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Editor’s Note: This article contains discussions of suicide. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, you can find resources in your area on the National Crisis Line website or by calling 988.
(NewsNation) — Jury selection began Monday in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children in 2023 before attempting to take her own life. While Clancy has acknowledged her role in their deaths, the trial is expected to focus on whether she was criminally responsible for her actions or suffering from severe mental illness at the time.
Clancy’s trial is expected to explore the complicated and rare diagnosis of postpartum psychosis, a mental illness affects a very small percentage of women, causing them to develop delusions and sometimes hallucinations after childbirth.
Because of that prognosis, Clancy’s attorneys and her family argue she isn’t responsible for her actions. However, prosecutors say the murders were intentional.
Defense attorney and former prosecutor Mark Eiglarsh joined NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday. He explained that prosecutors will point to the fact that prisons are packed with people who had mental disorders while committing their crimes. For the prosecution, he said, the case comes down to proving that Clancy planned her children’s deaths.
“Prosecutors will argue, why did you wait till your husband was gone before committing these atrocities?” Eiglarsh said. “Why did you choose to kill yourself? It’s because you knew, after you did this task, what you did was horrendous and horrible.”
Eiglarsh also noted that prosecutions are about upholding the law, and that prosecutors must consider how the outcome of this case could be used by others in their own defense in the future.
“It’s more about defending the law that the legislators do not want, legally, people to escape if there’s any notion that they knew right from wrong, in spite of having the mental illness,” he said.
Her husband, Patrick Clancy, is on the list of witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense. He has repeatedly said in interviews that he forgives his wife, which Eiglarsh says will come into play.
“Imagine someone you love, your husband, your older son, and they all of a sudden do something like this. What’s your position going to be?” he said. “It’ll be different because you know they’re not in the right frame of mind. …and that they were trying to treat [it]. …If she killed the neighbor, then you would have to stand by that same proposition too, legally.”
Michael Casey of the Associated Press contributed to this story.
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