Lindsay Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington moved to declare a mistrial on Monday, claiming "intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution" by "injecting Roman Catholic faith" into testimony.
Judge William Sullivan ultimately denied the motion, but not without reprimanding the prosecution and instructing them to speak to their witness about what he can testify on.
Clancy, 36, is on trial for charges related to the killing of her three young children in 2023. Her attorney does not dispute that she killed the children. But Reddington says she shouldn't be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that the prescribed antidepressants worsened her condition.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.
After Clancy strangled the three children with exercise bands in the family's basement, the defense says she attempted to take her own life by jumping from a second-story window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Kirk Heilbrun, who examined Clancy over three days this year, testified as a rebuttal witness for prosecutors in a case that centers around Clancy's mental state.
Heilbrun said he struggled to reach a diagnosis of bipolar 2 disorder "because of all the diagnoses in the records and all the symptoms that she experienced." People with bipolar 2 disorder experience cycles of depression and hypomania, which is less intense than the mania experienced with bipolar 1 disorder.
"I was having a hard time finding something that looked like it was a manic episode," Heilbrun said. "There were times when she felt, as she described it, after the birth of different children, she felt good. She felt on top of the world. She felt really close to them, her husband and her kids and so on. But, it's also something that it didn't look like a manic episode so much as it looked like she was really feeling good."
Heilbrun echoed earlier testimony about Clancy's struggles with sleep, the negative reactions to medications she was prescribed, anxiety about returning to work and leaving her children, as well as intrusive thoughts that include wanting to hurt herself.
But he noted that at a psychiatric hospital she stayed about two weeks before she killed her children, she never reported having hallucinations or suicidal thoughts. Her main concern was insomnia.
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Heilburn testified that he believes Clancy was in pain and did attempt suicide, but that she didn't want to leave the children behind.
He echoed earlier evidence presented that said Clancy told the children, as she was strangling them, to "go to God," and Heilburn said that was a sign of her expectation that they would be "together in heaven with God."
"She was raised as a catholic and this, as I understand catholic considerations, that's not necessarily what happens, but when I ask her about that, when I said, isn't suicide a mortal sin?" Heilburn said before he was cut off by the defense objecting, followed by a sidebar conversation with the judge and counsel.
The court was then sent into recess, and the defense made a motion for mistrial after they returned.
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When the jury returned, the judge instructed them to disregard part of Heilburn's testimony and dismissed court for the rest of the day.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old.
The two sides have presented experts with starkly contradicting testimony on whether Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
