A prosecution psychologist testified that Lindsay Clancy’s account of hearing a male voice ordering her to kill herself and her three children was highly unusual, as the judge rejected a defense request for a mistrial after testimony about Clancy’s Catholic faith surfaced in court.
Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, who interviewed Clancy for roughly 10 hours over three days in April, testified that she may have experienced an acute psychotic episode. However, he said the primary evidence supporting that conclusion was Clancy’s own account that she heard a male voice telling her to kill herself and her children.
Heilbrun said Clancy never reported hearing the voice before the killings or afterward.
“To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about,” Heilbrun testified.
He said he is particularly cautious when someone reports experiencing a psychiatric symptom only while committing an offense.
“It provides a convenient way of lessening your own culpability,” Heilbrun said, while acknowledging that such an experience is possible but describing it as very rare.
Heilbrun was testifying as part of the prosecution’s rebuttal case as Clancy’s triple-murder trial moved closer to its conclusion.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to three counts of murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months.
Prosecutors allege that Clancy intentionally killed her three children at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023, before attempting to take her own life.
The prosecution has acknowledged Clancy suffered from significant mental health problems but argues she nevertheless understood right from wrong and remained capable of controlling her actions.
Her defense maintains that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and therefore was not “criminally responsible” for the killings.
A defense psychiatric expert testified previously that Clancy was psychotic when she killed her children and did not appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing.
Heilbrun offered a different interpretation of Clancy’s reported voice.
He testified that her descriptions of the voice changed over time and that what she described was more consistent with an intrusive thought than a command hallucination. Clancy had reportedly experienced intrusive thoughts for months before the killings.
He also pointed to what Clancy did immediately after her suicide attempt.
According to Heilbrun, Clancy’s first statement to her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, was that she had 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, Heilbrun characterized the killings as “altruistic filicide,” meaning a parent kills their children out of a belief that doing so is an act of love or protection.
He testified that Clancy had been deeply attached to her children and disliked leaving them for work, school or social activities.
“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 said.
Judge Rejects Defense Request for Mistrial
Heilbrun’s testimony came to an abrupt halt Monday afternoon when he referred to Clancy’s Roman Catholic upbringing.
Earlier in the trial, testimony indicated that Clancy told a psychiatrist she said “Go to God” while strangling her children. Heilbrun referenced that statement while discussing her state of mind.
He then said Clancy had been raised Catholic and discussed a question he had asked her about whether suicide was considered a mortal sin.
The attorneys immediately approached the judge for a sidebar.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington subsequently asked for a mistrial, accusing the prosecution of intentionally bringing Clancy’s Roman Catholic faith into the proceedings.
Prosecutors opposed the request, arguing that Heilbrun’s reference to religion was unintentional. They noted that prosecutors had not asked the psychologist about Clancy’s religion.
Judge William Sullivan ultimately denied the defense motion for a mistrial.
However, he ordered jurors to disregard Heilbrun’s comments concerning Clancy’s religion 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 nodded as the judge delivered the instruction.
The issue was not the first time the concept of a “mortal sin” had arisen during the trial.
The previous week, prosecutors asked Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, whether she knew that murder is considered a mortal sin. Judge Sullivan immediately intervened and instructed the jury not to consider the question.
The trial is now approaching its final phase. The prosecution’s remaining rebuttal witnesses are expected to finish their testimony, after which the court will move toward closing arguments and jury deliberations.
The jury will ultimately have to determine whether Clancy was legally responsible for the deaths of her three children or whether her mental illness rendered her not criminally responsible at the time of the killings.
