Judge Makes Big Move In Lindsay Clancy Trial

“Yes, I did,” Cavanaugh replied.

“And you never once wrote about the voice, correct?”

Buckingham pressed.

“Correct,” Cavanaugh answered.

The exchange underscored a recurring theme in the trial: defense experts and witnesses describing auditory commands and mental collapse after the fact, while contemporaneous medical documentation often lacks those specific details.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder.

Her attorneys acknowledge she caused the children’s deaths but argue she lacked criminal responsibility due to severe postpartum psychosis, a condition they claim left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions or conform her conduct to the law.

On Wednesday, forensic psychologist Dr. Paul Zeizel, who met with Clancy dozens of times after the incident, concluded his testimony by affirming the defense’s central claim.

Under questioning from Reddington, Zeizel agreed that Clancy had lost substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform to the requirements of the law because of mental illness.

Reddington asked about records from January 7, 2023—two weeks before the killings—regarding intrusive thoughts.

“Did she have, at this point, intrusive thoughts continuing regarding voices in her head that she heard constantly?” Reddington asked. “Yes,” Zeizel said.

“What were these voices saying to her?” Reddington followed. “They were getting worse, and they were telling her to kill herself,” Zeizel replied.

Yet under cross-examination, Buckingham highlighted the absence of such reports in the actual clinical records from September 2022 through late January 2023.

“My question to you, though, was where in the records from September to Jan. 23 or Jan. 22 did she tell any of the providers she saw that she heard a voice telling her to kill herself?” Buckingham asked. “It’s not in the records,” Zeizel acknowledged.

Buckingham further asked how many times Clancy had reported currently hearing voices in the years since the killings.

“She has not heard voices since the event took place in 2023,” Zeizel said.