Tense Lindsay Clancy prosecutor snaps at her defense attorney as trial inches towards closing arguments: Live updates

After tense cross-examination in which Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham questioned Dr Paul Zeizel about potential bias, she exchanged tense words with defense attorney Kevin Reddington.

‘Let’s talk about confirmation bias,’ Reddington said, springing to his feet as soon as the prosecutor said she had no other questions.

Buckingham quickly responded: ‘Can I sit down please.’

The public gallery laughed.

The Daily Mail has launched a new podcast taking you inside the courtroom for the murder trial of mother-of-three Lindsay Clancy.

The Crime Desk’s Rachel Sharp 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.

Rachel will now be joined by Trial USA host Kayla Brantley twice a week to record a special podcast miniseries.

Judge William Sullivan ruled that Thorndike cannot testify in the trial.

The judge said that he finds Thorndike credible. But he has to look at issues such as the element of surprise, bad faith, prejudice to other parties and the materiality of the testimony.

The first three issues he said do not apply here.

The fourth – materiality of the testimony – is at issue, he said, in that she didn’t work there for a year before Clancy was admitted to the hospital.

He also said that the McLean records show the staffing levels in holidays and not in holidays. He will allow those records to be admitted to show what was available to Clancy during her time there.

Buckingham is saying Patrick wasn’t asked if it was the best hospital in the country. He was asked if he knew Clancy declined some group sessions there.

She also pointed out that Thorndike has not seen her medical records.

Thorndike said that she knows certain rules, however, such as that they could only spend 20 minutes per patient due to the number of patients.

She had to see eight patients a day, she said. McLean directly limited their time with patients, she said.

Emily Thorndike watched Patrick Clancy’s testimony and saw him being questioned about Clancy being admitted to McLean.

It was the holiday weekend when she was admitted.

The state presented it as being well staffed despite being New Year’s Day.

Thorndike said she was ‘emotional’ when she saw that and posted a TikTok.

‘I was emotional because I felt what was said in court was not what I experienced,’ she said.

To her, it was ‘misleading.’’

‘There was mention that there was individual therapy. There was not,’ she said.

The judge ordered the jury to go on break until 2pm.

After the jury left the courtroom, potential witness Emily Thorndike was called to the stand for questioning.

The process is called a voir dire, which is questioning of a potential witness to determine if they are allowed to testify.

Thorndike was a social worker who previously worked at McLean psychiatric hospital – where Clancy admitted herself in January 2023.

She posted on TikTok about the hospital after Patrick Clancy’s testimony.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington filed a motion seeking to introduce her as a witness to rebut the state’s presentation that McLean is one of the best hospitals in the country.

In the motion, he said she was ‘incensed’ with the prosecution’s questioning of Patrick about the hospital, saying it was actually understaffed and lacked resources.

Thorndike did not work at the hospital when Clancy was admitted in January 2023.

Having been in many psychiatric hospitals, Dr Zeizel said that there is nothing unusual about Clancy’s behavior in the hospital.

When asked about her family visiting, he said:‘That’s indicative of love.’

‘She is extremely well-regarded and well-liked on that unit by everyone.’ he said.

She has good and bad days, but she is not in there laughing and partying at the hospital, he agreed.

‘She does speak about her children,’ he said.

‘She really loves them and misses them and thinks of them every single day, almost every moment of the day.’

The prosecution played a video of an interview with Dr Zeizel from December 2023.

In the clip, Dr Zeizel stood alongside defense attorney Kevin Reddington and described Clancy as being ‘in a surreal state,’ saying ‘it seems dreamlike to her.’

Zeizel told the court that he had not reviewed Clancy’s medical records at that point.

‘That was not an assessment of Ms Clancy. That was an assessment of people who go through mental health crises,’ he said.

Clancy’s records from Tewksbury Hospital om some of the children’s birthdays and the anniversary of the killings were read to the court.

On May 26, 2023 – Callan’s 1st birthday – Clancy was seen self-propelling her wheelchair along the corridor. She had lunch with her mother and they played games.

On Cora’s birthday on December 24, 2023, she accepted medication, meals and snacks and had her family visit.

On January 24, 2024 – the one-year anniversary of the killings – she was noted as being able to engage with staff and her peers.

Under cross-examination, prosecutor Shanan Buckingham pressed Dr Zeizel about Clancy’s claim that a man’s voice told her to kill herself and the children.

He said that Clancy also told a chaplain at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital after the killings about the voice, as well as her husband Patrick.

Dr Zeizel said that Clancy has not heard voices since the killings in 2023.

But she had heard voices before then, he testified.

Dr Zeizel explained that someone in the grips of psychosis can continue with normal tasks.

If someone is in a psychotic state they can continue to talk, look things up online and do everyday tasks that they can normally do, he testified.

‘People who are in that state can continue to do things they have done before,’ he said.

Doing new tasks – such as changing a tire if you have never done that before – can prove difficult.

‘They can do everyday tasks,’ he said of someone in a state of psychosis.

So Clancy could continue to do things like take Cora to the doctors and search things online that day even if she was in the grips of psychosis, he said.

‘My opinion is that she did have indeed a mental disease or defect, that’s a legal construct, not a DSM-5 one, but she had bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis,’ Dr Zeizel said.

‘In addition, she was unable to conform her behavior to the law, and she had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.’

The stunning moment came during day 12 of Lindsay Clancy’s trial when a police officer admitted the state’s apparent theory that a doctor had coached the mom-of-three to claim that she killed her children because she was hearing voices.

That doctor is Dr Paul Zeizel, a highly experienced, well-respected forensic psychologist who works with Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, who testified that he visited Clancy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital days after the killings.

She claims that she was in the throes of severe postpartum depression and psychosis and heard a voice commanding her to kill the children and herself, telling her it was her ‘last chance.’

Inside Plymouth County Superior Court on Wednesday morning, Massachusetts State Police Sgt Dan Lawlor was forced to admit that investigators discussed a ‘theory’ that a psychologist hired by the defense had planted the seed of that story in Clancy’s mind.