The standard at the center of Lindsay Clancy's murder trial is specific: documented postpartum psychosis alone does not satisfy it. The record must show a break from reality at the moment she strangled her three children. Jurors were scheduled to begin deliberating Thursday, following closing arguments, as Clancy, 36, faces three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan, all under age 6, whose bodies were found at the family home in January 2023.
Rep. Tommy Pope, speaker pro tempore for the South Carolina House of Representatives, told Fox News Digital he does not believe the defense cleared that bar. Pope prosecuted Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her sons after strapping 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander into her car and allowing it to roll into a lake in 1994; Smith received a life sentence. He draws on that experience when reading the Clancy proceedings.
His analysis turns on the kind of evidence prosecutors typically surface in psychosis cases: mundane defendant actions that speak to orientation, not to moral weight. Pope cited Clancy's ability to order dinner or dial a phone as the type of behavioral data that carries weight in this determination. He told Fox News Digital he does not see the break with reality in the Clancy record.
Pope also flagged a structural difference between the two cases. In the Smith trial, the motive the prosecution put forward was legible: Smith was romantically involved with a man who did not want a relationship with a woman who had children. In the Clancy case, Pope said he could not identify a comparable end game after the act, calling that absence a disconnect.
The defense's psychiatric case rested in part on Gregory Saathoff, a University of Virginia forensic psychiatrist who consults for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. Saathoff testified Wednesday that financial pressure was among the stressors Clancy faced, and that she believed her brain had been damaged to the point that she could no longer do the work she loved or help support her family. That sense of being a burden shaped her psychological state before the killings, he said.
Under questioning from defense attorney Kevin Reddington, Saathoff confirmed that severe insomnia can produce psychosis and that sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture. Prosecutors rested their rebuttal case Wednesday afternoon.
If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).