More than 80 witnesses have testified. The judge has delivered complex instructions. Now, the Lindsay Clancy murder trial rests with the jury.
Behind closed doors, 12 people face the difficult task of sorting through the evidence, applying the law and reaching a verdict. Experts say this jury faces more than a complicated legal calculation. They must weigh the evidence about Clancy’s mental state, navigate their biases and tune out the social media storm that surrounded the trial to ultimately reach a unanimous decision.
Adam Rosen, a lawyer and clinical psychologist who runs a jury consulting business, said jurors always have to balance intellect and emotion — but in this case, the latter weighs heavily.
“If the logic doesn’t satisfy them on an emotional or moral grounds, they’re gonna be looking for a rationale to go with what their heart is saying,” said Adam Rosen, a lawyer and clinical psychologist who runs a jury consulting business.
He pointed to two huge emotional drivers in the case: the unimaginable suffering of the children, which could sway a juror to find whoever committed the act guilty, and the emotional toll Clancy will carry, which could stir sympathy for her. As deliberations stretch on and patience wears thin, he said jurors could pull back from more analytical work and turn to a “gut” check.
“Each of them are going to be ... consulting their own conscience here. And so, there’s a great possibility of at least an initially hung jury,” Rosen said.
But Rosen and others pointed out the jury has several possible guilty options — first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter — which could help them reach a compromise, as the latter two carry significantly lesser sentences.
Janice Bassil, a criminal defense attorney who’s argued cases to convince the jury of a “lack of criminal responsibility” like Clancy’s case, said the jurors’ biggest task is emotional. They have to reconcile the stark contrast between a person described as a wonderful mother and the horrific acts of killing her children.
“Is the jury going to accept the idea that this could only have happened because she was psychotic, she had lost her mind?” she said. “And I think that’s the hard thing that the jury’s going to have to sift through.”
Experts say cases involving what’s commonly called “the insanity defense” are extremely rare in Massachusetts and rarely succeed. In the Clancy case, prosecuting and defense attorneys in the Clancy case have relied heavily on mental health experts to testify to her mental state.
Bassil thinks, now, people are more familiar with those kinds of experts.
“Years ago, the prosecutors would basically say, ‘Oh, don’t listen to these experts. They don’t know anything. You know that this person did something terrible, and that’s all you need to know,’” Bassil said. “And that has evolved.”
Still, Brad Bailey, who has argued cases as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney at the state and federal levels, calls cases like Clancy’s “steep uphill battles” for the defense.
“Very often, jurors do have innate prejudices against these types of defenses,” he said. “And there’s the old saw that gets repeated, that ‘insanity defenses are the last recourse of the guilty.’ Which of course is not the case — at all.”
Under Massachusetts law, the issue isn’t simply whether Clancy was mentally ill. Jurors must decide if her illness made it impossible for her to understand that her actions were wrong. The prosecution bears the burden of proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was “criminally responsible” and that she knew her behavior was wrong and that she was able to change her behavior to act, according to the law.
Bailey said the jurors will also have to distill testimony from what he called “the battle of experts” and expects that could extend the length of deliberations.
Like other experts, he sees potential for a hung jury in the Clancy case.
Whatever the outcome, defense lawyer Bassil said cases like Clancy’s can be traumatic for jurors.
“I don’t think in a case like this any juror is gonna walk away sort of untouched,” Bassil said. “And I think that they will think about this and this will be with them for years, maybe for their whole life.”
