The Lindsay Clancy Trial, Day 20: "Committing The Act Is Not Curative Of The Voice"

***Due to time constants, this episode is unedited.

Day 20 was the last full day of evidence in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, and it was the strangest day of the whole five weeks.

The morning belonged to Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, the forensic psychologist the Commonwealth hired to explain postpartum psychosis to a jury. On cross examination, Kevin Reddington established that Heilbrun last treated a patient with postpartum psychosis in 1982, has never published a word on it, wrote his only article on psychosis in 1977, and has been paid roughly $54,000 at $300 an hour.

That same witness told jurors Lindsay Clancy committed what he called altruistic filicide. That she killed her three children out of love, so they would not be left behind or suffer without her after she took her own life. The prosecution has argued for five weeks that this was planned and methodical. Their own expert just told the jury it was despair.

The afternoon belonged to Dr. Gregory Saathoff, forensic psychiatrist at the University of Virginia and a senior psychiatrist for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. He gave that jury something no witness had given them in five weeks: a moment by moment account of how Cora, Dawson and Callan died, sourced entirely to Lindsay Clancy's own words. The refrigerator. The chicken nuggets. The 5:34 phone call. The voice. The order. And then he spent the rest of the day taking it apart.

We go through the whole day in order, gavel to gavel, because the order is the argument.


In this episode:

The Monday mistrial motion, and why "mortal sin" has now been put in front of this jury twice.
Heilbrun's direct: bipolar two, peritraumatic dissociation, and the eighteen minute problem. "Why the basement. Who among the children goes first. What do you say to the kids to keep them from panicking."

The cross: 1982, the $54,000, the "beast" question, the day program in Rhode Island that would not take her, and Reddington standing behind Lindsay Clancy's wheelchair.

Saathoff's five attacks on the voice, including the line that is going to end up in closing arguments: "Committing the act is not curative of the voice. I've not ever seen that."

Why the chicken nuggets are contested evidence and not a poignant detail.

The circus outside the courthouse, the livestream, and the TikToker the defense actually tried to put on the stand.

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