By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial ended a second day of deliberations on Friday without a verdict in the case of the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three children in 2023.
Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children, but her lawyer said she did it because she had lost her grip on reality due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth. In the months before the killings, Clancy sought treatment for her worsening mental health, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing. They say she strangled the children because she was depressed and tired of living, and made a conscious choice to kill them before attempting suicide.
The jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon and met again Friday, asking at one point to take a look at a knife that Clancy used to cut herself and bags with empty prescription pill bottles found in her house.
Jurors are expected to return to the courthouse Monday. Members of the panel could find her guilty of murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter, or acquit her if they decide she wasn’t in control of herself due to her psychiatric problems.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. She did not testify during the trial, but jurors heard at length from medical professionals who treated her, as well as from friends and relatives she had told about her mental health problems.
Jurors also heard from medical experts called by prosecutors and the defense who disagreed about her likely state of mind when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at their Massachusetts home.
The killings happened less than three weeks after Clancy was discharged from a psychiatric hospital. She cut herself before jumping from a second-floor window after strangling the children. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.