Deliberations In Lindsay Clancy Trial Enter Sixth Day

0:00The Last Word With life pharmacy, over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together. Maria McHughan is with us again today because we're going to talk about the trial of the American nurse Lindsey Clancy, which has been an enormous story in the United States in recent weeks. It's a very, very sad case and I should also say that some listeners may find this to be quite distressing because it involves the murder of a three young children who were aged only five, three and eight months. But there has been jury deliberating for six days now in trying to come to a verdict and they can't as yet. Maria McHughan, tell us please the background to this. Tell us about the why this trial has come about. Okay, well, it started a couple of months after Lindsey Clancy, who was a nurse who worked in labor and delivery wards in Massachusetts near Danbury,

1:02which after she gave birth to her child. She already had two children, a young boy and a girl and they were this is in 2022. She was regarded as has been tested, if by her mother-in-law, by her husband, as a very devoted mother. She was a very hard working nurse who's described as a perfectionist in all things and she became depressed and anxious after the birth of her third child. Now, she apparently sought help and her husband testified this also and several witnesses on numerous occasions after the birth of her child. As she was depressed, she was anxious. She lost a lot of weight. She couldn't sleep and she told her husband about a month before. She killed her three children that she'd had thoughts of killing the children she was put on about 13 different medications by various different doctors. She was seeing a psychiatrist. She even checked herself into a hospital and saying that she believed that there was something seriously wrong with her mentally about a month before the children were killed.

2:02She was released after five days. On the day her children, she killed her children and she never denied that she killed her three children. She strangled all three of them. She had been looking at how long it would take to get to various take-out places and whatever on an apple app. She sent her husband to as a Microsoft worker when he came home from work to go and get some take-out and pick up some for medications. While he was out at the house, she strangled all three children and then she went upstairs to her bedroom and she attempted three different methods of committing suicide, culminating with where she jumped out a window and as a result of that was paralyzed permanently from the waist down. Now she was obviously, she never, as I say, the police were called. Apparently it was, as you can imagine, an extremely harrowing scene. Her husband about a month afterwards had written, I think there was a go, fun me online and he had asked people to forgive his wife to please forgive her. And people were surprised by that, but he and his mother and her family, her mother, had all said she had desperately sought help.

3:09Indeed, Marianne. We actually, because this is the nature of American trials, that this has been live-streamed and various elements of it have been recorded and are available for broadcast. So let's hear her husband, Patrick Clancy, recounting Lindsay's declining mental health for the murders and his description of the day is children died. Do you recall how she was physically after starting the Cerequal? Awful. How so? That was really where her big spiral started. She started to lose a lot of weight and she became very depressed and she was having a really hard time. And so after you called Lindsay and didn't get a response, what did you do next? I started checking upstairs. And where did you check upstairs? First the bathroom. I thought maybe they were taking baths, but there's no one there.

4:09And then where did you go? The kids' bedrooms. Was there anyone in the kids' bedrooms? No. And then did you go to your bedroom? Yeah. And were you able to get into your bedroom right away? No, the door was locked and that's when I knew something was wrong. She said she heard a man's voice and we heard that if she didn't do it now, she would lose her chance or something like that. And did she also tell you that she had had a moment of psychosis? I don't recall. Very distressing, just to warn people again, this is Lindsay Clancy's sister and former mother-in-law among the family members who testified about her deteriorating mental health after the birth of her son. The beginning of December, it seemed like she very much decompensated. I do remember her saying at one point at the beginning of December, something long lines a moment in a really tough spot

5:09and knowing what she had shared with me previously about how her mental health had been struggling. I had this gut feeling that something was off and that she was really struggling and I asked her if she was safe. What did she say? She said yes at that. Lindsay was a very loving mother. She was dedicated to her children. She was a fun mother. She was always doing things for her kids. She always wanted to be a mother, have many children. I felt it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She would do anything for her children. She was just a loving mother. Mary, tell us about the basis for her defense while she's beating not guilty to murder. She's pleading not guilty to murder by reason of insanity because the Massachusetts law, relating to insanity, is broader than a lot of the American states where it's really, really narrow. Under Massachusetts law, you can be found not guilty for reason of insanity, even if you were aware of what you were doing at the time was wrong,

6:18but you weren't able to control your actions. The prosecution, which is accusing her of murder, and there's also options for the jury to find her guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter, which in this context seems slightly contradictory, but they are saying she planned the whole thing that she didn't hear any voices in her head telling her this was her last chance she had to do it. They're saying she wasn't suffering from postpartum psychosis. They're even saying she faked her suicide attempts that what she really wanted to do was just kill her children. And so as I said, her lawyer is saying, look, this woman was begging for help. The prosecution is saying this is not a referendum or a trial about the American health care system. This is a referendum on whether or not this mother planned the murder of her children, and that has been their case all along. Now, there were some very heated moments. One was her psychiatrist and said that she had not shown signs of psychosis, even though her notes about Lindsey Graham, but one of her sessions, I think it's part of Lindsey Tancy, even though it seemed to contradict this, but her husband is bringing a civil lawsuit against the medical providers,

7:22saying that they were negligent in their treatment of her and in not spotting how much danger she was in. So there are a number of sort of, as I say, subtext to this, the jury at the moment, it's a really difficult case. During the trial, there were very few people attending every day, with mainly friends and family, and now there's been a lot of support outside the court with a lot of women have turned up wearing pink, and they're saying that the health care system failed her very badly, and that this should not have happened. This should have been prevented. As I said, the prosecution are saying this was a deliberate, calculated act of murder. She wasn't in saying she wasn't suffering from any condition she wanted to kill her children, and the jury has not been able to reach there in their sixth day now. Marianne, the judge. Can I just briefly say what the judge said? In this very important point, the jury has heard all of the evidence, and clearly the jury cannot reach a unanimous decision. I don't know whether they're allowed to give a majority verdict, and yet all the stuff that you read online is quite a remarkable example again of the way that American society has gone.

8:26In that everyone feels entitled on the basis of their limited knowledge to have a decision, they can make a decision one way or the other based on what they've heard. But the clear thing here is that the jury who's heard everything and not just selected sound bites is divided and one actually happened. Yeah, and they saw very harrowing pictures of the children after they've been killed. They heard from 84 different witnesses, 74 for the prosecution, 10 for the defense. So they have all this information. Now the judge sent them away again with what's called a chewy Rodriguez order, where the judges basically say to them, listen to each other again, listen to the opposite side, reach a verdict because no other jury is going to be any better than you are. So it's really on you. So it's a way of pressuring the jury, but it seems in six days in that they're not going to be able to reach a verdict. And it really seems at this stage that they are struggling. If they don't reach a verdict, there could be a retrial. Whether or not the prosecution will bring a retrial given how this case has conflicted not just the jurors,

9:33but you know, as you say, it's very easy for people outside of the courtroom who have no expertise, no inside knowledge to have opinions on this, but it seems that the jury, despite having all of this information presented them, are just not able to conclusively say that she deliberately killed her children, that she commissioned manslaughter where their deaths was not an intentional consequence of her actions, which as I said, is the version that will make the least sense, or that, you know, a second-degree murder charge R&D that she is not guilty by reason of insanity. So they haven't, they had four options there. They haven't been able to reach any of them, which really shows what a difficult case this is. Okay, we will leave it there, Mary and Michele, thank you very much for being with us. The last word. With life pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help. Life pharmacy. Live better together.