Lindsay Clancy jury braces for closing arguments as judge tells court: ‘You’ve heard all the evidence’ – Live updates

After Dr Saathoff’s testimony concluded, the prosecution rested its case against Lindsay Clancy.

Judge William Sullivan then excused the jury for the day.

‘You have heard all the evidence,’ he told the jury, but advised them to keep an open mind.

Sullivan ordered a lunch break, and when the court returns, the lawyers will go over the charges against Clancy.

On the latest episode of The Trial USA, crime correspondent Rachel Sharp takes listeners inside Plymouth Superior Court for day fifteen of the Lindsay Clancy trial, the second day of the defense’s case.

Rachel has been covering every single day of the trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, keeping our readers up to date with live reports and filing video roundups from the scene.

Kevin Reddington asked the judge for the jury to be allowed to consider acquitting Lindsay Clancy based on an inadequate police investigation.

‘It was no investigation,’ he said.

‘They basically accepted the fact that she strangled the children and moved on.’

He said that they didn’t test the window screen or the tumbler that she allegedly crushed pills into. He also said there are all sorts of questions about the blood spatter.

‘I could go on and on about the horrific investigation,’ he said.

Reddington asked the judge to remove instructions about voluntary intoxication.

‘Believe it or not, after five weeks, we agree,’ he joked, acknowledging the prosecution had the same requestion.

Reddington said he did not see any evidence to suggestion she voluntary took drugs that induced psychosis.

Reddington asked that the word ‘morally’ is added into the instructions where the jury is told that the state ‘must prove that the defendant knew or understood that her conduct was wrong.’

Buckingham objected to involuntary manslaughter being introduced as possible lesser charges.

Bow-wearing prosecutor Shanan Buckingham is asking the judge not to include instructions over involuntary intoxication.

She said there is no evidence to show that Clancy was intoxicated to a debilitating effect during the killings.

Buckingham said that the state does not object to the criminal responsibility explanation.

Court has returned from the lunch recess.

The attorneys are now arguing over the instructions and which charges to give the jury when they begin deliberating.

With the final witness now off the stand, the judge is holding a charging conference Wednesday to determine which lesser charges and legal instructions will be presented to the jury when deliberations begin.

The issue could prove pivotal for Clancy, whose defense argues that her mental state and the effects of medication used to treat her postpartum psychosis should give jurors a path to a lesser conviction.

Prosecutors, however, argue that she deliberately killed her children as part of a plan that involved sending her husband, Patrick Clancy, out on errands while she strangled the children in the basement before attempting to take her own life.

Before the lunch break, Reddington renewed his motion for a required finding of not guilty.

Judge William Sullivan denied the motion.

Lindsay Clancy is accused of murdering her three children – Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan – in January 2023.

Although the 36-year-old does not deny killing her children, she has pleaded not guilty and claimed she is not responsible for her actions because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

On the day of the killings, Clancy asked her husband, Patrick Clancy, to leave their home to get takeout food and to pick up something at a pharmacy.

The former nurse strangled the children with exercise bands, then used multiple methods to try to end her own life.

She was paralyzed after falling from the home’s second-story window and is being held at a state hospital.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.

Behind the doors of the pre-Civil War psychiatric facility, the former nurse who once cared for her own patients has become the patient herself.

There, confined to a wheelchair, she receives round-the-clock care for her physical and mental health, following what her defense says was a severe episode of postpartum psychosis and depression.