386. The Lindsay Clancy Trial Part 14

The Prosecutors

The Prosecutors continue their coverage of the Lindsay Clancy trial, focusing on a chaotic and bizarre courtroom exchange between attorney R

Key takeaways

• The cross-examination between Reddington and Dr. Mack devolved into a personal feud, undermining the trial's credibility and distracting from key legal issues.

Main topics

• Psychiatric evaluation and mental competency in criminal cases

Notable quotes

This trial started off as a very serious, thoughtful look at mental health... By this point, we have reached circus-level atmosphere.

Conclusion

The Lindsay Clancy trial has shifted from a focused legal examination of mental health and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours before the trail goes cold. From A &E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48. I'm Carter Roy. Every Thursday, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation in depth with long-form storytelling built for your ears. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:45) I'm Brett. And Speaker 2 (0:46) I'm Alice. And Speaker 3 (0:48) we are the prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, the Commonwealth and Lindsay Clancy case continues its rebuttal. Speaker 3 (1:39) Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my mortally sinful co-host, Alice. Speaker 2 (1:50) Brett, we've been here. If you're gonna come here once. We've been here before! If you've already been here once, you had to take your one shot. You can't have two shots at this. And that's the problem. Speaker 3 (2:02) I don't know that I've ever seen a... Case where immortal sin was brought up once, but twice. That has to be a record. That has to be a record. And Speaker 1 (2:11) we had a Father Bob Speaker 3 (2:11) appearance. We've had a clergy person testify. Speaker 2 (2:15) Do you think this is secretly like the church's conversion method of some sort? Speaker 3 (2:20) We got Roman Catholicism coming up all the time. I mean, it's wild. We got people Speaker 2 (2:24) alleging whether they're just committed or lapsed. I mean, what is happening? Are we in like religious court here? Speaker 3 (2:30) No one ever expects. The Spanish Inquisition. So maybe that's what's happening here. Speaker 2 (2:35) Maybe that's what's happening. We're Speaker 3 (2:36) having a little bit of an inquisition in this trial. But I don't know, guys. This trial, it was, I felt like this trial started off, you know, pretty standard. There were some mistakes by both sides and things were happening. But it was a normal trial. Over the last three, four, maybe longer. Really since the defense case started. The second half of the defense's case. It's gotten so weird on so many levels. So many weird things have happened basically since the Commonwealth rested. And it continued today. I mean, you know, last time we spoke, we were talking about how this would be the last day of trial and we'll be doing closing arguments tomorrow. Speaker 2 (3:13) No, no. To be fair, I was like, I think we're going to go to verdict Thursday, which we can still reach because of the lunar eclipse that we're going to see where we are, which is like. the eastern half of the United States. But indeed, today was not the last day. And it was a spicy day. Speaker 3 (3:29) It was a spicy day and it was a weird day. And it was a, I don't know, like there was one point where I just stopped taking notes. And it Speaker 2 (3:35) was also, I will say, it was also a clarifying day, though. I don't know why we wait until day 18 and 19 to make sense of all of these 7,000 pages of medical records. I did think today was incredibly clarifying for me. And this is what we wanted all along. I'm not a medical professional. I want someone to explain to me What all of these things mean in the psychiatric sense. And Speaker 3 (3:56) so let's just get right back into that. We left off with Dr. Mack and we speculated that Reddington was spending so much time on the DSM because he was trying to run out the clock. And, you know, we started back. And wouldn't you know it, he didn't immediately go into more questioning about the DSM. It was weird. It was as if he didn't need to talk about that anymore. And he immediately went to another topic. I thought that was interesting, but maybe not surprising. Speaker 2 (4:21) Is that like a very humble, not humble way of saying, I told you so, Brent? Oh, Speaker 3 (4:26) I mean, I'm cheap. Look, we get enough stuff wrong that when we get it right, I'm going to hammer that. Speaker 2 (4:32) To be totally fair, the DSM, although it doesn't actually help him. Did set up the most bizarre line of back and forth cross I've ever seen in my life. So for what it's worth, the DSM did set up the most bizarre cross I've seen in a long time. Speaker 3 (4:50) Yes. There was a lot of weirdness in this cross, but it continued. And so it started off. He finally started to do the kind of things I think you should do on cross. As we've said, you burn them or turn them. I mean, one of the two, right? And one way you can burn somebody is you can attack their credentials. And so, you know, Mac, he's testifying in this hearing to determine whether or not she's, you know, was mentally competent to commit this crime. He's only done that one or two times. This is probably his third time he's done that. Now he has testified. A lot. He's testified in a lot of different cases and a lot of different mental issues, but on this very narrow specific thing, he's only done that one or two times. So, I mean, that's less than 10. It's more than zero, but it at least sort of gets at, he's not as experienced at testifying. Not that that necessarily means anything other than he just hasn't testified that much. And Speaker 2 (5:38) this is fair to point out because you'll notice that, now Dr. Mack really was fighting him the whole time because they... They were done with each other. They were done with each other from Friday. And by the way, he's testifying by Zoom. I'm not surprised. Speaker 3 (5:51) It made it so much worse. It Speaker 2 (5:52) made it so much worse because they're not in the same room together. Likely it's because he had to go back home because they did not expect to go through the weekend. It's expensive to stay there. He has other clients, all those sorts of things. It's understandable that he's by Zoom, but it did make it worse. And they already hated each other from the cross on Friday. And it made today so much worse, though, because they were just going at each other. And it was kind of not lost in translation, but more difficult to follow within the Zoom. Speaker 3 (6:18) Well, yeah. And what's eventually going to happen, we'll note when we get to this, is eventually, I'm not going to use the term someone used to describe it in the chat, which was absolutely accurate. But you got these two guys. Trying to show which one's the more dominant one in this. They were Speaker 2 (6:35) peacocking, shall we say? Speaker 3 (6:37) There you go. We'll use that. That's Speaker 2 (6:38) a Speaker 3 (6:38) good term. And it became absolutely useless for the jury. So basically you had the people who are firmly in the Lindsey Clancy camp were like, you go, Reddington, you get him. And the people who were against Lindsey were like, Mac's standing up. He's pushing back. He's not taking this. He's not going to answer his questions. Reddington's being such a jerk. Complete waste of time. For the actual jury, he's trying to figure this out. Just a complete waste of time. And this went on for like 45 minutes at one point. At one point, I just stopped taking notes because I was like, this is a complete waste of time. But we'll get to that in a second. So they talk about how much he's testified. We go back to Park Dietz because he's still trying to make something out of that. Sometimes he testifies because of referrals from Park Dietz. Sometimes through other entities. It seems like what happens is Dietz basically gets requests. from various entities, they need an expert, and he reaches out to, like, it's not like the guy works for Park Deets, but he's like, oh, you need someone to do this. This guy's good. I'll refer him to you, and they probably get a cut. It's like a finder's fee, basically, I think is what goes on there. And then we go through some examples, and this is always a good thing to do with experts, because if experts testify long enough, eventually, they're either going to have their opinion questioned, or they're going to be excluded as an expert by a... It's not that unusual. It happens all the time. But for someone who's a juror or just a casual court watcher, it may seem much more significant. So it's always good to point out those things. And he had a few that he goes through where he wasn't allowed to testify. And one in particular he points to is this 11th Circuit case out of Florida. And I think he went after this because he wanted to make him seem like a bad guy in addition to like he's not qualified because the case was all about temporary aid to needy families. Florida passed a law that said if you're going to receive this, you have to be drug tested, essentially. And that was challenged in court as a. You know, this is getting into sort of civil stuff, but essentially there's no rational basis for this or it might have been strict scrutiny. I'm not exactly sure what the standard was, but nevertheless, you can challenge it and say you're making these people do this. There's not a strong reason to do it. Therefore, you shouldn't be able to do it. Sort of challenge that you'll have in cases like that. So oftentimes experts are hired in those cases to come in. So he was hired basically. As you may recall from Friday, he is an expert on drug usage, drug addiction, particularly with adolescents. He's done a lot of research and studies on that. He's brought in to basically say what the population, people who typically are on these kind of things, what the drug usage rate is. If it's high, then maybe it's more rational to have people drug tested. If it's very low, then it seems like it's not rational. Court might strike it down. So he comes in, but he only has the studies are nationwide studies that have been done on this. There's no Florida specific study. So he gives the nationwide data and eventually that gets struck on the basis that because he didn't have Florida specific data, he was not able to offer an opinion on that. That's going to get explained later more fully. For the time, Reddington does the thing you should do, which is just like, you weren't a qualified expert. They found you weren't qualified, didn't they? And it makes it sound like, ooh, he's not really an expert. He must not actually be qualified to even talk about this. I thought that was a pretty effective attack. Got cleaned up some on cross, but nevertheless, might be the kind of thing that would make a juror. The doubt is expertise much more than the stuff Reddington was doing on Friday. And Speaker 2 (10:09) just to like show you why it's slightly different. So being disqualified as an expert is something usually very narrow. And unless it's because you're just like completely not qualified, the opinion will say so. It'll say something like he doesn't know enough about Florida law, what he's offering nationwide. It's not relevant for this case. If you say have a Giglio challenge for a witness. Giglio, of course, is there is a law enforcement officer who is testifying who has previously been found to have credibility issues. Like they lied. They planted evidence, that sort of thing. Basically, across the board, if there's a Giglio child, that's going to look pretty bad. And if you've been found to be discredited by a court of law, let's say you were sanctioned or kicked off a case because the judge found that you planted evidence, for example, that's going to be bad across the board. And that will... absolutely affect your credibility as a witness, whereas exclusion for a witness in a specific civil case on Florida law doesn't necessarily mean he's a quack expert. And Speaker 3 (11:10) one way we know he's qualified to be testifying about the subject matter he's testifying to now is he's testifying about the subject matter he's testifying to now. If he weren't qualified to talk about this, Reddington could challenge him. Have you ever seen My Cousin Vinny? It's exactly that. He could have gone after him and had him eliminated as a witness or gone after his credentials to testify here. It's just a completely different situation. And look, a lot of cross-examination is playing to ignorance. It really is. Like, you're hoping the jury is ignorant. You're hoping that the prosecution can't clear it up. And you're kind of making fake points for effect. And that can be... Very powerful in a lot of situations, particularly if the prosecution doesn't clear it up. But it happens a lot. I mean, we've seen, for instance, the whole three year delay in the government talking to them. I mean, I've seen so many people on Twitter who were shocked about, I can't believe it took him so long. Well, Reddington knows that's a purely an effect of the law and the fact that until he notices that there's going to be this question that they can't have a doctor talk to Lindsay. He knows that, but he's using that ignorance. to his advantage, and you see that a lot. And, you know, it's going to happen again later on. In fact, there's one huge chunk of this that Alice was just talking about, where Mac is making a point about postpartum psychosis and postpartum depression, that they're not syndromes independent of themselves. It's a descriptor of a syndrome. And Reddington knows what he's trying to say. But nevertheless... keeps acting like, so you're saying there is no such thing as postpartum depression? There is no such thing as postpartum psychosis? And this guy is trying to talk about the DSM and what the science says and what the sort of technical standard is. Reddington's playing off that emotion and off that ignorance of exactly what's going on here to try and score points. And that's what happens in cross-examination. I'm not criticizing him for it. It's just something that happens a lot, and you see it a lot in these cases. So they talk about that whole... whether or not he was qualified thing. Then we go into yet another one of those that I just mentioned, the fact that it had been three years since the incident when he talked to him, which is a legitimate criticism, just pure timing. You know, been so long. Does that affect your ability to do this? Can you really say how she felt? Don't memories change? Like there was a way to attack this. He doesn't really go into any of that. He just makes it seem like, you know, why this extreme delay? He notes that he'd reviewed records before he spoke to Lindsay, including defense reports had been prepared and that he had had a brief conversation with the government. And he uses this to sort of lead into confirmation bias. And he says, like, you're hoping to help the Commonwealth when you come in. And he says no. He mentions that they interviewed her in a locked room, which is I don't know why that's surprising. So a little bit different from testimony yesterday. Yesterday we had him. I don't know if he was conducting one of the exams for an hour and a half, and now it's a four to five hour interview. Not a huge discrepancy, but he spent about four to five hours with her. She was polite and affable. Dr. Kirk, whatever his last name is, this comes up to. He does some psychological testing. Reddington gets into this whole thing about what Kirk's last name is and how you pronounce it. I don't know why. I don't know why this was significant. This is not someone that Dr. Mack had ever worked with before. He has sort of a strange last name. I don't know. It was some sort of weird gotcha. It didn't really make sense to me. But he talks about that. You know, at one point he asks him where they stayed. He's like, did you stay Speaker 2 (14:51) in Speaker 3 (14:51) a van? And Speaker 2 (14:51) if they met in Speaker 3 (14:51) the Speaker 2 (14:51) parking lot to walk in together, it was pretty Speaker 3 (14:54) bizarre. And he's like, I stayed at a house. I don't know what he was going for there. I almost think there's some weird like. TikTok conspiracy that he stayed with Patrick or something. Like, I don't know what it is. But he asked those questions. It was a very strange period. Another point, he got mad at him for smiling. I guess he was smiling and he was like, this is not a smiling matter. This is a murder case. I don't know. It was very strange. He did that too. They talked about the MMPI and the K scale. The MMPI is not designed as a lie detector. The K scale, because Radington likes to call it the lie scale. The K scale is what you use to determine if the MMPI is usable. Reddington wants him to say it's about lying. He's saying, look, it could be lying or it could be that the person's mental state, even if it's subconscious, prevents them from providing you usable information on MMPI. And so therefore, you kind of have to throw it out. And there's no indication that Lindsay was manipulating the MMPI and it was a valid test. Speaker 2 (15:54) Okay, so then they now talk about how Nurse Gelada thought Lindsay could be suffering from bipolar 2. And of course, this is relevant because if you do have bipolar, there's a tendency to avoid SSRIs. Though Dr. Mack said that this concern has actually been reduced over the last decade or so. So it's not like you see there's a potential bipolar and you run from SSRIs. There's a lot more understanding of it now. Reddington has Dr. Mack redefine mania. Again, Mac notes that they've already talked about this, but Reddington wants him to do it again. So he does. He says, there's these symptoms that you look at. There's flight of ideas. There's distractibility, risky activity, rapid or pressured speech, grandiosity, excessive degree of goal, directed behavior. But what you need within this, you need a major depressive episode. and a hypomanic episode, which is similar but lesser than bipolar one than for two. And that's why he thought she had bipolar two because she did not have the more severe. Basically, my understanding of bipolar two is just like, it's a lesser degree of the bipolar. You're not quite to the symptomatic level of bipolar one. Then again, this is good. I think this is good for... the defense, but he has Dr. Mack repeat to him his diagnosis, that there is a major depressive order, which was she had a major depressive episode, which was a part of a major depressive disorder, but she retained capacity. He notes that that other doctor that he interviewed her with, Dr. Kirk, thinks it's also bipolar 2. Now, Dr. Resnick also thinks bipolar 2, but it's Dr. Spinelli who says Lindsay actually has bipolar 1. Speaker 3 (17:38) Which I think, you know, he didn't call Dr. Spinelli. She was the one he didn't call. And one of the reasons people think he didn't call Dr. Spinelli is because of her Facebook posts have been very friendly to Lindsay. Honestly, I think anybody saying that Lindsay has bipolar one is clearly biased and shouldn't even be considered. I think bipolar two is a possibility. It's a very interesting to hear Dr. Kirk, whatever his name is, talk about that later on. in the day. She obviously does not have bipolar one. There's no way she has bipolar one, but bipolar two is a real possibility. And I thought this was fine. You know, this was a good thing for Reddington. The thing about Reddington, there are good things in his cross-examination, but he either has forgotten or because it's a big case, it's on television and he's playing to the TikTok and the YouTube. Shorter is often better because you can get your hits in and you can really make those points and you make them stick and then you move on. It is a legitimate point to make that one of the doctors who saw Lindsay says she's bipolar and that this guy didn't. That's legitimate. That's interesting. But a lot of this other stuff is just strange and I don't think hit the way he wanted to. And once again, there are plenty of things he did that play to the choir. There were members of the Lindsay Clancy choir who were singing along with him while he was doing it. That's fine. But unless you've already won, which maybe he has, that's not going to convince a jury. Like you really need to be thinking not about the people who already agree with you, but maybe the people in the jury who don't. And I feel like the longer this trial has gotten, the more Reddington has been preaching to the choir and less trying to convert lost souls. So that's sort of where we're at. Speaker 2 (19:20) So then Reddington goes on to her time at Tewksbury. So he kind of gets into the whole, you're only examining her three years later. But Dr. Mack says she has not demonstrated any signs of mania at Tewksbury. And Reddington goes through how she hasn't had any problems for three years. And he says it's because of the medication, though obviously there is the other side of that argument, which is, of course, that she either never had it or just isn't sick. To be fair, he's the one who also pushed this whole litany of medication that she was on before. Speaker 3 (19:48) And, you know, as I was listening to this today, and I don't remember if we've talked about this, but one of the weird things, just looking back on the defense case, there was so much focus on the failure of the medical community over prescribing of medication. You know, that point where he accuses Dr. Tufts of pushing her over the edge by giving her a very minor increase in amitriptyline to a very low dosage. I mean, he said all those things. Then we have the defense case. And unless I'm just forgetting. I don't remember any witness that testified to this was likely or could have been medication induced. I mean, there was nothing about that. We had an emergency room doctor who talked about her spinal injury. We had the doctor who talked about how she must have fallen on her head. Then we had. the doctors who just talked about psychosis and how she was in psychosis, but there was never any significant testimony about the drugs. And just as I was listening to this cross today, I was thinking about that, like how strange it is that that was such a big part of everything he did in the cross of the state's witnesses and everything he said in the opening, but then he never actually. called a witness to testify to that, and he never really even asked his own witnesses about how the medication could have been involved. Like, there was no defense witness who said definitively, yeah, SSRI with her condition, man, no wonder she had all these problems. Like, he didn't have that. And just looking back on it today, I... I was just thinking about how strange that was. Well, Speaker 2 (21:21) I was thinking also because he knows what his experts are going to say. He may have tried to go that route and no one was going to say what he was going to say because the reality is all of them would say, yeah, of course, a therapeutic level is going to take three to four weeks. She took three to four days, perhaps. And the records are clear here. She didn't take enough to get to where she needed or whatnot. So I think he did explore that. And he knew his experts weren't going to give him the answers that he needed. Now, he should have abandoned this earlier on. But I guess if your goal in the defense is simply to poke holes and create reasonable doubt, then so all the doubt you want, even if your actual case is not going to include evidence of medication-induced psychosis. Speaker 3 (21:59) So we go through the Zoloft. As I said, we go through the Zoloft, the 25 milligrams, the 50 milligrams. She could not sleep after that. She desperately wanted to sleep after that. And... Dr. Mac is obviously somewhat sympathetic to Lindsay and talks about this, talks about her depression. He gets asked about, there's some Massachusetts funding, I guess, for researching and treating postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. And he talks about that for a little while. He doesn't know anything about the funding. And then we get into this weird back and forth about depression because Mac has already said she is severely depressed. And... And Reddington keeps asking him about postpartum depression and keeps going through the symptoms of postpartum depression. And he keeps explaining, yes, she has all those symptoms and the problem here and the reason this becomes an issue. So Mac, you know, he follows the DSM-5. That's what he does. He follows the DSM-5. He's not following whatever they say in Europe or whatever they say at the WHO. And the DSM-5. Speaker 2 (23:03) Because he's Speaker 3 (23:03) a Speaker 2 (23:03) psychiatrist here in the United States. And that's relevant here. Because I did see a lot of people say like, how could you not? He's heartless and whatnot. Just like lawyers, we can't go out on a limb and just like change the law if we decide to. We actually have to take an oath and we follow like the model rules of ethics. He is governed by a body that he is a member of in order to practice here in the United States. So I just want to note that because a lot of people are just out there being like, he's heartless. No, this is actually the guide he has to go by. Speaker 3 (23:28) And he's saying that guide says. 12 weeks, eight weeks, four weeks. I can't remember what it is anymore. It's a very it's a relatively short period of time. It's not long at all. It was shorter than I thought. Yeah, it really is. And honestly, probably wrong. But that is what it says. So what he's trying to say to Reddington is she could be depressed. She could be psychotic. It's not postpartum psychosis or postpartum depression because that's. a modifier of the main syndrome. And if it occurs in that period, then that's what you would say it was. But since it didn't occur in that period, that's not what you would say it was. And he's trying to explain this to Reddington, at which point the judge, who just cannot keep himself out of this trial, no judge should be as involved in this trial as he is. And I always tell you, Allison and I have tried cases. We've sat through trials. I've never seen a judge. get us involved. Half the time, I swear they're asleep. Half the time up there. You know, they just pop in. Or Speaker 2 (24:28) scrolling Speaker 3 (24:28) Facebook. Yeah. Speaker 2 (24:29) I've seen it. There's an objection. Speaker 3 (24:31) That's the only time. But this guy is so involved. And whenever Reddington gets upset, you know, the guy's trying to answer the question. Reddington, one of the things he does, which is a pretty common technique, he asks an open-ended question. The witness starts to answer. And then he says, it's a yes or no question. Give me a yes or no. Now, Even real yes or no questions often can't be answered yes or no because the question itself can have a false premise. If the question itself is based on a false premise, you can't say yes or no. That's not the way it works. And particularly with these experts, they're not going to do that. You can often trick regular witnesses into giving you a yes or no answer to a. broken question, but experts don't tend to do that. So he's pushing back on the question. Reddington's interrupting him and the judge, rather than telling Reddington to let him answer the question, let him finish. Instead of doing that, he's jumping on the witness. So at one point, at this point, while they're arguing about this, he basically tells the witness, if you need to answer the question, if you can't answer it the way it's phrased, then say you can't answer it. And Mac's like, Oh, you want me to do that? Then that's what I'm going to do. And so for the next few minutes, it's just Reddington asking a question and Mac saying, I can't answer that the way it's phrased. And it just goes back and forth. And Reddington's getting more irritated. Mac's getting more obstinate. This is becoming a complete waste of our time. Speaker 2 (25:57) The Speaker 3 (25:57) judge is just like Speaker 2 (25:57) foaming at the Mac. And here's the thing. I think he tried to catch himself, but he wasn't fast enough. It was like when, I know I use my. toddlers, because you know what? When there's toddler-like behavior, I'm just going to use a toddler example. It's like when I'm a lot of boys, I have three boys and they don't care. They just sniff out trouble and they want to go with it, right? So if like one of my kids starts dogpiling on one of my other sons or dad or something or me, doesn't matter the situation, doesn't matter if it's happy or sad. All the other boys run into the room. They like hear that something's going on and they jump on top with them. And the dog pile begins. That's literally what happened. Like as soon as there started to be tension or talking between Reddington and Mack, the judge couldn't help himself and would just jump in on Reddington's side. Because there was one time where Mack was speaking and he was. in the right, trying to say, you don't talk over the witness because he asked him a valid question. He barely got two words out and Reddington didn't care because it was all performative. And he said, I started jumping and a judge jumped in and said, and he caught himself because he realized he should not have jumped in on this fight and said, well, are you finished talking yet to Dr. Mack, which is not how you talk to a witness whatsoever. The appropriate almost always across the board is going to be, please let the witness finish. Next time, witness, please don't talk over the attorney. And I could see him catch himself almost sheepishly, but not enough to actually change his behavior. It was just dogpile behavior, except always on the side of Reddington, which is really inappropriate. Speaker 3 (27:27) And it could affect the case. I mean, you don't Speaker 2 (27:30) know Speaker 3 (27:30) how the jury's seeing this. The jury often sees the judge as sort of the ultimate father figure in the room, the person who takes care of them and is kind to them and protects them. And so when he's doing that, and that's why you should only do it in an extreme situation. You know, as a judge, you have to keep your cool. And even if you are reprimanding the witness, you have to do it in a very neutral way so that the jury doesn't know. It's the same reason you