The insanity defense in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial rests on a precise clinical threshold: whether Clancy, 36, was experiencing postpartum psychosis severe enough to negate criminal responsibility at the moment she killed her children. She faces three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan, all younger than six, found strangled at the family's home in January 2023. As the defense opened its arguments after the prosecution rested Monday morning, a secondary tension has emerged: that the three victims have been displaced from public conversation by the intense focus on the defendant.
The defense centers on what Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and authority on filicide who testified for the defense, called a "delusion of influence." Resnick testified that Clancy was functioning normally for much of the day, including making a snowman with her children, before she suffered a hallucination that left her feeling like a "puppet" with her body taken over. Dr. Avram Mack, a child and forensic psychiatrist called by the prosecution, directly rebutted that reading. His testimony held that Clancy's actions that day were methodical and organized. "My opinion is that she retained the capacity required for having criminal responsibility for these actions," Mack said.
Where this sits procedurally: a not-guilty verdict by reason of insanity would not release Clancy. She would instead be committed to a state psychiatric hospital and subject to periodic reviews.
The displaced names
Hundreds gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court in pink to show support for Clancy during the trial. Those present framed the demonstration as a stand for maternal mental health awareness rather than an endorsement of the killings. Bethany Mandel, a conservative columnist and mother of six, challenged that framing in an interview with Fox News Digital. "We all know her name," Mandel said, referring to Clancy. "Very few people know the names of her children." Mandel said the courthouse supporters she observed almost never mentioned Cora, Dawson or Callan, and that she saw no one wearing a button with the children's faces.
Jonathan Hatami, a deputy district attorney in the complex child abuse section of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, made a parallel point to Fox News Digital: the trial has become a show centered on the defendant rather than on what she did to her children. "These children died," Hatami said. Days after the killings in January 2023, Patrick Clancy wrote on a GoFundMe page that he had forgiven Lindsay and that "the real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone." Closing arguments are expected to begin as early as Monday or Tuesday before jurors deliberate.