Plymouth, Massachusetts (CNN) — A psychologist testified Lindsay Clancy killed her children in January 2023 because she planned to attempt suicide and “wanted her children ‘with’ her so they wouldn’t be separated (and) wouldn’t have to suffer after she was gone.”
Kirk Heilbrun examined Clancy over three days in April and performed psychiatric tests as he tried to understand her motivation for the killings.
He said there was some evidence she experienced an acute psychosis, primarily her own claim that she heard a male voice telling her to kill herself and her children. But she did not report hearing that voice at any point before the killings or at any point afterward.
“To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about,” he said.
He said he is “always very careful” when someone reports experiencing a symptom only during the commission of an offense.
“It provides a convenient way of lessening your own culpability. It’s always possible, but as I said, I find it very, very rare,” he said.
The psychologist’s testimony came Monday during the prosecution’s rebuttal case as the triple-murder trial neared its conclusion. His testimony abruptly ended for the day after he mentioned Clancy’s Catholic religion, earning sharp words from the judge and a defense motion for a mistrial.
The prosecution’s final witnesses are likely to finish Tuesday, and closing arguments are expected to take place on Wednesday, the judge said. He cautioned the timeline is subject to change.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to three counts of murder in the killings of her children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months.
Prosecutors have argued Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she fatally strangled her three children and attempted suicide at their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. They have acknowledged she had mental health issues but say she still knew right from wrong when she killed her children.
However, her defense attorney has argued she is not “criminally responsible” because she was in the midst of a psychotic episode stemming from postpartum mental illness. A psychiatric expert testified for the defense last week that Clancy did not appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions at the time.
In Heilbrun’s testimony Monday, he said Clancy’s stories of hearing a male voice were inconsistent over time. He said the voice was more consistent with an unwelcome intrusive thought, which she had been experiencing for months, rather than a command hallucination.
After her suicide attempt, for example, the first thing Clancy told her then-husband Patrick Clancy was that she tried to kill herself.
“If she had actually experienced this command hallucination, she might have said something like ‘I did what I had to do’ or ‘I did what the voice said,’” Heilbrun testified.
Instead, the psychologist described the killings as “altruistic filicide,” or the act of killing one’s children out of love. Clancy did not like to leave her children, whether for work, school or a date night, he testified.
“When she decided at some point that she was going to put a stop to (her life), then she had to answer the question of what to do about the kids, and she didn’t want to leave them, and she was convinced they would suffer without her,” Heilbrun testified.
Judge says no religious testimony
Heilbrun’s testimony stopped abruptly on Monday afternoon after he invoked Clancy’s Roman Catholic religion.
Clancy said “Go to God” as she strangled her children, she told a psychiatrist, according to testimony last week, and Heilbrun mentioned that quote in explaining her mindset.
“She was raised as a Catholic, and this, as I understand Catholic considerations, that’s not necessarily what happens, but when I asked her about that, ‘Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?’”
The parties immediately went to sidebar. Afterward, defense attorney Kevin Reddington moved for a mistrial, citing “intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution” by “injecting Roman Catholic faith into this trial.”
Prosecutors argued against a mistrial, saying Heilbrun’s comment was unintentional. Prosecutors had not asked him about religion, and thus argued it was not intentional misconduct on their part.
Judge Sullivan ultimately ruled against the mistrial, but he instructed jurors to ignore Heilbrun’s testimony about Clancy’s faith and Catholic theology.
“The religion that the defendant was raised is absolutely an inappropriate area of testimony,” Sullivan said. “It is to be stricken. It is not to be considered.”
Several jurors were nodding as Sullivan instructed them.
This is the second time this trial the idea of a “mortal sin” has been discussed.
Last week, the prosecution asked Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, whether she’s “aware that murder is considered a mortal sin.” The judge immediately called a sidebar and instructed the jury not to consider that question.
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