The Lindsay Clancy trial has reached one of its most important moments. The witnesses are finished, both sides have made their closing arguments, and now twelve jurors are left to decide what happened inside that home on January 24, 2023, and whether Lindsay was criminally responsible when Cora, Dawson, and Callan died.
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m taking you through the final stretch of testimony without making you sit through every minute of psychiatrists and psychologists arguing over diagnoses. Because, y’all, even I recorded that version, and decided I wasn’t going to do that to you.
Instead, I want to focus on what actually matters.
The Commonwealth brought in its final three experts, and while none of them suggested Lindsay was well or that her suicide attempt wasn’t real, they disagreed with the defense over two critical issues: whether she was psychotic and whether she still had the capacity to understand that what she was doing was wrong.
We’ll also talk about the moment religion entered the testimony and the defense asked for a mistrial, what happened during closing arguments, and the five possible decisions the jury can reach for each child, including what a finding of lack of criminal responsibility would actually mean.
As a forensic nurse death investigator, I keep coming back to something I learned working scenes: evidence doesn’t narrate itself. Phones, medications, searches, timelines, medical records and witness statements give us pieces. It’s investigators, experts, attorneys, and ultimately jurors, who have to determine what those pieces mean.
And that is exactly where this case now sits.
The jury doesn’t have to decide whether Lindsay suffered. Every expert agreed that she did. Their job is to determine whether the Commonwealth proved criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.
And while we talk about mental illness, diagnoses, criminal responsibility and everything surrounding this trial, I don’t want us to lose sight of the reason that courtroom exists in the first place: Cora, Dawson, and Callan.
I’ll continue following the case and bring you an update when something moves.
Content Note: This episode discusses the deaths of children, strangulation, suicide, self-harm, and serious mental illness.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson.
00:10
Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, guys, it’s Julie with Pushing Up Lilies. I wanted to tell y’all that I actually went to the North Texas Overdose Awareness Day last night.
00:41
I love that people were getting together and discussing, like, their history of abuse and recovery, and it was just heartwarming to hear their stories.
00:56
And there were a lot of recovery facilities there to provide support.
01:02
And I had a couple of stickers made for the event, and these are gonna be available on my website, but this one is like a Narcan sticker, and this one is overdose awareness, and those are gonna be available on the website.
01:16
I have a ton of cute stickers, y’all. I’m super excited because I designed them all, and so most of them have our website on them. I only have one that have a QR code, but they’re just fun.
01:30
They’re fun. And then also, I don’t know if y’all have seen the tumblers. I’ve got so much stuff on my desk here. The tumblers. So, these super cute Pushing Up Lilies tumblers.
01:41
I believe they’re 16 ounce and lots of fun. Those are also available.
01:47
Now, these are in my store at the Mercantile in Crumb, but they’re also gonna be available at the Murder Mystery Dinner, which again is October 10th at Studio 141 in Crumb, catered by Our Blended Table, my friend Tiana.
02:05
And it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be exciting. It’s put on by murdermysterytexas.com. So, I’m looking forward to the actors being there. Very interactive, great meal.
02:18
You’ll get to visit with Jan Bonham. Again, she’s the mother of Kelly Ann Cox, who is the UNT student that was abducted back in 1997 and found murdered in the Houston area.
02:29
So, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. It’s gonna be a fun night, and we’ll get to talk with Jan, and she has been gracious enough to come down from Houston to be my guest.
02:41
And looking forward to that and looking forward to meeting her. Also, I will be at the Day of the Dead Festival, October 24th, as a vendor, and all my merch will be there.
02:52
I will have the comic books. I’ll have all the stickers. I’ll have the T-shirts, and I have a special giveaway sticker. I only have 200 of them, so get to my booth quick.
03:01
But it is a Day of the Dead sticker that I had designed, so I think y’all will love it. Also, I am attending as an exhibitor the Texas EMS Conference.
03:14
Gonna be in Fort Worth in the end of July, at the Omni Hotel. I think I missed out on getting a hotel room at the Omni, which is not good, but I’m not happy about that. But anyway, I’ll get one close by.
03:26
We’ll figure it out. But lots of events coming up. I’m just already looking forward to and looking for events for 2027, and I feel like 2027 we’re gonna blow up, y’all.
03:41
So, if you will share this podcast with your friends, I would so appreciate it. I am so stinking close to 100,000 downloads.
03:50
Like, it’s amazing, and never ever would I have thought that I would be there. I mean, it’s just, it’s nuts to me. I love it, though. I absolutely love it. Also, I’m just trying to think.
04:03
I feel like there’s something else coming up I should have told y’all about. If you hear of events, let me know. I’m really interested to see where y’all are going, what y’all are doing.
04:14
What kind of events would you like to see the podcast at? Do you have friends who have been involved in something that you feel like would be a good story for the podcast?
04:26
There is a place on my website where they can go on and actually put their information in, and we can do a virtual episode, and it doesn’t matter where they live.
04:39
I would love to have them on the air. I met a girl last night who actually spent some time in prison for the murder of her husband’s ex-wife, and he did it.
04:50
And so, she spent over a year in jail, and it’s unbelievable, so she will be on soon. I wanna have her on. Kind of waiting for this Lindsay Clancy case to be over with.
05:02
And I’m not gonna lie, this past week’s been a little bit boring. I had recorded an episode, and it was…
05:08
It turned out to be an hour and a half long, and it was the most boring episode, y’all, and I just do not wanna bore you like that.
05:14
I mean, we all wanna know what’s going on, but we don’t need a step-by-step of all of these psychiatrists and psychologists arguing about what Lindsay Clancy’s diagnosis was.
05:26
It’s not, it’s not entertainment. So, I’m not gonna bore you with that. I did tell you that I would stay with this case, so that’s what we’re doing today. Not the whole five weeks.
05:37
We’ve already covered that, but we’re gonna just talk about the last stretch, August 24th through the close of the court on the 31st, which was yesterday.
05:47
Who testified, what those last three doctors actually said, and why the defense actually asked the judge to throw the trial out.
05:56
What did the lawyers tell the jury, and what those 12 people can actually Even pick as far as what her punishment is, and actually where it sits at this point.
06:13
So, this one’s heavy because these three babies are gone, and baby and child deaths were always the most difficult for me, always the most difficult. They’re gone. Their mom is on trial.
06:27
Everybody agrees that she was sick, so that’s not the fight. The fight is whether she was still criminally responsible when they died, and a lot of people are fighting about it.
06:40
I know that it’s been all over my Facebook, people saying, “I can’t believe that anyone supports her.” And then other people saying, “She’s ill.” Now, I’m not diagnosing Lindsay Clancy.
06:54
I cannot do that from my kitchen table, and I would not even if I could.
06:59
But what I can do is separate what was on the record from what a lawyer argued and from what an expert believes, and those are not the same thing. On a death scene, they’re never the same thing.
07:15
And I just wanna remind everybody, this episode talks about the deaths of children, strangulation, suicide attempt, and psychiatric illness.
07:25
So, if that’s not where your head is today, skip this episode. And I mean that, and I’m okay with that. Child deaths are not something that I like talking about.
07:37
Actually, I try to steer clear of them because I know there are a lot of teenagers that listen to the podcast, and they’re my least favorite to discuss.
07:47
But because this case has got everybody so riled up, I wanted to share with y’all because I know that I’m telling you the facts and not just making up a story.
08:00
Now, again, remember that if you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call for help.
08:07
Nine eight eight anywhere in the US, and then the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is one-eight three three TLC mama.
08:18
So that’s M-A-M-A, and don’t make me tell you the numbers because I do not know. I don’t have a phone in front of me.
08:24
We all know that Lindsay pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, and that’s the Massachusetts language for what most people call an insanity defense.
08:40
Now, it’s not enough to say she had a mental illness.
08:44
The jury has to decide whether a mental disease or defect substantially took away her ability to know that this was wrong or substantially took away her ability to follow the law.
09:00
Now, once the defense put that on the table, the Commonwealth had to prove that she was still responsible. That’s what we do, right? The defense and the prosecution, that’s their job.
09:13
So, beyond a reasonable doubt, that’s the question hanging over every expert that you’re about to hear.
09:20
Before August twenty-fourth, the defense had already put on family, friends, and medical staff who had actually treated Lindsay, as well as their own doctors.
09:34
So, the defense’s story is postpartum psychosis and a male command voice on January twenty-fourth of twenty twenty-three telling Lindsay Clancy to kill the children and then herself.
09:49
Now, one thing we have to remember is that the prosecution never said she is fine. There is no argument about that. They are both in belief that she was not okay.
10:03
They said she was depressed, she was exhausted, she was suicidal, and still able to choose.
10:11
Their story is that she sent her husband Patrick out for food and medicine, killed the children while he was gone, and then trying hard to die.
10:22
Now, this week, the Commonwealth called three rebuttal doctors, and that’s it. Lindsay didn’t testify. After the last doctor sat down on August twenty-sixth, no one else took the stand. So, Dr.
10:36
Avram Mack is a forensic psychiatrist. He actually finished on Monday. Dr. Kirk Heilbrun is a forensic psychologist out of Drexel. He testified on Monday and Tuesday. And then Dr.
10:51
Gregory Saathoff, who is a forensic psychiatrist, he’s tied to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. He testified on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, here’s what I want you to hear before we get into the weeds.
11:04
Basically, those three men agreed on more than the internet fight suggests. They all agreed that Lindsay was suffering. They all agreed that her suicide attempt was real.
11:19
Testing did not say she was faking. Nobody on the rebuttal stand called this a healthy woman putting on a show, so no one believes that.
11:30
But they did split on the label on psychosis, on that voice, and whether she still had control.
11:42
And so that’s the whole week in one breath, and now I’m gonna kinda slow down where it actually changed the temperature, I guess is a good word. Changed the temperature in the courtroom.
11:56
So, we’re gonna do just a little quick kinda trial update. Now, we’re gonna talk a little bit about Mack and Heilbrun. So, Mack appeared on a video screen.
12:06
Mack was virtual And Kevin Reddington, who is Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney, went back after him. Mack’s bottom line was blunt. Major depression. He said she was not bipolar.
12:20
He said she was not psychotic at the time of the killings. And he said that she was still able to know that this was wrong. Now, Reddington’s first swing at Mack was time.
12:35
So, Mack evaluated her, first of all, more than three years later.
12:40
Now, that’s not abnormal when it comes to forensic work, but he’s basically rebuilding her past mental state from records and interviews and phones and the memories of other people.
12:54
But the defense wanted the jury to feel that gap. He was not there back in January of 2023. He did not interview Lindsay at that time. He isn’t able to see how she responded at that time.
13:13
So, he’s just basically going back through the record. So, the defense wants the jury to make sure and know that. Then Reddington went to bias.
13:23
Did you walk in already knowing what the prosecutors wanted? And that’s important too. Now, Mack said no. And now it got ugly in that little way courtroom cross can get ugly.
13:37
Talking over each other, Mack asking for the question again, asking him to repeat, Reddington objecting because Mack smiled and he made note that this was not funny and jurors watched all of that.
13:54
Demeanor is definitely important in the courtroom. It lives in the room. It was very important to me, you know, back when I testified, you got to be confident. Don’t make a fool of yourself.
14:08
Like, don’t be an idiot. Act like you know what you’re talking about. And these guys know. They know what they’re talking about.
14:14
But the bipolar fight mattered because the defense tied that diagnosis to a higher risk of postpartum psychosis. And later, doctors at Tewksbury called it bipolar.
14:26
And Heilbrun, the next prosecution expert, would call it bipolar too. And then a nurse practitioner had already been thinking about bipolar before the deaths, but Mack would not move.
14:40
And so Reddington asked whether postpartum psychosis could show up fast and then look almost normal in between treatments.
14:50
And Mack said the current diagnostic manual doesn’t list postpartum psychosis as a separate disorder. So, there’s that. But y’all, I need to pause here because that sentence can fool people.
15:05
A thing that does not have its own chapter in a book can still be real. So, we diagnose psychosis inside mood disorders all the time, including after someone has a child.
15:21
So, the fight in that courtroom was not the table of contents. It was whether she actually was psychotic when those children died.
15:32
Now, they also fought about how long postpartum depression can last because Kellan was eight months old. So, Mack kind of used a tighter window and the defense wants a wider window.
15:49
So, there’s a question as far as, you know, how long after the pregnancy can you say that you have postpartum depression?
15:57
You have pregnancy and you have birth, but then you have months of no sleep and then you’re depressed and then you’re on meds and your medications are changing and your doses are changing and you don’t always snap back at six weeks.
16:12
I mean, that’s a reality that we all know. Now, when Mack left, his opinion had not moved. He did agree she was very ill, but he said she was responsible and that she was not psychotic.
16:26
So, when Heilbrun walked in and I’ll be honest with you, his testimony is the one that feels like two completely different episodes taped together. He spent about 120 hours on this file.
16:40
He interviewed Lindsay. He interviewed Patrick. He interviewed Patrick’s mother and he diagnosed bipolar too. So, he talked about Zoloft in the fall of 2022 and a woman who was gradually sliding.
16:57
So, I mean, he’s discussing some of her medications. He said that, you know, she was anxious about going back to work. She had a baby who wouldn’t take a bottle.
17:09
And by late November, Lindsay’s saying that she’s at the end of her rope. She is disconnected. She feels somewhat like a zombie. And in December, she was having intrusive thoughts.
17:23
And Heilbrun said she described those thoughts as hers. So, she did say she was the one feeling. And that’s what scared her. Now, one loop was that her brain was damaged and she needed to die.
17:36
And sometimes the content involved harming the children. And so all of that kind of came out here during his testimony. Now, this is where I put on the investigator hat.
17:51
So, an intrusive thought is junk that your brain throws at you. Like most people still know that it comes from inside. It’s your thought your brain is telling you.
18:04
A hallucination is actually hearing a voice as is not in the room. So, both of these are unbearable. Both of these can be very real, but they’re not the same.
18:14
So, the jury has to decide what to do with her later report that a male voice commanded this. So Heilbron said testing showed that she underreported unusual experiences.
18:29
But he didn’t see her, and he didn’t see her inflating symptoms. He saw somebody who liked control. She worked, she liked motherhood, she liked doing things right.
18:44
He also said more than three years later that she’s still on one-to-one suicide watch. So, he did not describe her as cold towards those babies. He said she still grieves, and she doesn’t wanna live.
18:59
I mean, she’s still on one-to-one suicide watch. But then he made the turn the Commonwealth hired him to make, and two explanations, he said, acute psychosis with a command voice.
19:13
That’s the defense. Or what forensic people call altruistic filicide. That’s a word… That word’s awful in regular English, but nothing about this was kind.
19:26
So, in that model, a parent who wants to die kills a child from a twisted belief that death will spare the child from suffering or from being left behind. So, it names a claimed motive.
19:40
It does not wash anything clean. Now, Heilbrun liked the second path better. In his reading, she decided to die and couldn’t stand the thought of the children living without her.
19:56
And we’ve heard this before in other cases that are very similar, but he didn’t buy the voices as proof of psychosis.
20:05
The first time she reported anything like it, timed to the short window Patrick was gone, wording changed later, no bigger web of delusions.
20:18
And in her account, the voice stopped after the last child was born. Now, he also leaned on Patrick coming home and asking what she had done. She reportedly said that she tried to kill herself.
20:34
Now, Heilbrun’s point was, if a voice ran the whole event, why didn’t she say so at that point?
20:43
The defense later reminded everybody that she was critically hurt, and the nine one one tape is very hard to understand. It’s not a clean sentence, and that is also in front of the jury.
20:59
Then the day broke. Lindsay had reported saying words to the children about going to God, and Heilbrun used that to say that she actually expected them to go to heaven.
21:15
And then he started talking about her Catholic upbringing, and he started talking about what he thought Catholic teaching said. And that didn’t go over very well, as you can imagine.
21:29
For whatever reason would he wanna bring religion into it? But defense objected, and Reddington asked for a mistrial.
21:37
He said that religion had already actually been a problem in this trial and that the Commonwealth just dragged it back in. And the prosecutor said that Jennifer Sprague never asked that question.
21:52
The witness actually volunteered it at the time that it first came up, and they denied trying to light a fire. So that was a big thing, you know, when religion came up.
22:04
The judge, William Sullivan, was not happy. He actually denied the mistrial, and he told the state to get their witness basically back inside the lines. Like, stay in your lane.
22:16
Don’t veer off into things. And then he brought the jury in, and he told them straight, “Look, religion is not the subject here. Strike it. Ignore it.
22:28
Do not use this man’s personal take on Catholic teaching.” He sent them home early so that comment would not be the last thing in their heads.
22:38
Now, a mistrial would have killed this jury and forced a do-over if the state wanted one. So, the judge decided a hard instruction was enough.
22:51
He felt like, no, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna do all this over. So legally, that remark is out. So, Tuesday morning, Heilbrun came back and gave the Commonwealth the sentence it needed.
23:02
She understood killing another person was illegal. Her wish to die bent her moral thinking. He didn’t believe it erased her moral thinking.
23:15
He believed that she still chose whether, when, and how all this was to take place. He talked about January twenty-fourth as a string of ordinary-looking choices and then a sequence in that house.
23:32
The defense answer is one I have seen in a lot of other cases. Organized action does not settle psychosis. People who are psychotic can still buckle a car seat and follow a recipe.
23:48
So doing steps in order is not the same as being legally in control. So Heilbrun offered another word, dissociation, feeling like it’s not you, feeling like you’re watching it.
24:03
He said that fit better than a command voice. And Reddington asked him if she had been an excellent mother. Heilbrun said, “Yes. She was a very good mother.
24:12
I will agree with that.” That sentence helps both sides, which is why it kinda hung in the air. Reddington even gave him the hypothetical. Assume the voice was real and compelled her.
24:26
Does she then lack capacity? Heilbrun wouldn’t give a clean yes. Now, a command hallucination, he said, does not automatically erase responsibility. And yeah, we know that.
24:40
I mean, just because she says she heard a voice that told her to do it doesn’t mean she’s not responsible. The last witness was Dr.
24:48
Gregory Saathoff, and the state used him for inconsistencies, planning, hiding, and whether Lindsay could manage what other people saw.
25:00
So, he interviewed Lindsay twice, once in May and then in June of 2026, and he talked about her masking. So, Christmas of 2022, she was trying to act normal.
25:13
She used the word fake, but the prosecution heard control.
25:19
I’ve also sat with a lot of sick people who hide symptoms because they’re ashamed or scared or terrified that somebody’s gonna take their kids.
25:29
Masking is real, but what it proves about January 24th is the argument. That’s the argument that’s being argued. That’s what’s going on here. He went after the voice.
25:44
In one version, it starts after Patrick calls while she’s at the fridge. And last chance, kill the children before you kill yourself. And other versions start after Patrick leaves.
25:59
Some lean on the children suffering without her. Patrick’s testimony put at least one child already eating before he walked out, which really doesn’t match every later detail.
26:15
So Saathoff called that hallucination very unusual. First time, constant, timed to the opportunity. Gone after Callan. Not wrapped in a bigger set of false beliefs.
26:29
He also said people do not automatically obey those voices, which, you know, that’s obvious.
26:37
I guess if you hear voices, not everyone follows through with what they’re telling them to do and obeying one doesn’t make it go away. So, he built the clock the Commonwealth likes.
26:50
She knew where Patrick was going. She had a sense of how long it was gonna take him to get there, how long it was gonna take him to get back.
26:59
She called CVS, she called Patrick back, and she moved each child separately to the basement. Then medication, then cutting, and then a jump from a second-story window.
27:14
So, he read that return call as concealment. Ignore the phone, and Patrick might turn around. Wednesday, he finished his testimony. Same legal landing as the other two, really.
27:28
Bipolar II in his diagnosis. Says she still knew right from wrong. She’s still able to control her conduct. She was still responsible.
27:38
And I want you to hear this part clearly because the commentary gets a little bit sloppy. Saathoff called the suicide attempt extremely serious.
27:47
He said missing an artery did not make this attempt any smaller. The Commonwealth’s last doctors did not say she was well. They did not say that she was pretending to die.
28:01
They parted with the defense on psychosis and on capacity. Reddington had a decent day on Cross. Saathoff’s recent hands-on work with postpartum psychosis was old.
28:16
Like, we’re talking state hospital in the ’80s and in the ’90s. His later career is in prisons working national security and government consulting.
28:31
So Reddington tried to hang the government man son on him, and the judge kinda cut that wording off, but the resume was still on the board. The jury still heard the resume.
28:44
So, then the question the defense needed, can postpartum depression turn into psychosis quickly? Saathoff said, yes, it can.
28:54
He would not take the next step, though, to say that that’s what happened in this case.
29:02
They fought about Lamictal and Stevens-Johnson syndrome, that rare ugly reaction people are legitimately scared of. You know, we all worry about the side effects of all these different drugs.
29:18
It’s something to be concerned about. I mean, that’s why they say…
29:21
God, I heard a commercial the other day, y’all, and they were talking about a drug, and literally the commercial was ten minutes long telling you everything that could go wrong if you took it, you know, including death, of course, ’cause we have to tell you worst-case scenario.
29:35
But Saathoff ended up saying her refusal was reasonable, about one in a thousand for the serious reaction. Reddington walked him through every reach that Lindsay took for help.
29:48
Searching postpartum depression, seeing actually multiple providers, telling Patrick and his mother that she was scared of hurting the children. She called the crisis line twice.
30:00
She admitted herself to McLean Hospital. And he agreed that getting redirected by a crisis line because she did not have a specific plan might have actually landed hard.
30:13
He also agreed the testing did not show malingering. And then Reddington did one thing I would have done if I were sitting at that table.
30:22
He read the Commonwealth’s own opening to the Commonwealth’s own last expert.
30:28
So that opening had painted her actually as manipulative, wanting a quick fix Rejecting the life she thought she wanted, making a selfish choice to escape, to just like escape the life that she had.
30:47
Saathoff said that that statement actually minimized what Lindsay was going through, and so that’s a real moment. The last state doctor still said she was responsible.
30:58
He would not sign the meanest version of why. So, he also agreed that the nine one one recording was not a clear confession about a voice. She was outside. She was torn up. I mean, she fell.
31:18
She was torn up from the fall. And shortly after one o’clock on Wednesday the twenty-sixth, the Commonwealth rested.
31:26
The jury had heard more than seventy prosecution witnesses and ten defense witnesses across five weeks. So, this update week was just three doctors.
31:40
So today, I’m recording this on the first, and we are expecting a possible outcome. So, with the jury out, the judge put manslaughter on the slip as a lesser option. Second degree too.
31:55
So, the defense wanted about an instruction, which in Massachusetts actually tells a jury that it can consider holes in the police work. But the judge said no to this special charge.
32:09
He still let Reddington argue it, though, in closing, and the jury still heard it. So that’s a difference. You can talk, but the judge is not necessarily gonna spotlight it for you, right?
32:21
So, Thursday, they had one hour each, the defense and the prosecution. Reddington named the children first. He didn’t ask anybody to pretend this did not happen.
32:33
He asked why and whether the legal test was met, and he put the woman before the decline next to the death scene. She had no criminal history. She had no violence.
32:48
She had multiple people calling her a good mama. His answer was severe mental illness, missed care, medication, and a command voice.
33:00
He said she first told a hospital chaplain about that voice before the forensic psychologist, the state later accused of planting it.
33:11
He went after bottles left in a nightstand that the police left there, a meal used for timing with no test on the food. No one proved that any of the kids had eaten.
33:24
And any suggestion that Dawson died first because he was difficult, he called that idea actually repulsive. He asked for not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
33:35
And then Jennifer Sprague got up and did not waste time pretending that Lindsay was very healthy. The state did not have to prove she was well.
33:45
It had to prove she had substantial capacity, and she told the jury not to put the whole mental health system on trial. This case, she said, is January twenty-fourth.
33:58
Her story was a woman tired of trying, children as the last reason not to die, and then a decision to remove that reason. Suffering and criminal intent all in one hour.
34:13
So, she rebuilt the clock with the restaurant drive time search, the CVS call, the watch data, and then the return call.
34:22
So, sending him away and answering the phone, she said, shows that Lindsay Clancy knew this was wrong.
34:30
Appointments where nobody saw psychosis, nobody seemed to think that she acted out of the ordinary. She was having ordinary days with the kids. The defense says psychosis can be sudden and hidden.
34:46
The state says planning started before any claimed sudden voice. So, Sprague also used what Lindsay did not tell mandated reporters. The state hears concealment.
35:00
They feel like she was trying to conceal. The defense hears a sick, scared mother. Now, Lindsay cried through a lot of these graphic parts.
35:12
Judge Sullivan reminded them that closings are not evidence, and then he charged the jury.
35:20
She did not have to testify, so he wanted them to not use that against her and to not decide this on feeling even after they saw all the photographs, which, you know, I’m used to seeing those.
35:35
People in the jury are not used to seeing those. So, twelve deliberating, nine women, three men. Juror two fifty-seven is the foreperson. Five roads for each child.
35:48
So first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty because the state did not prove the crime, or not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
36:02
So that’s what we’re dealing with here. Now, first degree, as the state asked for it, is life without parole. Second degree is life with the possibility of parole.
36:17
Now, manslaughter, as it was explained, is actually up to twenty years. And I need you to hear this because people get this part wrong. Lack of criminal responsibility is not a ride home.
36:34
So, the judge explained the state can still seek an evaluation and commitment.
36:41
If a court later finds that she’s mentally ill and dangerous, she can stay in a state facility for years, maybe even for life. And release depends on later findings.
36:55
It depends on what happens later. So that’s not freedom. That’s just a different system altogether. So, the jury started a little after 1230 on Thursday, three and a half hours and still nothing.
37:09
Friday, they asked for the knife that Lindsay used on herself and two bags of pill bottles. One was from the nightstand, and one was from Patrick’s truck.
37:21
That request really doesn’t tell you which way they’re leaning. We really don’t know yet, like what they’re thinking, what’s going through their heads. So, these items sit right on the fault line.
37:33
Suicide attempt, meds, the fight about the investigation, all the different theories. But Friday was about seven hours, so 10 hours total. And then the jury went home for the weekend.
37:47
And then they came back on Monday, the 31st, with no new public question, home again just before 4 and almost 17 hours.
37:57
So, the judge told them to stay the course and come back Tuesday, which is today, September 1st, at 9 a.m. So here we sit. We’re waiting. So, I know everyone is impatiently waiting.
38:13
Okay, so through this recording cutoff, there’s no deadlock, no dynamic charge, no replaced jurors, no verdict. 17 hours of quiet, though, is not a hint.
38:25
So, we don’t need to assume that this is a difficult decision. In a case this heavy, it’s just quiet. So here is the board tonight. Basically, Mack believes depression, no psychosis.
38:40
Lindsay’s responsible. Heilbrun believes bipolar II dissociation, that there was no command voice and that she was responsible. And Saathoff believes bipolar II, that her suicide attempt was real.
38:56
He has doubts about the voice. And he believes that she was concealing and planning and that she was also responsible. So that’s what these three doctors all brought to the case.
39:10
The defense doctors from earlier weeks said the opposite. They all said psychosis. They all said no substantial capacity. So, we’re just kind of sitting.
39:21
This jury does not have to swallow any of these experts whole. They can actually take a diagnosis and spit out the capacity piece.
39:31
So, they can believe there was a voice and still find her responsible. And they can see planning and still decide that a mental disease blocked any real grasp of wrongfulness.
39:46
So that’s how I work a scene. What do we know? What are we inferring? Phones, meds, inquiries. Basically, those pin pieces of a timeline, but they don’t really narrate themselves.
40:00
So, it makes it complicated. And everybody’s kind of sitting on pins and needles waiting for this to end.
40:07
Doctors and lawyers put a plot on top, and 12 people decide actually which plot survives reasonable doubt. So, they don’t have to decide whether she suffered. Every last expert said that she did.
40:20
Everyone was in agreement that she did suffer. So, they don’t have to decide whether Cora and Dawson and Callan mattered because their names are why that courtroom exists at all.
40:36
Their names are the reason. So, for each child, did the Commonwealth prove the crime and did it prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt?
40:49
So, I’ll come back when they do prove or do not prove, when something else in this case moves. But until then, take care of yourselves.
41:00
If this one’s sitting on your chest the way it’s sitting on mine, that’s okay. These cases do not leave just because court is adjourned. Just be sure and take the facts with you.
41:13
Do not turn a diagnosis into a verdict. Don’t forget those babies while you talk about maternal mental health. And do not erase mental health or mental illness while you talk about responsibility.
41:28
So anyway, I want to thank y’all for listening. This case is heavy. It’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in.
41:34
And this was kind of a boring week when it comes to the psychiatrist and the psychologist talking. But hopefully it kind of gives you a little bit of a rundown on what’s taken place.
41:45
And we’re just all kind of sitting on pins and needles today to see what happens. So, I’ll keep you posted. Y’all take care. Bye y’all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
41:57
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42:08
Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.
