Why Lindsay Clancy's Prosecutors Carry the Hardest Job in That Courtroom

In most states, the defense has to prove insanity. In Massachusetts, the prosecution has to prove sanity. That distinction is at the center of the Lindsay Clancy trial as closing arguments approach Thursday, and it changes how everything this jury heard over 21 days of testimony gets weighed in that deliberation room.

Eric Faddis, a defense attorney and former prosecutor, explains the standard the Commonwealth must meet. Under the McHoul test, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy could appreciate the wrongfulness of strangling Cora, Dawson, and Callan and that she could have conformed her conduct to the law. Two parts. Both required. Failing on either means Clancy is not criminally responsible.

The prosecution called Dr. Avram Mack as a rebuttal witness. He told the jury Clancy had a severe depressive episode. He would not call it psychosis. The defense called experts who did. The legal standard does not pick sides on the diagnosis — it asks whether a mental disease or defect deprived her of the substantial capacity to understand or control what she was doing.

Faddis walks through the human side of deliberation — how holdouts operate, how twelve people with no psychiatric training evaluate dueling expert testimony, and what happens when a jury tells the judge they are deadlocked. In the Karen Read case, five days of deliberation and a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction could not break the impasse. The judge declared a mistrial.

This jury must reach a unanimous verdict. That process starts after closing arguments.

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