Victims' names fading as Clancy trial focuses on defendant's mental state

The courtroom in Plymouth has become a stage for competing narratives, and somewhere in the noise, three small names have nearly disappeared. Cora, Dawson, and Callan—all younger than six—were found strangled in their family home in January 2023. Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, now 36, stands trial for their deaths, charged with three counts of first-degree murder. But as the case has unfolded, the focus has shifted almost entirely away from the children and toward the woman accused of killing them.

Bethany Mandel, a conservative columnist and mother of six, has watched this drift with alarm. She points to the hundreds of people who gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court in pink, ostensibly to raise awareness about maternal mental health and postpartum conditions. The supporters say their presence is not an endorsement of what happened, but a stand for mothers in crisis. Yet Mandel noticed something troubling in their vigil: almost no one wore buttons bearing the faces of the three dead children. When she listened to interviews with the women standing outside, she heard almost nothing about Cora, Dawson, and Callan. "We all know her name," Mandel said of Lindsay Clancy. "Very few people know the names of her children."

Jonathan Hatami, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who specializes in child abuse cases, echoed that concern. He told Fox News that the trial has become "this entire show" about the defendant—her conduct, her mental state, her suffering—when it should remain fixed on what she did to her victims. "These children died," he said flatly. "People don't realize these children matter."

The trial itself has been consumed by psychiatric testimony. The defense has argued that Lindsay Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her children, that her mind had fractured in a way that rendered her unable to control her actions. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on filicide, testified that Clancy was functioning normally through much of the day—she even made a snowman with her children—until she experienced what he described as a hallucination and a "delusion of influence," a sensation that her body had been taken over, that she was a puppet with no agency. The prosecution countered with Dr. Avram Mack, who testified that Clancy's actions were methodical and organized, that she retained full criminal responsibility for what she had done.

The question of her mental state will likely dominate the jury's deliberations. If jurors find her not guilty by reason of insanity, she will not be released; instead, she will be committed to a state psychiatric hospital and subject to periodic reviews. But that legal outcome, whatever it is, will not restore the names of her children to the center of the conversation. Her husband, Patrick, wrote on a GoFundMe page just days after the killings, asking people to forgive Lindsay, describing her as "generously loving and caring." The plea for compassion toward the mother has largely drowned out any sustained attention to the three children she killed.

Closing arguments are expected to begin as soon as Monday or Tuesday. When the jury begins deliberating, they will be asked to weigh questions about Lindsay Clancy's state of mind. But the broader question—the one that has already been largely lost—is whether a trial can remain centered on its victims when the defendant's suffering has become the dominant story.