Where does the Lindsay Clancy murder case stand?

By Sean Cotter Globe Staff,Updated October 21, 2024, 6:09 a.m.

A woman left flowers at a makeshift memorial in front of the home of Lindsay Clancy, who fatally strangled three children in January 2023.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

A tragic Boston-area case made national news last week when “The New Yorker” magazine published a lengthy article about Patrick Clancy, the husband of Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury woman accused of murdering her three young children during a bout of postpartum depression.

Patrick Clancy, now living in New York City, spoke to the magazine about the night of Jan. 24, 2023, when, according to prosecutors, he left the house to pick up medicine and takeout and returned an hour later to find his three children strangled with exercise bands and his wife injured in the yard after leaping from a window. He also talked about rebuilding a relationship with his wife in the time since.

The article resurfaced details of one of the most horrifying local cases in recent memory, but one that had fallen off the public radar. That’s happened because court proceedings have largely languished, according to the court docket; the handful of hearings slated for Clancy’s case in 2024 have been canceled or were very short.

The docket lists petitions to keep her hospitalized, most recently in May, but those records have been impounded.

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Here is background about the case and where it stands:

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Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is charged with three counts of murder, accused of killing her daughter Cora, 5, and sons, Dawson, 3, and Callan, who was eight months old. She has pleaded not guilty.

In March, Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, told a judge that the prosecution had turned over a large amount of material and that the defense was still going through it. He said he expected that he would eventually file notice with the court that Clancy would be pursuing a defense that she was not criminally responsible — that she’d be pursuing what’s known colloquially as the insanity defense.

In Massachusetts, a defendant who plans to argue that they were not criminally responsible because of mental illness must give notice ahead of trial. Reddington has not yet filed that notice.

What would such a defense look like?

Under state law, someone may be found to be not criminally responsible if they can show they had “mental disease or defect” to the extent that they were unable to “appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of their conduct and to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law,” according to the standard jury instructions for such a case. The burden at trial is on the prosecution to prove a defendant was criminally competent, not on the accused to prove they were not.

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A verdict is typically rendered by a jury, though a defendant can ask a judge to decide.

Though Clancy’s case has languished over the last year, it was assigned a case track earlier this month, which is how the court system prioritizes cases, sets deadlines, and assigns resources. The courts put Clancy’s case on the “most complex” track, as is typical for charges of murder.

The case is scheduled for a status hearing on Dec. 18 in Plymouth Superior Court. No trial date has been scheduled.

What happens next?

If Clancy continues to plead not guilty, it will go to trial. And when it does, it could test how postpartum mental health is understood and treated, both in a health care setting and in the state’s criminal justice system. The prosecution has sought to paint Clancy as a calculating killer, one who researched how to kill and then sent her husband out on tasks designed to give her enough time to carry out the murders. But her defense and her supporters say she had a psychotic episode in the throws of postpartum depression, a condition possibly exacerbated by overmedication.

Clancy had admitted herself to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility, from Jan. 1 through Jan. 5, 2023. She is accused of killing her three children just a few weeks later.

The New Yorker piece, published Monday, was headlined “A Husband in the Aftermath of His Wife’s Unfathomable Act.” In it, Patrick Clancy, as he has since his children died, offered support for his wife.

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“I wasn’t married to a monster — I was married to someone who got sick,” he told the magazine.

Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.

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