Prosecutors in the Lindsay Clancy triple-murder trial are undermining their own case with cold, combative questioning that ignores the emotional weight jurors carry, a criminal defense attorney contends.
The defense team for the 36-year-old Duxbury, Massachusetts, mother began presenting its case this week in Plymouth Superior Court after prosecutors rested Monday morning. Within hours, the prosecution's conduct during the preceding days became its own flashpoint, not because of the evidence presented, but because of how the state's lawyers handled witnesses in a case involving the strangling deaths of three children under the age of six.
Criminal defense attorney Donna Rotunno, assessing the trial's dynamics, told Fox News Digital that the prosecution is coming across as "uncaring and snarky", a posture she warned could cost the state credibility with jurors who are absorbing deeply disturbing testimony day after day.
The moment Rotunno singled out came Tuesday, when Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asked Susan Clancy, Lindsay's mother-in-law and a Catholic, whether she knew that murder was a "mortal sin." Susan Clancy offered no response. Judge William Sullivan immediately called a sidebar and ordered the remark stricken from the record.
Rotunno pointed to the exchange as exhibit A of a prosecution that has misjudged the room. Susan Clancy, she noted, appeared deeply sympathetic to what Lindsay Clancy was going through, a posture likely shared by at least some jurors sitting through weeks of testimony about a young mother, three dead children, and a mental health system that may have failed at every turn.
"I understand that your job is to prosecute this murder case and you view this as a first-degree murder, but in sort of ignoring the true emotion that this type of a case invokes, and by ignoring it, you are really tone deaf as to the way the jurors feel."
That was Rotunno's assessment. Whether or not jurors agree, the prosecution's decision to invoke Catholic doctrine against a sympathetic family member, only to have the judge strike it, handed the defense a visible win in the courtroom without the defense lifting a finger.
On Wednesday, the defense called Dr. Paul Zeizel, a clinical forensic psychologist, who walked jurors through Lindsay Clancy's mental state in the months before the killings. His testimony painted a picture of a woman spiraling toward catastrophe while the systems meant to catch her looked the other way.
Zeizel told the court that Clancy called a suicide hotline in December 2022. She was told she did not qualify for intervention.
"They told us she did not meet the standard of care because she did not have a plan."
She called again. She still did not receive help, Zeizel testified.
Zeizel described Clancy's state of mind in stark terms: she believed her brain was damaged, she believed she should end her own life, and she believed she would never recover. The defense is building its case around the argument that Clancy was in the grip of postpartum psychosis when she killed five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and seven-month-old Callan at the family's Duxbury home in 2023.
That argument will stand or fall on whether jurors believe Clancy's mental illness was severe enough to meet the legal threshold. But the defense scored an emotional point when Zeizel addressed the prosecution's earlier line of questioning, which had implied Clancy never spoke about her children.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked Zeizel directly whether Clancy had ever mentioned her children, "because apparently, according to the questioning that you underwent, she never talks about her kids." Zeizel's answer was unequivocal:
"She does speak about her children. She really loves them and misses them and thinks of them every single day. Almost every moment of the day."
For a jury weighing whether this defendant is a calculating murderer or a profoundly ill woman who lost control, that answer matters. And the fact that the prosecution's own questioning set up the contrast only reinforces Rotunno's point about tone.
Reddington also took aim at how prosecutors had characterized McLean Hospital, the short-term psychiatric facility where Clancy received treatment. He told Fox News that prosecutors had made it sound like a "five-star institution" where doctors and therapists were practically tripping over each other trying to treat Clancy, and that she was "just blithely refusing care and treatment."
"Her involvement in this case came about after one of the prosecutors, I don't recall which, made it out on direct examination that McLean is some kind of a five-star institution where the doctors, the psychiatrists, the psychotherapists, and the counselors were all banging into each other in the hallway trying to interview Miss Clancy, who was just blithely refusing care and treatment, which is not the case."
Reddington was explaining why the defense had sought to call Emily Thorndike, a former clinical social worker at McLean who had firsthand experience in the same short-term unit where Clancy was treated. Judge Sullivan rejected that motion on Wednesday, ruling that Thorndike could not testify before jurors. But the judge did grant a separate defense request: certain records relating to McLean's staffing levels and the programs it offers during the period Clancy was a patient will be allowed into evidence.
That partial win gives the defense documentary ammunition to challenge the prosecution's framing of McLean as a place where Clancy had every opportunity to get better and chose not to. If the staffing records tell a different story, fewer clinicians, limited programming, shorter stays, the defense can let the paperwork do the talking.
Reddington told Fox News on Wednesday that closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. The trial, expected to last six to eight weeks, has featured a witness list of more than 200 names. Reddington did not say whether Lindsay Clancy will take the stand, but he noted that she is aware of the support she has been receiving.
That support has taken a visible form. Supporters plan to gather outside Plymouth County Superior Court on Thursday wearing pink, and social media posts have encouraged people to organize similar gatherings in their own cities Thursday morning.
Lindsay Clancy faces three counts of first-degree murder. The facts of what happened to Cora, Dawson, and Callan are not in dispute. The only question is why, and whether the answer the defense offers meets the legal standard.
Rotunno's critique of the prosecution is not about sympathy for the defendant. It is about strategy. A jury asked to sit through weeks of testimony about dead children and a mother's disintegrating mind is a jury carrying enormous emotional weight. Prosecutors who ignore that weight, who reach for "mortal sin" questions and imply a grieving mother-in-law is somehow complicit, risk looking like they care more about winning the argument than understanding the case in front of them.
None of that excuses what happened in that Duxbury home. But a prosecutor's job is to convict, and conviction requires jurors who trust the state's judgment. Tone deafness in a courtroom is not just a style problem, it is a strategic one.
