What Lindsay Clancy's Diary Entries Reveal & Key Witness Testimony in the Murder Trial of Her 3 Kids

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I want to be well. I can't make a plan. And I'm terrified till the next nap time. I don't know if I have brain fog. And I cannot tell if I'm withdrawing from medications. Those are the haunting words of Lindsay Clancy as read by her defense attorney Kevin Reddington at the end of day five of testimony today from her journal directly from there. Are these the writings of a mother who is suffering from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis? Or is it just a mother who is overwhelmed and should be held criminally responsible for the murders of her three young children? That is the core question at the heart of the Lindsay Clancy [00:00:50] Speaker 2: trial. Welcome to the global phenomenon, Surviving the Survivor. Here's your host, Emmy award-winning journalist, Joel Waldman. [00:00:58] Speaker 1: What's up, STS Nation? Welcome to Surviving the Survivor. This is the global phenomenon bringing you the very best guests in all of true crime. Today wrapped up day five of testimony in the Lindsay Clancy trial live from Plymouth, Massachusetts and Surviving the Survivor bringing you gavel to gavel coverage. And today saw 14 witnesses coming on and off the stand and perhaps the most powerful testimony coming at the very end of the day. There were two witnesses who were forensic psychiatrists who treated Lindsay Clancy after she committed these murders, admittedly, according to her criminal defense attorney. And then at the very end, while there was a mass state trooper on the witness stand, Kevin Reddington read from a journal that Lindsay Clancy had written that this Massachusetts state trooper had reviewed as part of a warrant of information he collected. And it was very haunting to hear that about how sort of out of control she felt that her life was becoming. Without further ado, we've got the best guests in all true crime is not a tagline. It is our reality. Here is R, the letter R and O-U-R, Timothy Jansen, the famed Tallahassee criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. All around, great guy. His hair and his spirit is immutable. Next up, Joshua Ritter, the host of Courtroom Confidential. He's also a former L.A. Prosecutor of the Year. People have been chirping at me saying, hey, you guys are too one sided. You are too empathetic to this defense. Not Josh Ritter. He has no heart. He's a prosecutor, rose people in prison. And here he is. That's what he did for a living. And he will explain why this case should be prosecuted, if that is in fact what he thinks. And last but not least, if you heard of Dartmouth University, it's one of the best in the nation. She is a teacher. She lectures on postpartum issues, mental health related to maternity, maternity. Her name is Clara Lewis. Love the name Clara, author of American Infanticide, the subtitle Sexism, Science and the Politics of Sympathy. And she has extensively researched renowned as well as Dr. Margaret Spinelli, both of whom are expected to be defense star witnesses who are legends in the field. They are what Dr. Anne Burgess is to criminal profiling. They are this to maternal mental health issues, these two people, and they will be testifying in this trial. Tim Jansen, let me start with you as the sort of the father figure, the brother figure, the whatever figure, the man who's been around STS for since the very beginning, Courtroom Confidential here, gifting five memberships. Thank you to Tiff and Josh Ritter himself for that. But Tim Jansen, you know, I look at the chat and I see a very [00:04:25] Speaker 3: divided chat. Why are they prosecuting this case? Why are they moving forward? So everybody's going to get a glimpse to get a glimpse of the evidence. They're seeing why the prosecutors are going through this. And they're seeing a very experienced defense lawyer cross examining and raising issues that I [00:04:47] Speaker 1: think will still divide this jury. Josh Ritter, if I pay enough, can I file a lawsuit against Google and YouTube? I hope the algorithm is not picking this up. We're having a glitch. It is not on our end. It's on the YouTube end, Josh, but it is affecting my show. Can we file suit against these mega titans of [00:05:10] Speaker 4: industry? I think you should just to get their attention. Yeah, it seems like people are very frustrated. I don't know if refreshing it might help. Yeah, it'll help the greater public. But Josh, [00:05:25] Speaker 1: that wasn't like an emphatic. Yes, I'm going to draft something tonight. That was kind of like Joel's annoying me. Let's move on. Josh, we had 14 witnesses testify today. Nine, I believe, testified on Friday. This appears to be going at a very rapid pace right now. Are you surprised at the speed that these witnesses are coming up and then stepping off of the witness stand? No, I don't, you know, [00:05:56] Speaker 4: I've been watching it and I don't think the clip of it seems rushed. It seems like they're getting what they need out of the wit. I think what you're witnessing more than anything is just attorneys on both sides who are efficient with their time. I think we probably get used to watching a lot of trials where that is not the case and attorneys like to talk and hear themselves and they tend to bloviate a little bit and probably take too long with witnesses. But I think they're just both being very efficient with their time and how they've been getting through these witnesses. And I agree with Tim. Um, I've noticed that as well on my channel, on other channels where I've discussed this, uh, people are very, um, they feel very strongly about this. I don't know if people, I don't know if people are all that divided. I mean, I think they all have the same feelings. It's not like, it's not like people don't feel people who support Lindsay Clancy. It's not like they don't feel for the children. And people who feel that she is guilty are not callous to the idea of what she was going through, but they have very strong feelings about how they think this should end up. And I think a lot of those feelings, um, are directed at kind of our overall larger, uh, mental health system. And that, you know, it seems to have been a failure in this instance. I think that's causing a lot of people to be angry because I think, I think what they see, I think what everybody agrees on is that we see a woman who by all accounts had no indication that she did anything but love her children before all of this, that she was raising two children before the last and loved them and no problems, no issues with violence, no issues with any kind of, um, you know, feelings of, of violence towards them. She has a third, she starts to struggle with this, uh, postpartum psychosis, depression, uh, whatever the diagnosis may have been at the time that she was being treated. This is something that a lot of people can sympathize with. A lot of people who have experienced themselves or have loved ones who have experienced similar, uh, type, uh, struggles. And so I think because of that, we go, wow, this woman must have been insane to have done this, to have this anomaly take place in her life. She must have been insane. This isn't like the typical, you know, we've talked about cases in the past where children are murdered and usually it's in the midst of some really ugly divorce proceeding and there's, um, you know, some sort of custody battle taking place and it's part of this murder suicide and they take out the entire family. None of that seems to exist here. So you have a woman that I think people are left with. The only explanation they can wrap their heads around is the idea that she must have snapped. Now from a lawyer's perspective and from the prosecution's perspective, they've got an uphill battle because they're going to have to explain to jurors that yes, while that is true, that's not really what the question is in front of them. The question in front of them is not, was Lindsey Clancy sick? Not was she very sick? Not was she even psychotic or experiencing auditory hallucinations? But in that moment, was she so sick that she couldn't even appreciate that what she was doing was wrong? The law probably did itself a disservice by even calling this concept insanity because we start to think about it in terms of psychiatry and medical terms. We start to think about it in terms of what we would consider insane behavior ourselves. But really the criminal law is only concerned with the mens rea. Could you form Massachusetts in this type of case? [00:09:52] Speaker 1: Josh, just explain that a little bit more. So the burden shift to the defense in Florida, but in Massachusetts, what happens to the Commonwealth? [00:10:00] Speaker 4: Yeah. In most jurisdictions, if you bring any kind of affirmative defense, they call it by the by the defense, the burden shifts to you. So like if you're going to say, I was defending myself, [00:10:11] Speaker 3: it's a self-defense case. Ask for a lawyer. That is not normally admissible in any court because it's prejudicial. You have the right to have an attorney. You can say stop questioning, but normally they don't let you get in there. Say he asked for an attorney and he probably did it one time. But in this case, my understanding, it was like 10 or 12 days later after she was in the hospital, after she was secluded from her family. And so he has every right to object and he doesn't want that inference that she's guilty. That's why she asked for an attorney, right? He probably should have asked for some kind of an instruction. And sometimes when you ask for that instruction, sometimes you play, you give more credence to that statement. The prosecution, of course, wants to get that out and they're going to keep doing it as long as the judge lets them get away with it. And they probably should not be able to keep saying she asked for an attorney, she asked for an attorney. Everybody has a right to an attorney. And normally, you don't really get that maybe one time, why the questioning stops, but you don't keep hammering it. It's a negative inference and it shouldn't be done. [00:11:22] Speaker 1: To me, it's almost like someone takes the fifth. You cannot mention that at all. We saw that Donna Adelson. It's akin to that. Okay. Clara Lewis, she is author of American Infanticide. She's a lecturer at Dartmouth, one of the finest universities in the great United States of America. Obvious first question, Clara. How did you get into this field? What piqued your interest to get into it as a career? [00:11:46] Speaker 5: Oh, I've been doing work in critical criminology since graduate school. My background is in sociology and American history. And I became interested in studying infanticide in the US. A sort of an ambitious young researcher and just realizing that there had been very little work done in that area outside of forensic psychiatry and wanting to take a more interdisciplinary approach. Now, I mean, doing this work for this long has had some pretty intense negative impacts. One of the things that the lawyers on both sides and the jurors are going to be dealing with is the exposure to secondary trauma. The public as well. I mean, this trial, we're only at the beginning of the second week and these cases and getting close to them are known to have a really intense secondary trauma impact on everyone. So the trial is becoming a vector of that already, even at this early time. So would I go back and advise myself to to study something else perhaps. But I am happy to see the field advancing in a more interdisciplinary direction and seeing more different kinds of researchers getting involved. [00:12:53] Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, I guess, you know, this is a tragedy all the way around. It's an awful story. I mean, there's no other way to say it. But is the silver lining here that people become a little more educated about the issue of mental health issues revolving around pregnancy, such as postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. Do you hope that that's what people maybe get out of this is our more public discussions and conversations about those things? Yeah. And I hate to think of a silver lining or an [00:13:27] Speaker 5: upshot. It's just, you know, this didn't need to happen. This information has been widely available. We didn't need a tragedy of this nature to occur in order for there to be a better understanding of postpartum psychosis and depression. But I am heartened. Even watching your coverage, you know, last week, I thought it was really noticeable. You know, the Tommy Pope, even someone who had prosecuted Susan Smith was having seemed sincerely really curious to have this better understanding of postpartum psychosis. So if prosecutors and police are taking an interest, I do think that's a public good. And there is just so much more to know and understand here. And I do hope that that curiosity can take us into more productive conversations about what prevention might look like. [00:14:17] Speaker 1: STS, please feel free to weigh in. And here's a great question from Meowmer. Josh, to you, there was a point in the day when the prosecution sort of snidely during a, you know, line of questioning said she didn't see a unicorn in the corner. Kind of poking fun, in essence, like she was so nutty that she's now seeing unicorns and rainbows. But, and you see the comment right after that, says the unicorn comment, unicorn comment today took the cake, ignorant beyond words. I mean, doesn't the prosecution here have to be careful and sensitive either way, whether she is found criminally responsible, or she's not found criminally responsible. At the end of the day, this is about three young children, you know, Cora Dawson and Kallen being murdered at the hands of her mother. Isn't there a certain level of, I guess, intent and just dignity that the Commonwealth has to [00:15:26] Speaker 4: operate at? Yes. And that has been the part that's been most troubling to me in the way that they've handled this is that even from the start, from opening statements, I feel that there's been a lack of, there's been certainly a lack of empathy or understanding towards Lindsay Clancy, whether or not she was going through anything. And there's been a lack of, I think, appreciation that the jurors might not feel as passionate about this as the prosecution does because they haven't gotten there yet. They haven't, they, you know, this is the beginning of the trial and they, they have maybe not have proven that enough to be as kind of vociferous as they've been about this and her guilt. And certainly dismissive comments like this are probably never all that successful and going to land with the jury. And, and on top of it, it strategically doesn't make sense to me because they've added a burden to themselves that they don't need. I would have thought that they would have come in and said, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to hear about a woman who was very sick. And she was, she was being treated for months. She was having intrusive thoughts. She was having, she was prescribed heavy duty psychotropic medications. You're going to hear from her husband that she was struggling and earnest to get help. And all of that is true. But what we intend to prove to you is that in spite of all of that, she still knew in these crucial moments, what she was doing was wrong. They're not mutually exclusive concepts. You can be very, very sick and you can be having auditory hallucinations and you can be having intrusive thoughts and thoughts about taking your own life and still commit a crime, but they have gone farther than that and added to their burden because they've taken the position that she's faking everything, that it's all a big fake and that she wasn't taking her medication or she was trying to seek out medication or she was seeking attention. I'll be honest with you. I'm not even quite clear as to what their strategy is on her mental health, but they're very dismissive of it and they're full stop saying it's not true. And even her attempt to take her own life, they're calling a fake. And I just feel like that, that is really stretching their credibility with the, with the jurors. And if you're in support of the idea that this is a case where as sad as it may be, that should probably end up in a criminal conviction, then, then you should be very concerned with the way that the prosecution is handling this because they're not doing it in the delicate soft touch and way in which it should be done. And they're probably going to alienate some of these jurors, even jurors that might have been on board with their arguments are going to be a little kind of bothered by the way that they've been handling this. [00:18:30] Speaker 1: Speaker 1: Yeah, this is why Josh Ritter was prosecutor of the year. I mean, he's making the point and I agree with them that there's a way to handle this with sensitivity and it is not mutually exclusive. And that would be a way better approach. You see Malia here, 825 new subscriber. Welcome, Malia. Glad to have you at STS. As someone that suffers with mental illness, the prosecution is really going to turn off the jury. It could be a lot more gentle in approaching mental health. And look, there's going to be people on that jury who have some mental illness in some form or capacity or have dealt with it. It's impossible. Speaker 1: Family member, loved one. Yeah, [00:19:09] Speaker 4: they did very close to them. Yeah. Speaker 1: [00:19:11] Speaker 1: A hundred percent. I mean, they're going to be connected to it in some way. The children here were beautiful and happy, very tragic for all involved. I'm going to get back to Claire again in a second, but Tim, would you or, or Josh, but I'll ask you, would you have taken this case as a criminal defense attorney, uh, is this kind of case that would have appealed to you? And you agree with Josh that the prosecution maybe, and I don't know their strategy either other than she was BSing it all. Uh, and she didn't really try to take her own life. I think Josh is absolutely right. That is sort of how it's coming across. She had other intentions. That's why she's calling for an attorney. Uh, they're kind of blurring a line there also in this relationship between she and her husband, that maybe there were things going on that we are not aware of. And unless it comes out in trial, we're going to remain that way. But number one, Tim, would you take this? And number two, [00:20:03] Speaker 3: do you agree with Josh? Well, you know, you take cases all the time for different reasons, right? You might be related to the person or you see an issue that you think is important to you, or you're going to protect her rights, no matter what she did. If you believe that this prosecution is not righteous, which what Kevin has said, and the way the prosecution has presented its case and presents themself is, is kind of barbaric, right? Uh, make the husband come back in there, um, and relive this and make him go through all this and, and, and saying her whole, everything is fake. Um, making them go into the crime scenes, write a bus to go to CVS, go to the restaurant and then go by the home and in the home where new people live because they know that they, they've got marching orders from the, the DA and they're not thinking like people. It kind of reminds me of when you argue or debate somebody and that person really doesn't debate you. They yell and they scream and they never give you any credibility with your arguments. They never discount them or are able to debate them. They just are rigid in their view. And that's the way they're coming across to the jury. They're rigid in their view, whatever a doctor said, whatever pills she was described and the injuries. I mean, she slit her throat, cut both of her wrists and jumped out of a window. Now, if you're saying she faked that, then you really have no sense of objectivity and no reason because no one on that jury is not going to believe she didn't try to commit suicide that night. Nobody, she wasn't successful, but she sure as hell tried. [00:21:52] Speaker 4: And you don't, and you don't need to prove it either. Like, right. That's my point. Like you, that doesn't ma, it doesn't get to what they need to prove. And they're adding that to their case. [00:22:03] Speaker 3: They just, they got marching orders and I think they, someone has convinced them to see its approach they need to take. And like all trials, if the jury doesn't like a lawyer, they're not going to go with you. And if you have to get that jury to climb a mountain and two mountains, in this case, you're not going to get over that mountain. [00:22:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, here's Renee ethereal with, uh, a thought that maybe a juror is having, uh, she's upset. She says, yeah, let's all feel sorry for a killer mom, which could be the feelings, uh, that some of these 18 jurors have. Um, which brings me to an interesting point here. Uh, Clara, if this was a man on trial who in the moment had a psychotic episode and shoots and kills his three kids, which a lot of people compare it to, uh, this Chad Dorman case, um, I think there would be a lot less empathy, a lot less sympathy. Is there, um, is there some kind of gender bias, uh, a line that has been drawn in the sand? Cause I think most of us can agree if a man went and killed his three children, they would have to, this guy would have to be talking to himself and swatting at imaginary flies and bouncing off the walls for him to not get convicted. And even then he would probably get convicted. Is there more empathy because of the maternal aspect here in your opinion? [00:23:33] Speaker 5: Oh, it's a great question. And it actually connects with the analysis that we are just having in terms of the prosecutorial strategy. I would say that sympathy in these cases historically has proven to be extremely volatile and that you can see both lenience and also, um, kind of revengeance, retribution, depending on whether or not the perpetrator is, uh, viewed as herself a victim or as basically in this just monster it's kind of subhuman category and public perception and jury perception can kind of wildly swing either way. So there are certainly cases where you see lenience extended, but that monster category also exists. And I think kind of a few different things are true here at the same time. And I think the prosecutorial strategy is very risky for that reason that this appears to be re-victimizing all of the people that were closest to the victims and that that will probably work towards pushing her more towards appearing sympathetic and like a co-victim as well. Um, and, and that can really, you know, that can happen in these cases, but I think the bigger picture to consider, um, is that there's also just a very routine over prosecution of pregnancy-related tragedies in this country. And it's important to consider this prosecution in light of all of those other cases. Um, infanticide cases that I've worked on as an expert witness and gotten close to, um, you know, these are cases where there's far fewer victims and an absence of any violence. You know, these are sort of tragic accidents that occur immediately after birth. It's a subcategory of infant homicide known as neonaticides. These occur immediately after birth in the first 24 hours of life. There are many young women in this country who are serving life sentences, uh, facing death sentences for those kinds of pregnancy-related tragedies. Um, so if we're thinking about where sympathy falls, it's important to consider that sort of routine over prosecution in that light. But circling back to your question about men, I do think there are aspects of this case that are quite a bit less gendered than the current discussion might suggest. And I think in general, the criminal justice system could be better equipped to respond appropriately to mental illness and to trauma. And that's true for both male and female defendants. And I think if someone is genuinely has this sort of demonstrated history of, um, mental health illness, uh, that that should be relevant as a mitigating factor in sentencing regardless of, [00:26:16] Speaker 1: uh, the defendant's sex. Yeah. Let's stay on this for a second. I mean, Josh Ritter, uh, close to you, and I guess most recently, and these are, they're apples and oranges and everyone's in the chat saying, look, we're talking about female hormones here, but let's take a Nick Reiner. Uh, you know, he could go on trial for the murder of his parents. Uh, some say he was in a psychotic state because of medications. Um, but just taking a half step back, um, already, uh, just from a, a public sort of court of opinion, uh, and taking a temperature of the public, it feels like it feels to me like there is much more empathy for a Lindsey Clancy than a Nick Reiner. People are, you know, essentially let this guy rot in prison. He should go to hell. He slashed both his parents' throats. Uh, do you see a difference, uh, in the, in the way public perception is, uh, across a gender line between men and women that generally women, particularly who could be suffering from postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis are going to get more leeway, more empathy from a public standpoint? [00:27:26] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I, I think you taking an honest look, you have to go that probably just in, in general, as, as defendants, women are probably receive a little more initial, like that kind of first, first glance, first gut reaction response to a case, uh, perhaps more sympathetic than a man might be. Uh, so many of these are very fact specific. Um, I think Lindsey Clancy has actually received uh, more of a sympathetic response than even other women who've committed similar crimes. And I've thought long and hard about that. And I think it has to do with in large part what she's, what she's saying she was struggling with and the evidence that she has of what she was struggling with as far as that being a postpartum related mental health issue. You know, we've seen other cases where women have drowned their, their children, drove their car into the, into a lake with their children inside of it, horrible ways of killing. In some of those, I think it was the, the coverup that, uh, made people less sympathetic to it. Uh, in others, I think it was, uh, you know, we just didn't see, you know, the same, the same kind of, um, mental health struggles that others can immediately kind of, um, identify with that we see here in this case. Um, I think also the idea that she, you know, she didn't, uh, there's evidence she did intend to take her life. So this wasn't like something she was trying to get away with. Um, but you know, again, I come back to the idea that, uh, you know, I, I, I keep on trying to drive home this point, um, that it is, it is not, it is not to say that we, it, we can find Lindsay Clancy guilty and at the same time, not be discounting what Lindsay Clancy was going through. I, I think that that's where people are trying to get a little bit black and white and ones and zeros about all of this, that, that saying that she should be held criminally responsible is not saying and doesn't have to say that she was not suffering. And that, uh, that, you know, that she can be very legitimately suffering from mental illness, but at the same time, be criminally responsible. It's not a defense of mitigation. In other words, they're not trying to say that, Hey, she should be excused from her conduct because there's all these things that were happening to her that makes it a little more understandable that she would do something horrific. The, the argument is that she was so sick. She didn't know what she was doing and we're not going to hold somebody criminally responsible for something they didn't know what they were doing. I've made the, you know, we've all heard about, uh, the son of Sam makes the, that made the argument that he, the dog told him to kill. Okay. If the dog tells you to kill, that's certainly a person who's unwell, but as long as he understood the killing was wrong, that's not mentally insane for the purposes of criminal law that he could be fully be out there killing on behalf of his dog. But as long as he know that knows that killing is a crime, he should still be held criminally responsible. And that is the question really in front of these jurors. But even as we're discussing it, you understand how nuanced and difficult it is to get [00:31:09] Speaker 1: to that point. Yeah. And son of Sam, uh, David Berkowitz has been in prison since he committed those crimes in the late seventies. Uh, Tim, I was going to come to you, but now we're going to bump you for Clara right here. My cat's name is Karen. Uh, I've been a nurse for over 30 years, Clara. And my question is this, and I was going to ask this question. So thank you for asking it. If you can walk around psychotic and make plans with no detection, what is psychosis really? Do we take her word for it? I mean, to a degree, this is true. Only she was in her mind, uh, literally at that time, only she truly knows what's going on, uh, in that mind. Uh, how do we define psychosis? How do we know that she was psychotic if she had enough wherewithal to send the husband out, take exercise bands, do this, commit this, and also try to eliminate herself from this world? Yeah. No, it's a fair [00:32:05] Speaker 5: question. I think the important thing to keep in mind at this early stage in the trial is that no one is being asked to take her word for it. Certainly the jurors are not going to be asked to take her word for it. We're going to hear expert testimony on both the prosecution and the defense side related to this diagnosis. My understanding is that it's a complex diagnosis that the condition can wax and wane in different moments, but I'm really waiting to hear what the expert testimony reveals. And, and no one's going to be asked to take her word for it in this circumstance whatsoever. [00:32:39] Speaker 1: Uh, and we're, we're going to get there. Uh, Tim Jansen, before I start to play some tape from day five of testimony, and again, uh, there were 14 witnesses today. A lot of them sort of redundant in nature, just being law enforcement and first responders, but, uh, there were a couple of forensic psychiatrists. So we're going to get to some of that in a second, but what, what do you see, Tim is the biggest hurdle. I mean, Josh laid this out really well. And I really liked that, that son of a Sam analogy. I'm very tactile. So analogies helped me a lot. Um, before I get to the question, Judy Herbert, one of the most generous in all of STS. Thank you for the gavel to gavel coverage on a trial that has ignited conversations on all of these topics. Uh, Tim, what is the biggest hurdle in your opinion for the Commonwealth? And it's interesting because they sort of have an additional, as you said, and Josh pointed out an additional burden now. So what is the biggest [00:33:32] Speaker 3: hurdle for them? Well, I, I, first of all, I want to say those poor children, it's a horrendous crime. It was a crime. Those poor children suffered the way they did, died the way they did. It's just horrendous. It's heartbreaking. Um, and at the same time, um, you wonder, could this woman who's never had any issues with violence or anything commit these heinous crimes? Now you talk about Reiner's family. I don't know if his, his psychosis was due to drugs, uh, prescribed drugs. I had a client who took some drugs and he tried to kill members. He was a captain of a boat and he was hearing voices and he tried to shoot one and tried to drown the other. He's had no criminal history whatsoever, but it was a reaction to a drug that he voluntarily ingested. So he didn't have a defense because if you volunteer ingest drugs and then you act, that's not a defense, but he was hearing voices that said, kill them. If you kill them, you will live forever. And we don't know what this woman really was feeling. Um, there are issues that the state has are good ones, right? Why did she lock the bedroom door? If she was going through a psychosis to kill herself, why would she lock the door? If she's trying to prevent someone from stopping her? Um, why did she make a phone call in the middle of the committing these crimes? Why did she send them off? And the expert testimony is going to be the key here because there's parts of the case that the prosecution really has beneficial evidence. But on the other hand, if they, they push too hard and show no empathy whatsoever, that juror may not open up and even give them a fair shake. Um, they played the 911. I think if they played the 911, I think they would have convicted her right there if they would have stopped. I mean, that was so brutal. And when he said she murdered my kids, it was brutal. And I had a different look at her when I heard that 911 after hearing him. So the jury is going to go back and forth. I think we're going to end up with the experts. Um, but the state, they know what they have and they're, they're pushing what they think is their best. And I still think we're going to end up with a hung jury. There you go. Tim's been calling [00:35:55] Speaker 1: that from day one, a hung jury. We're going to see, um, sort of hope not because then that's all this effort kind of for what end, but, uh, that would be the decision of the jurors, uh, from Rosa here, uh, back to Josh. And then I'm going to play some, uh, sound from court today. Uh, is premeditation even relevant, Josh? That's a question. Exercise bands are an odd weapon of choice. She used a different one per baby. So shows she thought of something. She had three each and knew where to find them. Um, what do you do with that? If you are the Commonwealth, uh, do you, do you, do you point to that as, uh, the murder weapon of choice and it was pre-designated? Yeah. Great, great question. And, and [00:36:40] Speaker 4: so yes, premeditation matters in the, in, to the extent that it proves it's, um, circumstantial evidence of her state of mind, but that doesn't mean that you can't both premeditate a crime and be legally insane. So people who are legally insane can make plans. People who are legally insane can be going about committing a task that they have no idea that what they're doing is wrong, but they take steps that seem very deliberate in, in committing that crime. So how do you prove what a person was thinking, whether or not they knew something was wrong at the time, where you're going to have to use circumstantial evidence of their state of mind. And one of the things that the prosecution in these types of cases always points to is all the steps that they took beforehand and afterwards. So all of these planning steps, the idea of sending her husband out to, uh, you know, run those errands and realizing how long that would take him. That's important because yes, it shows premeditation, but two, it shows, um, an understanding of that she wanted to be alone. Why did she send him out? Why, why was it important for him to be outside of the house? If she didn't care about the wrongfulness of her actions, then why did she need to be alone to do it? That's the point that the prosecution's going to have to drive home. She sent him out of the house because she knew he would stop her. And why would he stop her? Because she knew what she [00:38:10] Speaker 1: was doing was wrong. That's it. Josh, they have, they, they haven't done that yet. I didn't mean to interrupt, but, uh, as a amazing point by you, they haven't really done that yet. How, when does the Commonwealth present it that way? And how, how do they, do they have to say it exactly the way you [00:38:26] Speaker 4: just stated it? They don't have to do it exactly the way I stated it, but I think here's the thing. [00:38:32] Speaker 1: I mean, if they, if they say it the way you just explained it, if I'm a juror, I'm much more apt to [00:38:37] Speaker 4: convict them. Right. I, I think they're going to have to do it either through their experts and kind of walk them through that same thought process, or they're going to have to make it in closing arguments if they can't, you know, be that direct about it. But, um, but yeah, I mean that, that, that's the whole point. The, the, you know, and the steps that she took afterwards, you know, is, was the attempt at her own life an attempt because again, she just couldn't appreciate what she was doing or was she doing that because she, she knew what she had done and she decided this was the time to end her own life. You know, they it's, they're going to have to somehow get those jurors inside of her head. Um, and that's why all of these steps are so important. You know, how long does it take to wrap those cords around each of those children? How, how, how long did it take to separate them? Why did she separate them? All of these different steps are important for understanding not just she knew what she was doing, but she knew what [00:39:37] Speaker 1: she was doing was wrong. Yeah. Uh, final question, a shout out to K9 Catherine, our good friend out in Maui, uh, based on the chat, uh, it'll be hung jury. That's what Tim has predicted. I don't know. We're, we're still, um, early on relatively, um, although we're moving through witnesses very quickly. One other question before we get to the, um, testimony from today. And that goes to Clara. I mean, Clara, anyone who has children and I have young children and Josh has young children and Tim's a parent. I'm not sure if you're a parent. I mean, we've all, uh, heard the stories, uh, you know, mom, the mom blogs, mom's talking to each other, mom's on Instagram. They've got the hardest job. I mean, without question, and I'm not saying that for brownie points, I couldn't do it. I couldn't multitask. I couldn't do the 9 million things that, that are our wives and significant others, uh, have to do. And, and I know there are times where all of these mothers reach their absolute limit. So what draws every mother out there has said, I, I can't take this another second. I'm at my wits end. I'm gonna smack my kid or worse. What draws, um, Lindsay Clancy across that line where, where she actually couldn't take it [00:40:57] Speaker 5: another second. Oh, goodness. Oh, that's a really impossible question to answer without being in her mind. I'm yeah, I'm a mom too. I have an almost 15 year old and a five year old. So I was catching the trial between various camp pickups and drop-offs. Um, and all of that. What I would say, like, you know, mentioning moms on social media and the whole like movement of mommy bloggers to me, the amount of willingness to consider the potential of, of extending empathy towards, uh, Clancy suggests to me that there actually have been some pretty significant cultural changes in the last 10 years. And that the fact that there's even a debate over, um, there's this consideration or a willingness to really look carefully into, to think through the mental health issues here suggests to me that, that it's a bit harder to really demonize moms than it may have been in the past for these kinds of failures. And that there's a little bit more willingness to have this kind of conversation, the kinds of conversation that we're [00:41:59] Speaker 1: having right now. Um, okay. Without further ado, here's, uh, the Commonwealth, uh, questioning one of the forensic psychiatrists. I think there were two on the stand today, uh, from Brigham, uh, and women's, uh, hospital. Here is this portion. [00:42:15] Speaker 6: Any confusion or disorientation? Is that correct? Yes. [00:42:22] Speaker 7: The right dosage, um, and that she was on the right medications, um, and then just ongoing evaluation [00:42:28] Speaker 6: in terms of kind of her mental status. And during that meeting, she denied suicidal intent, correct? That's correct. She denied homicidal intent, correct? She denied having auditory or visual hallucinations, correct? Yes. She reported her mood as okay. Is that correct? Yes. And she told you she was looking forward to moving to Spalding, correct? Yes. Um, she also denied any confusion or disorientation. Is that correct? Yes. And again, um, you described her mood as okay on that day? Yes. And, um, you described her as future oriented on that day. Yes. And then you spoke to her again on February 21st, 2023. Is that correct? Yes. And on that day, um, is this the same purpose that you just described getting her ready, assessing her mental status and getting her ready to transfer to Spalding? Yes. Okay. And during that time, um, you wrote that the patient reported feeling down about her current situation, her paralysis, and the events leading up to her hospitalization. Is that correct? Yes. And you. Okay. So that's like halfway through this, [00:43:48] Speaker 1: but Tim, let me come to you. I mean, this is a commonwealth hammering this forensic psychiatrist. Uh, and she admits she denied suicidal and homicidal ideation. She denied these auditory and otherwise other, uh, hallucinations that her mood was okay on that day that she was future oriented. She was down about her situation, uh, is the phrase that she used here. Um, these are strong arguments. I think for the commonwealth, are they strong enough? Um, or does it go back to the point that Josh is making that we have to go up to that moment in time when, when she quote unquote snapped and was this happening at that time? This is now a few days later, few days. It's a month later. Is it a month later? I thought it was a couple of days later, but maybe it might've been, you're right. It might be a month later. [00:44:38] Speaker 3: I mean, I thought I don't find it very persuasive at all. Uh, okay. She's been in a hospital. She's been getting a treatment. She's probably on better meds. Um, she's getting, so I don't find it that persuasive. Um, I had a client, he couldn't remember what was being told, uh, what he said. And the only way he could remember it was because his, the witnesses, when he read the police report told, said what he was saying. So it's not unusual that these psychotic events or whatever, that they don't remember what they did. Um, I don't think we're going to hear from Lindsay, but this is, uh, this, my understanding, the crime was in January 24th. Yeah. So it's a month later. Yeah. Uh, I don't think it's all that persuasive. Um, and I'm sure I, Kevin, I'm sure will cross-examine him, but her, but I don't think [00:45:29] Speaker 1: it's all that persuasive that she couldn't recall it. Yeah. I mean, Clara, uh, to you, um, how does psychosis work? I think most of us don't understand that. So if she was in having a psych, psychotic episode in that moment, when she murders these three children, what is going on? Tim is right. It happens January 24th, 2023, and these evaluations I think are being done in February, the following month. So what, what is your mental state like, let's say two, three, four weeks after something like this [00:46:02] Speaker 5: happens? I mean, I, I agree with what Tim was saying in terms of the time sensitive nature of the onset. It's hard for me to see how her mental state on an entire month later is relevant to understanding the lead up to the tragedy itself. And so I think getting more in-depth information about what was going on in her mind day of in the moment is going to be far more relevant to, to understanding the nature of her culpability than, than this witness's testimony today. Um, yeah. And I know, I'll just say that I think that, you know, the maternal mental health experts that you were having on last week are more qualified to define psychosis than myself, or historian and sociologist here. I'm just drawing on, um, on their, you know, the evidence or their sort of- [00:46:46] Speaker 1: Claire, don't undercut yourself. You've written books, you've written books. [00:46:50] Speaker 5: Well, you know, it comes in, you know, mental illness, especially post like this kind of psychosis is much more relevant in cases where women kill older children than strictly in infanticide cases. There's often sort of this social cultural, uh, nexus or circumstance that's highly relevant to infantic, uh, understanding infanticide cases. But this is also a filicide involving two older children. And those cases, the research literature really does point to there tends to be for the most part, um, a connection to mental illness. You know, there are rare cases where you'd see something like, um, was being described before in terms of like a revenge motive, something along those lines. [00:47:30] Speaker 1: Um, but these are quite rare. Yeah. Uh, Josh Ritter, a lot of people keep asking this. I think there's zero chance in hell this ever happens, but any chance she would ever take the stand in her own defense, particularly when the defense is basically that she was out of her right mind. [00:47:50] Speaker 4: Um, no, and I don't think that she needs to, because I think we're going to hear from her through other witnesses. We've already heard from her through her husband. I mean, he's testified to what she was going through her ex-husband, pardon me, what she was going through, what it, what, what it was, how the struggles were, how difficult it was for her, how she was having good and bad days. Uh, we're going to hear through treating physicians and psychiatrists of what she was experiencing and what her mental health was. That's the only thing that she, you know, the only thing that she would need to answer for jurors is what was going through her mind that day. And I don't, I don't see any advantage to the defense, uh, to putting her on the stand and, and risk her undergoing, you know, the crucible of cross-examination and that's somehow going wrong. I think they're going to, I think they're going to get everything that they want as far as her story and her mental health and what she was experiencing through other witnesses. All right, let's watch the end of this exchange. [00:48:53] Speaker 1: This is now the commonwealth and then I'll go a little quicker through the other pieces of sound, but this is the commonwealth, um, on direct exam of a forensic psychiatrist today. [00:49:02] Speaker 6: Also, um, noted, um, that she said her thoughts about what she had done were not constant throughout the day, correct? Correct. Um, so she wasn't thinking about killing her children throughout the day, every day, correct? Correct. And, um, she said she had no suicidal intent, no homicidal intent. Correct? Correct. No auditory or visual hallucinations. Correct? Correct. You also write no PI. What does PI stand for? Paranoid ideation. And there was none of that either. Correct. Um, you also made a note, um, notes, low mood today in the context of her physical and legal situation, but does not currently meet criteria for major depressive episode. Is that correct? Yes. So her focus seemed to be, um, on her physical and legal situation, but being hopeful about moving on to Spaulding situation. Can I see counsel? And so her focus at that time appeared to be her physical situation, her legal situation, and looking forward to, um, going to Spaulding rehab. Yes. And then your last visit with her, um, was February 22nd, 2023, correct? Yes. And again, she indicated she was, um, hopeful about, um, treatment at Spaulding. Yes. She was future oriented. Yes. And she denied suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation. Yes. She denied audio hallucination, visual hallucination, um, and, um, anything else of that nature. Yes. [00:50:41] Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. And if it sounds like it was looping, it was, there were some redundant, uh, questions there, but Clara, let me come to you. Cause you're the expert in this field. I mean, the thoughts were not constant, no paranoid ideation. Uh, and even the doctor says she doesn't meet the criteria, not for psychosis, but for a major depressive episode. Um, I mean, again, how did, how, how are jurors supposed to look at this? Because they're also not educated on what happens in the midst of this episode and how, how people recovered from it a couple of weeks later, which is where we're at now. Um, I've been covering this now for a week and I have no idea. I don't understand it. And I've talked to a few experts, uh, like yourself. So how does a jury come to understand [00:51:29] Speaker 5: this? No, it's very tricky. Um, you know, I think it'd be interesting to see how the defense responds to this. My sense is that her mental state that month later, as she's being transferred is, is not actually relevant to understanding her mental state the day of the tragedy. And that that's where we really have to focus in terms of really understanding, um, that in some ways this is an insinuation, like the lots being insinuated in the, in this questioning and answering here. Um, but I think if you walk it back to all the other things that we know about who she was before this happened, who she was in her life, before she started experiencing what is likely going to be diagnosed as postpartum depression, although we're waiting to really see what the real diagnosis is going to be, um, that it's not as relevant as it seems, but I do think it's, it's going to be hard for juries to get past that. This does create, you know, the defense is really going to have to think through how they counter this kind [00:52:26] Speaker 1: of testimony. If you appreciate the content, whether you hate or love me, that does not matter either. In this court of law, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button. Uh, we've got an active Patreon page. Uh, there you go. Pony mom, right on a queue, incredible panel. Thank you, SGS. You can hate me all you want, but you can love our, what's not to love about our panel. Uh, everything is to love about our panel. Um, Josh Ritter, since you're prosecutor of the year, uh, formally, what do you think of the job, um, Kevin Reddington is doing, uh, as a, as a solo defense attorney on one of the biggest cases, if not, it's arguably the biggest case in the country right now, 74, 75 years old. He's up there alone every day, has zero help, uh, sharp as a whistle, and some people hate him and some people love him. What do you think of the job he's doing? [00:53:16] Speaker 4: I think he's doing a fantastic job. I mean, he's got, he's got, listen, he's got a client, who strangled to death her, her three children. I mean, this is, this is one of the most nightmarish acts I can imagine. It is so horrific. And you would imagine would immediately cause people to be, you know, not only convicting her before they've heard everything, but wanting her buried under the prison. Right. And he's managed to really, um, and I'm not saying it's trickery. I, but he's managed to very, you know, handle this in such a delicate way and, and kind of, um, navigate through these issues that there are a lot of people who feel very sympathetic, uh, to her. And, you know, people in the chat, I imagine people in the courtroom, and I'm probably guessing people on the jury. Um, and he's done a very good job of kind of making this, putting the prosecution trial to some extent by saying that they're just being overly aggressive. This is a woman who was sick. She was failed by the system. I think he's put the system on trial as well. He was, she was failed by her medical providers. She was failed by the prosecutors. She was failed by many, many people. And this is the result of all of that. And it's incredibly sad and, and, and, and turning her into a victim as well that, you know, as she sits here right now, she's paralyzed, she's lost her children. She's lost her marriage. She's lost everything that was important to her. It's, he's done a very admirable job. Uh, and it's a very, very difficult case for a defense attorney. Uh, and, [00:54:58] Speaker 1: and Josh Ritter, uh, we all know you have a, uh, plethora of young children. Do you see yourself solo practicing at 74, 75 to, uh, to pay for their lifestyle? Are you going to be Kevin Reddington [00:55:11] Speaker 4: in another 50 years? I'm not going to survive till the, till that age with these kids. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I applaud the guy. He's, he's, he has not lost a, a step. He, he's out there, you know, this is a difficult, you know, and then just the lights and cameras and everything to the high pressure environment of the whole thing, putting aside the subject matter of the case, the whole world is watching. We're all watching. We're analyzing everything he's doing. There's cameras in court every single day. It's a high, high pressure situation. And he's, yeah, he's, he's handled on it. I don't think I will. [00:55:48] Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, it's tough. It's tough to get through it. Uh, Gabriel, the uh, Maglor Maine. Yeah, Tim, go ahead. [00:55:54] Speaker 3: Let me just say, cause I was in the courtroom for Monday and Wednesday and I actually talked to Kevin a little bit both days about the trial. I told him, I thought his opening was brilliant, very affable and very, uh, everybody. And he does have another lawyer that sits behind him. I think maybe helps him, but that is not sitting at the council table. He's very experienced and look at the way he cross-examined the doctors. Even when the one doctor was so arrogant that she's too busy to even review a file to come testify. He was very kind. He made his point in a very, like an uncle, grandfather type. Yeah. I think the jury is going to find him believable and trustworthy because he has not said she didn't kill her kids. He's going to say why. And I, I think he is the perfect lawyer for this case. He's seasoned, been around, and I think he knows where his strengths are. [00:56:54] Speaker 1: He, he also, he makes something very difficult look incredibly easy. Just like I said in Brockton, it's a working class community. And he just, there's like a ease that he does it with. Uh, and it's what he is doing is really hard in real time. And like Josh said, with the cameras, Tim, one follow-up and then we're going to play the other sound. Okay. Um, it was pointed out by people in the chat, you know, she, when she, when she kind of comes to, she never asks about the kids. And one of the only questions is, do I need an attorney? Uh, again, uh, damning, it seems to her case, uh, helpful to the [00:57:29] Speaker 3: Commonwealth, but how much, if at all? Well, you know, she's, she's in that room. She had, she was restrained in soft restraints. Uh, she saw, I'm sure she saw the police outside her room. I'm sure she saw that she could not have any visitors, family members. So she knew there was a legal case at some point. And then they asked, like, I don't know if it was 12 or 13 days later, do I have an attorney? You can go, it goes both ways. She realizes she's not getting out and the police is there. And I'm sure she got information from somewhere that the kids were harmed and she tried to commit suicide. So it cuts both ways and we'll see how they end up, um, evaluating it. [00:58:12] Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, Kelly McClellan, great point here. Psychiatry does not have biomarkers, meaning they can't determine you have it based off of taking your blood, et cetera. My dad was a psychiatrist. May he rest in peace. Whenever I told him I was having a nervous breakdown, he would chuckle and he would say, let me swear. Can I see it on your brain scan? And, uh, that was that. And then I would just walk away in shame, which is why I'm the son of a psychiatrist. Uh, so here is, uh, I saw another super chat up there, which we'll grab in a moment, but this is now the defense crossing the same witness who we just watched. I believe the same witness. [00:58:47] Speaker 2: Here we go. So doctor, um, from, from your testimony and correct me if I'm wrong, was she to your opinion and your experience an honest patient telling you what her symptoms were? That's an evaluation in the psychiatric. Hello. I love that question. Yes. In other words, she didn't go off and try to exaggerate to you and say, I'm, I'm seeing visions and I'm hearing voices and I'm suicidally ideated and I'm homicidally ideated. She didn't say any of those things to you, did she? No. She actually denied them, right? Correct. So this is not, in your opinion, someone who was trying to exaggerate her conditions for some legal reason, correct? No. Um, and you obviously were in close contact with her for, for about a month, right? That's right. Um, just a couple of, of questions. Um, [00:59:43] Speaker 1: I'm going to stop it right there and just go to, uh, Josh Ritter. I mean, this is sort of genius in a way. I didn't catch it when I was watching it in real time because he's coming back on a cross and, and he's sort of turning it and saying, yeah, she told you, uh, that she's not, uh, feeling paranoid right now. She's not having, and that means she's honest. She's being completely honest. Uh, the Commonwealth immediately objects to it. Uh, and he says she didn't try to exaggerate. I mean, that's, that's kind of a brilliant, um, turning of the narrative there, [01:00:16] Speaker 4: Josh. No, it's very, very strong, very powerful. He's talking about malingering. He, that's what the, that's what the prosecution is essentially arguing is that she was malingering. A lot of this was made up. A lot of it was fabricated, uh, that she, and, and they don't really provide a reason why, but they are saying that she, she was dishonest and untruthful with her, with her medical providers and psychiatric providers and with her own husband. And even on that day in her attempt to take her own life that all of it was made up and malingering. And he's, he's going back and saying, well, you not, you saw no signs of that. I think it's very powerful because he, you know, again, they don't need to make that argument and he's leaning into the part of their case. That's probably the weakest and they've made it the weakest because they didn't need to take on that additional burden. So he's turning this case into the question of was Lindsey Clancy actually sick. And he loves that question because he's got a great answer to that question, but that's not the question that the prosecution should be posing to jurors. The question should be, even if she was sick, did she know what she was doing was wrong, but he's done a great job of reframing the entire case to these jurors. [01:01:39] Speaker 1: All right, let's keep watching here and we'll get, uh, Tim and Clara's take as well. [01:01:43] Speaker 2: Counsel asked you whether or not, and I think it may have been in the beginning in January that you had difficulty understanding her, obviously after removing the tools and everything else, you're able to talk with her, correct? Correct. And you knew that one of the concerns, if you will, was postpartum, uh, issues. Uh, you knew that, right? Yes. And, and your, in your experience as a psychiatrist, um, you're familiar with the concept of postpartum, um, psychosis, correct? Yes. And you know that people can communicate and plan and act on plans, even if they're in the middle of a psychosis, right? Yes. Um, you don't have to be drooling and stumbling and unable to walk and talk to be in a psychosis, do you? No. So in other words, a person can be in a psychosis and can communicate to friends, family, people, talk, correct? Yes. So you didn't, as counsel asked, you didn't have any difficulty understanding her. She wasn't slurring her words or anything like that [01:02:42] Speaker 1: when she was able to talk. Right. Okay. Tim, how important is this? He's also, uh, setting the table here saying, look, you can have basically, I mean, he's, uh, having his cake and eating it too, to a degree, because he's saying, look, you can have, uh, total sort of cohesiveness and coherence, uh, in your mind, know exactly what you're doing, but yet you can be having a psychotic episode. So if you think she's totally crazy, she's crazy. But if you think she's normal, she could still be crazy. [01:03:13] Speaker 3: This is brilliant lawyering. He has taken the state's expert and made him his expert. He is testifying himself, introducing the issue of postpartum, gets the expert to accept that there is postpartum. And I earlier saw it was great when he introduced all the medical records. He introduced evidence in his cross-examination of one of the other doctors. Um, just an experienced guy. He comes across very well. He's turned this witness into a defense witness, and he's probably already got this written for his closing statement. This was a brutal thing for the, for the Commonwealth. He just turned this witness into them. And I was going to say earlier, I'd have been more concerned if Lindsay was saying, yeah, I heard voices or this, this or that, because that's a sign of malingering. And these forensic psychiatrists, they always, they know what to look for in malingering, and there's no evidence of it. So brilliant. I'm sure the state was not happy with this cross. [01:04:17] Speaker 4: And what he did too, is he made the question about psychosis. Like he's asking, Hey, you can still plan and have psychosis, right? You can, you can have all of these things can be true at once, and you could still be suffering from postpartum psychosis. So if you're the jurors, you at the end of this, you go, Oh, well, it sounds like she had postpartum psychosis. And here's the, the tricky did. That's not the question it, whether or not she had psychosis. The question is, did she have psychosis that prevented her from understanding what she was doing was wrong, but he's made it he's, he's injures heads. I imagine if you were to ask them right now, is psychosis the same as being legally insane, they would say yes, because of the way that he's handled [01:05:03] Speaker 1: this case. Right. Yeah. It's interesting, you know, watching it live, which I did. And then watching it on tape, you pick up so much more, uh, the second time around, Anita Margarita now says he's always testifying and he's a bully. A lot of people don't like them. If you have a hate mail, send it to Ritter tonight, not to me, but this last part, we'll, uh, we'll have Clara weigh in on this last part here. And then one more piece I want to play for everyone. And then we'll get final thoughts. [01:05:31] Speaker 2: Um, one of the things that, uh, when she was admitted and then without going through, I'm not going to go through all the stuff we've already talked about with the medical condition and everything else. Um, you indicated she, that she was very, very ill, correct? Correct. Um, did she appear to be cooperative to you when you would interact with her? Yes. Um, as a, as a doctor, as a psychiatrist, uh, you're familiar with bipolar, uh, concept of a bipolar diagnosis, correct? Correct. Can you tell me what bipolar means? [01:06:05] Speaker 7: Yeah. So bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, uh, categorized as a mood disorder where patients have distinct depressive episodes, uh, as well as depending on the type of bipolar disorder, either hypomanic episodes or manic episodes to the point where they don't sleep for days. They still have lots of energy. There's this decreased need for sleep. Um, there could be irritability. Um, there can be impulsiveness, racing thoughts. A lot of patients describe that they're out of control of their behavior. Um, and then severe episodes can also include psychosis. [01:06:38] Speaker 2: And, and in reference to bipolar, um, as you were referring to when, when somebody is hypomanic, [01:06:45] Speaker 7: what does hypomanic mean? Yeah, it's a lesser degree of mania. Um, so when patients are hypomanic, they don't always experience things like psychosis, um, but they might experience some of the other, uh, symptoms that I described, including racing thoughts, um, kind of moving too quickly, um, talking too quickly, um, being, being irritable. And as it relates to the hypomania, [01:07:07] Speaker 2: would that include things such as somebody who is getting up early in the morning and exercising or cleaning out their house or selling their property out of a garage and having difficulty sleeping and they're awake all night? Yes. Um, as a psychiatrist, one of the things you were concerned about when you were first started to deal with her, as well as when you were releasing her, if you will, um, is the medication that she, she had on board, so to speak, when she came into the hospital, right? Yes. Do you remember? And I know it's difficult to recall offhand, but do you recall the medications that, um, she was actually under, uh, from purposes of taking her blood when it was tested? When she first came to the hospital? [01:07:51] Speaker 7: Yeah. If you know, um, I believe her medication list for, um, what, you know, previous to the, uh, the incident, um, she was on amitriptyline, diazepam. I believe she was also on, uh, prescribed lorazepam. Um, and there may have been one other. [01:08:09] Speaker 1: All right. So Clara, I mean, this is also, I mean, really at the crux of the defense is that she was on this cocktail of medications. The list is much longer that literally helped put her out of her mind. Um, is there veracity in that? Um, was she, in your opinion, just way over medicated from every single direction? And she was kind of losing it because of that. Goodness. Well, I definitely think [01:08:33] Speaker 5: that, you know, that clip just follows up on the preceding ones where we see the brilliance of the defense really in terms of taking the prosecution with the witness and turning it into his own witness there and laying the groundwork. I think we're starting to get some real foreshadowing of what's going to come up once the defense starts their side of this trial and just circling back to that earlier comment about malingering. I think this also speaks to, um, Reddington's diligence in selecting experts for his team here that Philip J. Resnick, Dr. Resnick is not known to be defense friendly. He served on the prosecution for the Timothy McVeigh case. He served on the prosecution side for the Unabomber case. He ran a court clinic in Cleveland that assessed felons, thousands of felons a year for decades. And he is not known in the field in terms of, um, these maternal filicide and infanticide cases to be particularly defense friendly ever. He also happens to be an expert on malingering. So there's no way that he would be showing up for this trial in this way if he didn't feel strongly that Clancy was worthy of his time. Yeah. I'm going to come to circle back to him in a [01:09:47] Speaker 1: minute. Here's an interesting question, Tim. Um, and, and for those who don't know, Clara's talking about Philip Resnick, uh, who is going to be the star witness really for the defense. Uh, and I'm going to come full circle with him in a moment, but, uh, successful now. I like that name. Um, super chat. Do we give everyone Tim a pass for who takes the life of another? Don't these people who take the life of another have mental illness too? A very troubling case. I mean, there is pure evil and they're just awful people who kill for the sake of killing. But I think there's also a lot of people who kill, who are in a heat of passion, heat of the moment. Um, I don't know. Does the law have to be better defined as an issue with the law? Tim is an issue with us as a society. What's going [01:10:29] Speaker 3: on here? No, I think people that kill, um, usually are punished and they're usually caught. Uh, law enforcement now had the tools of the ability to prove either it was proven through their digital footprint, their actions or comments, um, covering up the crime. You can usually decipher those who committed a crime, knew what they were doing and just got caught and then claimed they have a mental hill. Then you have the people who are mentally ill that commit the crime. They don't do anything to cover it up and they just act as though they're crazy. And you get that. Um, I think we're seeing that in a couple of high profile cases we have up in New York. The other case we have that the shooting that killed the political figure, uh, who had premeditation, who, who then covered up the crime, fled the scene, tried to get rid of the rifle. Uh, and you got the one who killed the insurance executive. He planned it. He, um, he got away, he covered himself up. He, you know, so those are different types of individuals. People that commit crimes who are mentally unstable, you see those. And the evidence usually is there. It shows a history of mental illness. Or in this case, we have, uh, clearly we have mental health illnesses. She was medicated. She was hospitalized, seeking treatment. So it's not made up. Um, so no, we're not gonna let murderers go and we shouldn't. [01:11:57] Speaker 1: Uh, well said. Uh, the diary is a star witness from Julia Nielsen, long time STS-er. Uh, let's, without further ado, COE, let's bring this up. This is a state trooper, a state trooper Mello, M-E-L-O, which by the way, we have a friend of the family that calls my mother, Carm, Carm Mello. Uh, and I might start calling Carm Carm Mello because she's anything but Mello. But this is now, um, when Kevin Reddington starts reading part of her diary and I thought this was the most powerful part of the entire day. C-O-E, uh, let's roll the video. Did you know who the other handwriting was at the time [01:12:37] Speaker 8: who it belonged to? Okay. And fair to say reviewing the, um, contents of it, it's a pretty detailed, um, list of a schedule for the baby. Correct. I have nothing for it. All right. Mr. Reddington. [01:13:07] Speaker 2: So one of the things that the district attorney did was read to you, um, certain entries from what is referred to in your report as the tree of life artisan journal, correct? Correct. And when you refer in the report to the tree of life artisan journal, is that this here? [01:13:31] Speaker 1: Should have a tree on it. Yes. [01:13:42] Speaker 2: Set forth on a number of pages, her feelings dealing with her children. Is that fair? It's fair to say, yes, sir. And you wrote in your report on page 19 of 63, counsel asked you first about her stating that, uh, she had horrible PTSD from sleep training Kellan, hearing him cry for one and a half, one hour plus, and not intervening just about killed me. I even said the words I want to die to Pat while he was crying. He would be the baby, right? Correct. And this is her saying that not being able to go to her child because they were trying to do sleep training. She indicated that it was just about killing her, correct? That's what was stated, yes. And after that, I, meaning Lindsay, became obsessed with his sleep and nap schedule. Like to the minute, I would tell Lainey, and you know who Lainey is, right? Yes. Who's Lainey? The other child. The what? I'm sorry again. Lainey. Lainey. Lainey. L-A-N-E-Y. Lainey. I don't recall this time. Do you recall that she had a young lady or they had a young lady that was in their home helping with the baby while she was supposed to? I don't recall this time. Okay. That she would tell Lainey to put him down at 10:36. I would also drive him around for car naps for hours every day, feeling guilty for doing that. I don't recall this time. Okay. That she would tell Lainey to put him down at 10:36. I would also drive him around for car naps for hours every day, feeling guilty for doing this to my baby. Do you recall making that notation? Yes. I also feel guilty. We did it too young, parenthesis, one week shy of four months, end parenthesis, right? Correct. You also noted in your report that I also, quote, "I also feel like I did it wrong because I did it when he was overtired, so I made it harder. I now have horrible insomnia and anxiety, which is causing depression. I have no appetite. I don't know what's wrong with me. I want help. I want to be well." You saw that in there, didn't you? Yes. And then she went on and said, "I think the anxiety started after sleep training. Doctor said it was okay to let him cry. I need to get a good night's sleep and take care of him, rocking him to sleep every nap in bed in the middle of the night." She noted that, right? Yes. Noting further in a separate occasion, "He's still a very happy baby despite his sleep training. Why I feel guilty is not really hitting his milestones, not rolling over, although he almost is!" and he's babbling, which is a new milestone. She wrote that, right? Correct. She wrote, "I have crazy brain fog. I feel like I can't make a plan. I can't carry it out. Like I just live, moment to moment, waiting for the next nap time. I'm terrified of Cal getting overtired now because I feel I can't help him." She wrote that, right? Correct. She then wrote, "I'm really worried about going back to work and not being able to function with the brain fog. I feel like I should start with a four-hour shift and see how I do. I can't tell if I am withdrawing from Ativan and Benadryl or is this my new baseline. I feel completely disconnected with my baby. I feel like I'm going through the motions every day." She wrote that, right? Correct. And there were a number of other entries that you put in your police report about that, one of which was that, "I feel horribly guilty about my marriage. I want to connect with Pat again. I know he needs it. I need it. I'm terrified because I'm terrified of the relationship. She needs to get birth control first." She made reference to her inability to have conjugal relations with her husband, right? I believe so. She indicated further on into her travels, "I am completely overwhelmed, trying to take care of the kids. I'm drowning every day. I feel guilty that I'm spending my family's money and not making any. I feel like I spend way too much." She wrote that, right? Correct. "I'm terrified of Callan getting sick. He's a sick baby. A sick baby is miserable. He's sick now with a double ear infection. Clearly has a bellyache. It's miserable. I feel like the other kids are going to get him sick all winter long." She wrote that, right? Correct. "I always feel strongly against sleep training. I feel like it's abusive to let the baby cry and not respond, but I made the decision. I did it with Cal. It is way too much crying. It's incredibly stressful." She wrote that, right? Correct. "He's okay. He will be okay. It's not harmful in any way. The doctor said it was okay. Plenty of people sleep training their kids at that age. It's necessary as a third child," is what she wrote, right? Correct. "I feel incredibly sad and guilty about not breastfeeding anymore. That was the one thing I could do to help his immune system, and I can tell he really doesn't like the formula. I'm very sad about this. I know at this time it's what I needed to do for my mental health." She wrote that, right? Correct. "And then the statement started getting smaller and smaller as time went by. One occasion, it's like I'm desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone. My mind is trying to make something physically wrong with me. My mind never shuts off. It's constantly thinking of the next thing someone needs. I can't shut it off. I desperately want to go back to work, but now I don't know how I'm going to function, and it worries me." [01:18:47] Speaker 1: Look, to some degree, every one of us, if you're a human being, has experienced this. This is a more acute degree of it. FYI, according to the COE, if you missed a trial, the state introduced a diary, read a few sentences. Tim Jansen, why did the Commonwealth bring this diary up? It was at the very end of the direct exam with this guy, Trooper Mello. Not to say that the defense wouldn't have brought it up later on, but it opened the proverbial door. And man, did Kevin Reddington run with that. Horrible PTSD. I want to die. I became obsessed. I would drive him around. I mean, the level of control that she is exhibiting here and the loss of control as a result is mind-bending. And at the very least, it makes you feel a little bit sorry for this woman. Why open the door? [01:19:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, it did open the door. And you asked me, you asked Josh if she should testify. She just testified, okay? Her diary was her testimony. And I think one of the parts she said at the end, "I want to be well. I want to withdraw from medications." That's what you got. I don't know the purpose and the point the government was making, the Commonwealth. Maybe they wanted to defuse it, but it turned against them again. She's describing things and she's showing love for her child, how she wants to help the child, but she can't do it. And feeling empathy towards her child who's sick. And not the things you think of someone who's going to kill her child, right? It's far from it. It's the opposite. And she says, "I want to be well." And she's not been able to sleep. Clearly fits the defense theory. [01:20:34] Speaker 1: What about this question, Clara? Thanks, Tim. And that's interesting. She just testified in essence, is what Tim is saying. I think she snapped. Is that psychosis? I think that's safe to say that she did [01:20:45] Speaker 5: snap. Is that psychosis, Clara? I think it really, it's too soon to say, and we're going to have to wait to really hear from the experts who've taken the time to really clinically diagnose her. There might be an even more technical and even more rare diagnosis that emerges later from the expert testimony. And it's just, it is, it's too soon to say. I think what stands out and what makes this trial in some ways very different from some of the other high profile monster mom cases is just how desperately she was seeking help and how much of that effort to seek help is, is just documented in so many different ways. And so it is creating a very different kind of a conversation [01:21:35] Speaker 1: than maybe we've had in the past around these cases. Kelly McClellan, Joel, you had Josh come on as the other of you, but he feels the same way as you do. And I do. I'm trying, trying to get the other point of view. And we're getting the prosecutor's podcast, Alice and Brett, they'll come on. I mean, they have a literal podcast called the prosecutor's podcast. We'll see what they say. Now, Josh Ritter, if this was you or Tim Jansen, I mean, Kevin Reddington has such an interesting style. He's so almost deadpan like Steven, right. But was you or Tim Jansen be like, I can't make a plan. I cannot carry it out. I'm living moment to moment, just trying to get by. And then they even get into, I want to connect with Pat, the husband. We find out they're not having sexual relations. You'll build Clinton phrase that she has an inability to have sex and she is quote unquote drowning every day. Then she goes into breastfeeding. I'm not breastfeeding. I feel horrible about that. My mind never shuts off. Listen, I have self-diagnosed OCD. Personally speaking, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts that run through my mind, Josh Ritter. It is hard to turn them off. This is this is next level stuff. Somehow, once I had kids, I was able to just use it as an excuse to no longer be obsessive. I was just like, all right, let the house look like a tornado where a hurricane went through it, which is a better Miami metaphor. But I mean, we've all sort of had these thoughts. So, I mean, it's so relatable. What's not relatable is, are the murders? And therein lies the problem. But how important is this diary? How important is this quote unquote witness testimony through these words? [01:23:33] Speaker 4: Well, very important because like Tim said, this is her testimony. We, you know, we're getting a thorough understanding of what was going on in her mind through her own words. I think it shows the flaw in the prosecution's case, not in their case, but in their strategy. And in that, I think that they view all of this evidence very myopically and they're looking through it only through their lens. And they probably view this diary as helpful to their cause because they, they believe that it shows a woman who is kind of has a snowballing animosity, anger, anxiety growing towards her children. And they're going to make the argument that this was a woman who is on a collision course towards this disaster of taking her children because she viewed them to being causing her so much stress and anxiety and stress in her marriage and everything else. But instead, I think Reddington in the way that he continued to read it there and the way that we're all starting to perceive it is it makes her sound very sympathetic. You're seeing a person struggling, a person trying to do the right thing, a person trying to get help, a person in a constant state of being tortured almost by not only her, what she was living with, with the kids, but also her, what she's living with inside of her own mind. And I don't think they appreciated that. I don't think that the prosecution appreciated that that's maybe the way that people would perceive this. And again, they're getting off course because again, they're allowing this case to become the question of, was Lindsay Clancy sick? And did Lindsay Clancy get the proper medical attention? And did, did her doctors fail her? And did her husband do enough? And they've turned the entire, he's turned the entire case on its head and it's all about her and whether or not she was failed and whether or not she tried and whether or not she was sick. And, and they've, they've, they've allowed, they've allowed it to go off track. And I think the prosecution, if they want any chance of, um, reviving this case, need to turn it back to that question of one, there were kids that were murdered here. They were murdered in a way that's unimaginable. They were murdered at the hands of the one person, the entire world they should have been able to trust in the final moments of their terrifying lives. They were being killed by their own mother. And to help them understand that Lindsay Clancy may have everything in that note, that diary, every word of it, every letter of it could be true. And she could still know that what she was doing was wrong. And here's why we're going to prove that to you. But they, they got a really course, correct and understand how this evidence is being perceived by people. And I just, everything I see about them seems like they're, they're kind of operating almost in a fog that they view it only one way. And that's [01:26:33] Speaker 1: how everybody else will perceive it. Yeah. It's almost like tunnel vision with law enforcement. In this case, uh, prosecutors, uh, Christina here, uh, I'm sorry to hear this, but this is an amazing point. I have a child with disabilities and I never had help and still don't. They did have help. Uh, didn't kill them. I'm sorry. I think it's planned. Uh, and there's going to be people on this jury that either have children with disabilities or know someone with disabilities where it was incredibly difficult. And they're going to question the same thing. So, uh, these attorneys, um, have their hands full with a panel of 18 jurors, 12 women and six men. We don't know who the alternates are yet, but we do know Clara Lewis is author of American infanticide, sexism, science, and the politics of sympathy. She is a lecturer at Dartmouth and she has interviewed Philip Resnick and Margaret Spinelli. Uh, first question is, will you come back when they testify, Clara? Yeah, I'd love to. Absolutely. Yeah. And secondly, thank you. Um, just, I know you touched upon it, but who, who are these two people and do you feel that the, um, the verdict here could rest on their shoulders? It certainly looks like it. Um, [01:27:46] Speaker 5: just responding to the comment in the chat is so much empathy for this mom. And I think, you know, it's so fair to ask that kind of question and see it through that light. And I think it's just so important for listeners to understand that there is not some zero sum game here, um, between parent and child that we have to really care about the circumstances, um, for the parent as we care about infant and child safety. These things are intimately interconnected and we have to be invested on both sides of the equation. Um, and yeah, I do feel that a lot is going to come down to the, to the experts, the defense calls. We are not going to have clarity about the diagnosis until we hear from them, because these are very technical, very clinical kinds of considerations. They will have spent a lot of time with her to make these varied assessments. What we know is that Dr. Margaret Spinelli is a leading maternal mental health expert in her fields. She has trained and mentored lots of other professionals who work in this area. Her practice is very advocacy based. Like we know that she would only come out for the defense. You know, she felt that there wasn't a, you know, a valid diagnosis there. I don't think she'd be participating in the trial. Whereas Resnick is a little bit more of a surprise having him come out as someone who's not known to be defense friendly and as someone who's an expert on malingering as well as maternal filicide and infanticide. You know, I'll be very interested to see, and they're not natural allies, by the way, either. You know, they can be in some ways antagonistic towards each other if it was a different case. So the fact that they've teamed up is really intriguing. And it also speaks to just the diligence and legwork on the part of Reddington in tracking them down. When I say that these are senior scholars in the field, I'm not being exaggerating. Like they are well into their eighties, both of them. And they've both trained and mentored tons of other professionals who work in this area. Yeah. [01:29:43] Speaker 1: Yeah. And we've had experts on here who studied their work. And Clara obviously did the same. Clara, real quick, how do you see this ending? Do you agree with Tim? Do you see a hung jury here? [01:29:55] Speaker 5: I think it's as I was saying at the very beginning of the show, I think sympathy is very volatile in these cases. And if the prosecution continues to keep the same tact of appearing to lack all empathy and understanding as opposed to pivoting towards these strategies that we've been discussing today that I think would kind of let them have it as more of a both end. I do think see things tilted in her favor, but it's impossible to know the minds of the jurors. It's so hard to say in these cases, [01:30:28] Speaker 1: it can really go either way. Thank you. That's Clara Lewis, an expert in this field. Josh Ritter, an expert in his field, a one time LA prosecutor of the year, a current criminal defense attorney, current host of courtroom confidential and current dad. And he dads hard and often, and he might be working in his mid seventies as a result of that. So Josh Ritter, uh, how do you agree with, uh, you know, I'm just giving you a hard time because I'm projecting that that's my own life. I'll never be able to retire. Uh, Tim Jansen. I mean, uh, Josh Ritter, you agree with Tim Jansen. Does this end in some sort of hung jury? Will there be resolution? Your final thoughts? I think my money would be on a [01:31:11] Speaker 4: hung jury. Honestly, I, I, it's such a difficult case. It is such a torturous case for these jurors. I mean, as much as we're talking about it, I can talk about this case and convince myself back and forth one way in the same city. Um, I don't know how 12 people are going to get together and, and, and come to a decision on this whole thing. It's just, it's complex. It's dense. It's very emotional. Um, and I think that if they do come to a verdict, they're going to struggle, uh, toward it long and hard. I would expect deliberations in this case to take a very long time. [01:31:53] Speaker 1: Uh, wonderful show STS, excellent panel, uh, the best in business and Clara Lewis, uh, here as well, getting a heart emoji, uh, Tim Jansen. He is an STS OG, uh, courtroom confidential, by the way, is live tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern time. I just panicked. What time is that? Oh, 8:00 PM. Okay. Uh, didn't want you to miss your own show, Josh. Tim Jansen is, uh, the famed Tallahassee criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, Tim Jansen, your final thoughts here. [01:32:19] Speaker 3: Tim Jansen: Well, let's see if the state can turn the defense witness into a state witness on cross-examination. That's their, that's it. This is what the, this is really what they have left. And then I would say, let's see what those balls, what jurors are picked as the final jury. That's going to be a big determination to how many males, how many females and what that makeup is going to be. That's, those are key things to look forward. Josh Schroeder, one final question in my own self [01:32:53] Speaker 1: egotistical interest. How long is this trial going to last from this point on? Um, they always say six to eight weeks. It seems like it's moving much faster. What's your, uh, prognostication here? [01:33:04] Speaker 4: Josh Schroeder: Uh, I think they'll probably get it done on that six week mark. I, I think that the, you know, where things are really going to start to hit a, a slowing point is when we get really into the experts. I could see that taking several days with the experts, but they've been moving at a [01:33:21] Speaker 1: very healthy clip. Tim Jansen: Hmm. I was hoping you were going to say, uh, don't worry, it'll be over next week and then you can enjoy the rest of your summer. Josh Schroeder: I don't know about that, [01:33:28] Speaker 4: but it could be a, to me, it's going faster than expected. Josh Schroeder: Three weeks. It'll be done in three weeks. Josh Schroeder: You think so? Oh, wow. [01:33:33] Speaker 1: Josh Schroeder: Yeah. All right. So this week and next week and then, uh, mini summer break, but a huge thanks to the guests. I, uh, well, went well over my time here, remembering Cora five, Dawson three, baby Callan. Now you see the photo there. I can't even look at it. So sad. And, uh, Callan survived for three days before succumbing to his injuries. If anything, let's educate ourselves on this. And that should be, uh, the silver lining. If there's one to be had, love you, America. Love you, Australia. Love you, the UK. I'll come up with other, other countries, but I got yelled after saying, love you, America for a global phenomenon. So I always have to add another country. Love you, uh, all of South America as well. And, uh, Antarctic, uh, Antarctica. So, uh, there you go. I've added, uh, to the list. Uh, we'll see tomorrow bright and early court resumes. We'll be on 8:50 AM and, uh, guess what? I'm gonna go hang out with my kids right now and I'm gonna scare them a little bit, but we'll have fun. Love you all. I guess stick around for one second.