On the latest episode of The Crime Desk's The Trial USA: The Trial of Lindsay Clancy podcast, host Kayla Brantley is joined by crime correspondent Rachel Sharp who has been in court every day covering the murder trial.
Clancy, 36, is on trial for killing her three children – Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan – at her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in 2023.
She does not deny killing them but has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming she was suffering from severe post-partum mental illness that left her unable to control her own actions.
The trial has become a battle over whether or not Clancy should be criminally responsible for the death of her children with the defence and prosecution submitting opposing psychiatric assessments of the mother of three.
In this episode, we hear expert testimony from the defence which claims Clancy was out of control and could not understand the gravity of her own actions, the prosecution's rebuttal and the fiery blows exchanged when a different expert claimed Clancy showed no signs of psychosis.
Leading our hosts to consider did Clancy have the capacity to kill?
On Friday, the defence called their final witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr Philip Resnick who has researched postpartum psychiatric disorders.
He claimed that Clancy had been suffering from 'bipolar two with a severe depression' and that her symptoms began within three months of Callan's birth.
Dr Resnick argued that on the day of the murder she was suffering from postpartum onset and was 'clearly' psychotic.
Describing the state Clancy was in at the time, he told the court: 'She felt that her body was taken over by an external force, where if she were in a dream state and did not have control of her own body, it's almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings'.
Meanwhile, the prosecution called their first rebuttal witness, Dr Avra Mack, who interviewed Clancy twice in April 2026 and reviewed her medical records.
He diagnosed Clancy with a major depressive episode but claimed her illness was not postpartum and that he found no evidence of psychosis.
Dr Mack's claims were followed by a fiery cross examination from defence attorney Kevin Reddington, who challenged him on Clancy's medical history.
Yet the doctor's position remained – that Clancy was not psychotic.
Prosecution then called in forensic psychologist Dr Kirk Heilbrun who also interviewed Clancy. He found she was severely depressed, severely suicidal, but not psychotic.
Dr Heilbrun claimed this was because she only hallucinated hearing a male voice for 18 minutes and that it would be extremely unusual for a person experiencing psychosis to only hear a voice once.
This revealed for the first time that it specifically took 18 minutes for Clancy to kill her three children.
To find out what else was revealed in court, search for The Trial: USA.
