Killer Massachusetts mom's coded courtroom signals: Lindsay Clancy's surprising demeanor as potential jurors are reduced to tears in trial over murder of three children

Lindsay Clancy pulled a cream shawl tight around her shoulders. The fabric swallowed her thin frame.

A nurse in the courtroom had rushed to fetch the shawl. Clancy sat shivering in her wheelchair, unable to do it herself.

A yellow tag reading 'personal property' hung from the back of her wheelchair. Two nurses sat behind the defense table, ready to help her at any moment.

It was a stark reminder of the night in January 2023 when she tried to kill herself, after strangling her three children: Cora, 5, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months old. The attempt left her permanently paralyzed.

Her murder trial, which could take several weeks, has gripped America. It explores the rare phenomenon of postpartum psychosis, which afflicts a tiny percentage of women who develop delusions and sometimes hallucinations after childbirth. Clancy has pleaded not guilty and is expected to claim insanity.  

It also offers a jarring contrast between Clancy's seemingly perfect life in suburban Massachusetts and the horrific tragedy that occurred, combined with intense debates over maternal mental health and criminal responsibility

Inside Plymouth Superior Court during the first week of the trial, Clancy sat in the witness box and had to look up at everyone around her – the prosecutors, her lawyer, the judge and the jury pool deciding her fate.

She looked small and fragile in her chair. But mentally, she seemed sharp. Surprisingly so.

During the days-long jury selection, Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, took an active role. She watched jurors' faces closely and listened hard to their answers.

She read their questionnaires and followed the process intently, turning her head from speaker to speaker.

She kept glancing at her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sending him quiet signals – a nod, a raised eyebrow – to show approval or disapproval of each candidate.

Reddington, who once represented mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger's longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, sometimes let Clancy make the final call.

At one point, Judge William Sullivan asked if either side wanted to strike a man in his 30s from the panel. Reddington paused and looked at Clancy. She gave him a knowing glance. He said no. The man stayed on the jury.

At times, Clancy's face tightened with pain, her brow furrowed, her hands clenched in her lap. At other moments, she smiled faintly while chatting with her lawyer during breaks.

Watching from the public gallery, near Clancy's parents Mike and Paula Musgrove, it was strange to see how composed she looked.

This is a woman who was arraigned from her hospital bed. A woman whose entire trial hinges on her mental state.

Clancy is accused of strangling Cora, Dawson and Callan with exercise bands inside their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023.

She then tried to take her own life, cutting her wrists and neck before jumping from a second-floor window. She survived, but lost the use of her legs.

She faces three counts of first-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty in a blockbuster trial that raises tough questions around postpartum mental illness and criminal responsibility.

Prosecutors say Clancy planned the killings and was of sound mind, pointing to her internet searches and the fact she sent her husband Patrick out for takeout while it happened.

She doesn't deny killing her children that day. Her defense argues she isn't criminally responsible because severe postpartum depression and psychosis had taken hold of her mind.

Her attorney has called her mental state a 'toxic soup,' worsened by heavy medication and treatment gaps, despite her repeated pleas for help.

The couple has since divorced, and Patrick has remarried and moved to New York City.

But he will give evidence in support of his ex-wife, who has instead put blame on the clinicians who knew she was sick and, he claims, let her down.

Whether that illness explains away her responsibility is the core question for the jury.

Her condition today doesn't matter to the case. She's spent the past three years in psychiatric care at Tewksbury Hospital.

What she understands now has no bearing on what she understood then. Only her state of mind in that moment, more than three years ago, counts.

But separating who she was then from who she appears to be now may prove hard for any jury.

This week made clear how hard it would be to find 12 people willing and able to hear this case.

Some jurors couldn't commit to a trial that could run eight weeks. Others carried obvious bias, given the case's high profile and its subject: a mother accused of killing her own children.

Many simply found the weight of it all too much.

The first potential juror questioned Tuesday morning broke down in tears and couldn't finish her answer. The gray-haired woman, in her 60s, waved off her emotions and reached for tissues. A court officer checked on her after she was dismissed.

A day earlier, another woman left the courtroom in tears after similar questioning.

Others excused included a pregnant woman close to Clancy's age, and several people with young children or grandchildren – sparing them from graphic testimony and autopsy photos of Cora, Dawson and Callan.

Some jurors shared their own experiences. One man said his wife had suffered postpartum depression after their child was born.

Even jurors already seated asked to be let off. One man in his 30s, seated Monday, returned Tuesday to say he couldn't handle it.

'I just don't know if I can handle being on the jury,' he told the judge. 'I've just heard about it and a crime like this is really just horrible… I don't think I can handle it.'

The judge dismissed him.

Friday brought more of the same, as a man and woman seated earlier in the week were excused at the last minute, forcing the court to find replacements.

None of this surprises legal experts.

'Jurors often come into a case like this with powerful emotional reactions,' said attorney Shari Karney. 'One of the defense's biggest hurdles is overcoming the natural bias many people have when a mother is accused of killing her own children.'

Layer in the question of mental illness and legal responsibility, and the case grows even harder, said Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney.

Jurors, he said, must separate 'moral horror from legal responsibility.'

'The emotional facts are almost unbearable, but the legal question is much narrower,' Levin said. 'The jury is not being asked whether the deaths were horrific. It is being asked whether Clancy was criminally responsible when they occurred.'

'The law requires them to decide the case based on her mental state, not simply on the unimaginable nature of the outcome.'

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After four days, roughly 350 potential jurors had passed through the courtroom. Each day, dozens raised their hands to admit bias, or said they couldn't render a fair verdict.

By Thursday afternoon, 18 jurors had been seated – 12 women, six men, including six alternates. It's a larger panel than usual, built to survive losses along the way.

Under Massachusetts law, a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

If the jury finds her not guilty by reason of insanity, she still won't go free. She'll be committed to a state psychiatric hospital, evaluated over time, and released only if she's no longer seen as a threat.