Jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial are set to begin deliberations Thursday after closing arguments and the judge’s instructions on the law. The case now moves from evidence to decision, with 12 jurors due to weigh whether Clancy is guilty of murder, manslaughter, or not guilty by reason of a lack of criminal responsibility.
That is why the Lindsay Clancy trial live today search is drawing attention: the hearing has reached the point where a verdict is no longer a distant possibility but the next step. Plymouth Superior Judge William F. Sullivan told jurors Wednesday to “rest up and be ready for tomorrow,” after saying they must keep an open mind and not discuss the case until they hear the final arguments and his instructions.
Sullivan said he will give prosecutors and Clancy’s attorney an hour each for their final pitches before sending the panel to deliberate. Six members of the 18-member panel will be selected as alternates, leaving 12 jurors to decide Clancy’s fate after 21 days of testimony from 84 witnesses.
The instructions will be central. Sullivan said jurors will be told they may return separate verdicts for each child: guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, or not guilty by reason of a lack of criminal responsibility. That last option would require a finding that a mental disease left Clancy incapable of appreciating the wrongfulness of her actions or obeying the law.
Clancy has admitted she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. She has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and is asserting an insanity defense, saying she suffered a postpartum psychotic break and heard a man’s voice telling her to kill the children and herself.
The defense and prosecution have framed the same day in opposite ways. Clancy’s side says she was in the grip of a mental collapse that stripped away her ability to judge what she was doing. Prosecutors say the killings were premeditated, and that she was depressed and overwhelmed after the birth of her third child, tired of her life and decided to kill herself and take the children with her because she did not trust anyone else to care for them.
Gregory Saathoff, who testified Wednesday during his second day on the stand, said in his opinion Clancy had Bipolar II disorder but “did have the capacity to appreciate right from wrong.” He also said she should be held criminally responsible, describing her as “methodical and quite controlled” on the day of the slayings. He said she took her daughter for a checkup, built a snowman with her children and texted photos of them to her husband and mother, and that a significant amount of planning went into the killings.
Clancy appears in court each day in a wheelchair after being paralyzed from the waist down when she slashed her wrists and neck and jumped out a second-story window after the killings. That detail has made the trial feel especially stark: the jury is not deciding whether the children died, but whether the law treats the killings as murder or as the product of a mental disease that erased criminal responsibility.
By Thursday, that question will no longer belong to witnesses or experts. It will belong to the 12 jurors, and the verdict they reach will turn on whether they accept that Clancy’s condition left her unable to understand the wrongfulness of what she did — or whether they conclude, as prosecutors argue, that she knew exactly what she was doing.
