then was backing away because fire was going to start taking over, taking care of the five-year-old girl. I then backed into the infant who was on the ground. [00:10:19] Speaker 4: So you said that you checked the five-year-old. Was that Cora Clancy? Yes. You checked her for a pulse. Did she have a pulse? No. And you said fire came down and started taking over. Was that firefighters from Duxbury Fire Department? Yes, ma'am. And you said you started backing up. Is that when you bumped into Callan Clancy? [00:10:37] Speaker 5: Yes, ma'am. [00:10:38] Speaker 4: And at that point in time, what did you do next? [00:10:41] Speaker 5: I checked Callan's pulse. [00:10:43] Speaker 4: And did he have a pulse? [00:10:44] Speaker 5: No. [00:10:45] Lawyer Lee: And so, again, remember, it's an important point, I think, for the prosecution, how exactly the children were positioned. More on that again in a minute. But here's Brian Josephine talking about what he saw when he was at the scene. He's from the Duxbury Police. We heard from him just a minute ago. [00:11:02] Speaker 4: Do you recall whether he was on his back or something else? [00:11:06] Speaker 3: He was on his back. [00:11:07] Speaker 4: And do you recall his physical appearance? [00:11:11] Speaker 3: Like I said, he was laying on his back. His head was tilted to the right-hand side. Looked at him kind of in the face area once we got closer. And his face was white, gray. Lips were blue. Eyes were bloodshot. Looked like blood vessels were popped in his eyes. [00:11:32] Speaker 4: Did you notice any injuries to his neck? [00:11:35] Speaker 3: Seeing that, my first instinct was to kind of grab his head and tilt it to the side, see if I could get a pulse. But, I mean, based on my training experience from previous incidents, I knew it wasn't going to be good. So, I moved ahead. That's where I observed some red marks on that right-hand side. [00:11:52] Speaker 4: Of the neck? [00:11:53] Speaker 3: Yes. [00:11:55] Speaker 4: And in that exhibit, 94, there was a yellow exercise band, correct? [00:12:03] Lawyer Lee: Yes. So, let me talk for just a minute about why I think the position of the children matters and why the prosecution is asking about that. I believe what probably will happen is that the prosecution will ask some of the future witnesses, how long did this take? How long did each child take? How long did she spend doing this unspeakable thing? And even worse, if she's staring at them, looking into their eyes as she's doing it. There was contradictory testimony about what way the kids were turned, but I think one witness at least said all three were face-up. And I think that's one of the arguments that the prosecution will make is she had this amount of time to look at them and she still went through with it. This is someone who knew exactly what she was doing, who intentionally did something like this. This is someone who was not under postpartum psychosis. She is someone in control of her faculties and knowing exactly what she's doing. That is the first point, I think, just the horror of the day that the children were found and how very bad it is and how important that is for the state making its case. The second point, I think, that they went after hard is whether or not Lindsay Clancy truly tried to unalive herself. Did she really do that? She took pills, she cut herself on the wrists, on the neck, she threw herself out a second floor window. But what was that? Was it truly an attempt at unaliving? The defense believes absolutely yes. But the prosecution believes that this is maybe a ploy for sympathy or to convince people that she was in some kind of mental illness psychosis period. Now, importantly, you would not normally think that throwing yourself out a second floor window is going to result in your death. And in fact, it didn't here, right? Lindsay, instead, is now paralyzed because she hit that cold ground, that cold, frozen Boston ground in January. But there were also cuts that she had made to the wrist and neck, as I'd said. The prosecution says that's not a real attempt on her life. Those were just surface-level cuts. They were designed for show. They were nowhere near deep enough to actually cause her death. So all day, the prosecution witnesses were coming in and describing those cuts and calling them superficial, saying they weren't even bleeding at the time. And in fact, we heard something similar from Patrick Clancy. We know that on the 911 call, he said that the cuts weren't bleeding at the time he was talking to 911. And so he didn't need to do anything like apply pressure. So the prosecution is doing well on this point. I think we saw the pictures of the blood in the room. It frankly did not look like as much as you might think. Obviously, she didn't hit an artery. It wasn't anything that probably would have been life-threatening is how it looked. So we heard this from Daniel Daugherty, a paramedic. [00:15:18] Speaker 6: Lacerations to both wrists as well as her neck. [00:15:21] Speaker 4: And were those lacerations actively bleeding? No. Can you describe the lacerations that you saw on her neck? [00:15:27] Speaker 6: There was dry blood. Seemed to be somewhat superficial since there was no active bleed. [00:15:30] Speaker 4: And what about the cuts on her wrists? Same. And would you say same? Are you saying that there was no active bleeding there? Correct. And what, if anything, did you do to treat those wounds? [00:15:42] Speaker 6: We bandaged them up. I believe we placed an APD pad, just a sterile pad, on her neck as well. [00:15:46] Speaker 4: You said an APD or sterile pad. Is that just a type of like gauze or something that you put on the wound? [00:15:51] Lawyer Lee: Now, as I said, even Patrick Clancy acknowledged that she wasn't bleeding. So the defense lawyer sat through several witnesses who called it superficial wound, and I think the reason is, the tactic, the choice he had made, he was not going to cross-examine every witness. So he just, he kept biding his time, waiting for the moment. So at long last, after several witnesses, he did get up and he made the point that a lot of the people who were saying she wasn't bleeding might not really know whether she was or wasn't because she was bandaged up. This is Robert Costanzo, a paramedic. [00:16:33] Speaker 2: She had already been wrapped up on her wrist, right? That's correct. Already been wrapped up, had the thing on the neck to prevent the head from moving, right? That's correct. And also had bandages perhaps on her neck area, I'm not sure. [00:16:46] Speaker 7: There were no bandages that I could see because the collar blocks, yeah. Most of it I could see there are some holes in the collar that we could see some superficial lacerations through. Right. But there was no active bleeding. Her wrists were already bandaged, so we don't take the bandages off after they're on. [00:17:00] Speaker 2: Okay. And there was no blood. Now, did you know, sir, at all that she suffered a burst fracture of a cervical spine? Did you know that, sir? [00:17:08] Speaker 7: No. [00:17:09] Speaker 2: T5 through T6, T4, T6, T6, T7, T8 all exploded, fractured? Did you know that? No. Did you know that there was hemorrhaging into her body, that she fractured every rib in her body? [00:17:20] Speaker 7: No. [00:17:22] Speaker 2: It was pretty dark out there, wasn't it? [00:17:24] Speaker 7: It was. [00:17:25] Speaker 2: Did you obviously administer aid to her, or did you also have, like, a flashlight on your head, or were you holding a flashlight, or what? [00:17:32] Speaker 7: She was already packaged. She was already on the longboard and everything, so we picked her up, put her on the stretcher, and moved out of the backyard into the ambulance. [00:17:39] Speaker 2: So how long did you handle, if you will, her while she was laying there? [00:17:45] Speaker 7: On scene. We were only on scene for, I think it was seven minutes, I think, total on scene, from the time that we. Yes. [00:17:54] Speaker 2: And it was dark in the backyard, right? [00:17:56] Speaker 7: Yes. [00:17:57] Speaker 2: There was no exterior lighting, no nothing on the house that was lit up, like spotlights or anything, right? [00:18:03] Speaker 7: That's correct. [00:18:03] Speaker 2: No flashlights, right? [00:18:05] Speaker 7: No. [00:18:06] Speaker 2: And you scrutinized a hole in the thing that goes around the neck when someone has a head injury, especially a cervical injury, thoracic injuries. You scrutinized a hole that noted that there was a superficial wound to her neck. [00:18:22] Speaker 7: That's all we could see through the side of the collar. [00:18:24] Speaker 2: And you've talked about your testimony with the district attorneys in the past, haven't you? Yes. One of the things that they asked you is whether or not it appeared as though the injuries to her neck or wrist were superficial. Isn't that right? Yes. And other than looking through the little hole and the thing around her neck in the dark, you didn't see her neck after that was removed, did you? [00:18:53] Lawyer Lee: No. That was really well done in terms of cross-examination. But then there was extremely effective redirect from the prosecutor representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was excellent. Here it is. [00:19:09] Speaker 4: Sir, after the seven minutes that you were in the dark backyard, you were then in an ambulance for 18 minutes with the patient, correct? That's correct. And there's lighting in the ambulance, correct? There is. And during those 18 minutes in the well-lit ambulance, did you ever see blood seeping through the bandages on her wrist? No. During those 18 minutes in the well-lit ambulance, did you ever see blood pooling around her neck or flowing from the neck? [00:19:35] Speaker ?: No. [00:19:36] Lawyer Lee: So I don't know that the prosecution has proven that she did not actually intend to harm herself. But I think they did make a good point that it wasn't bleeding, that it wasn't particularly deep for whatever amount of credit the jury decides to give that. The defense attorney also tried arguing that maybe she wasn't bleeding because it was so incredibly cold that night. [00:20:01] Speaker 2: Do you know on that evening what the temperature was outside? It was cold. Wicked cold, wasn't it? In the 30s. It was lower than that, wasn't it? I couldn't die. It was really cold. [00:20:08] Speaker 6: Yeah. And how long was she laying in the snow and on the ground? We got the call at six-ish or whatever time it was. [00:20:13] Speaker 2: The call came because her husband came home from picking up food and found her on the ground, right? Correct. So you don't know how long she was laying in the snow on the ground, right? No. In the cold? Correct. And what's hemostasis, do you know? What's that? What's hemostasis? What does that mean? [00:20:26] Speaker 6: Just the coagulation. [00:20:27] Speaker 2: And do you know what the effect of hypothermia... Let me ask you, what's hypothermia? [00:20:30] Speaker 6: It's just the body, under temperature of the body. [00:20:33] Speaker 2: Under temperature of the body? Your body is not at the temperature that it should be. Right. Because of the environment, right? Cold, right? Sometimes it can be medically induced, right? Hypothermia affects the blood flow, doesn't it? Yes. So all these questions about whether or not there's blood seeping through the wrist bandages and whether or not there's blood through the holes in the neck brace, you don't know what effect the hypothermia, if any, had on that, would you? [00:20:56] Speaker ?: No. [00:20:58] Lawyer Lee: But again, there was very effective redirect by the prosecution. [00:21:03] Speaker 4: Sir, there's typically heat in a hospital, correct? Usually, yes. And were you aware that, well, Ms. Clancy went to South Shore Hospital, correct? Yes. And are you aware that the wound on her wrist did not have to be sutured until the following day? [00:21:20] Speaker 6: I didn't get any of that information after. [00:21:22] Speaker 4: Were you aware that the wound on her neck never had to be sutured? Same answer. [00:21:27] Lawyer Lee: Today was great for the prosecution. The defense did what it could, which was mostly just minimize the hits. Tomorrow will also be tough. As the realism of what happens sinks in for the jury. They are going to actually see the scene. They will be put into the situation, making them to some degree live it and what the experience would have been like. It's a very powerful time for the prosecution. Defense attorneys usually resist something like this same view, but the defense here keeps continuing to hammer on the question that matters for resolving the case. Is Lindsay Clancy criminally responsible for what happened or was she in postpartum psychosis so severe she could not appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing or she couldn't conform her conduct? Let me know in the comments, what are you thinking? As we follow the evidence night by night, what are your thoughts about the case so far? Please hit the like button and subscribe. I'll see you tomorrow night at 7:00ish.