388. The Lindsay Clancy Trial Part 16

The Prosecutors

The Prosecutors conclude the evidence presentation in the Lindsay Clancy trial, reflecting on the case's emotional toll and the jury's upcom

Key takeaways

• Dr. Sathoff's testimony highlights that Lindsay Clancy maintained control over the method and order of killings, suggesting she was not a passive puppet to external forces.

Main topics

• Lindsay Clancy trial
• Mental state analysis

Notable quotes

"She had to add quickly and methodically. And it indicated that she had control of the sequence of what she was doing throughout."

Conclusion

The presentation of evidence has ended with a strong prosecution case, leaving the jury

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (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 4 (0:46) I'm Alice. And Speaker 3 (0:48) we are the prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, the presentation of evidence comes to an end in the Lindsay Clancy case. 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 end of the line co-host, Alice. Speaker 4 (1:48) We've made it. 85 witnesses later, we are here. Speaker 3 (1:52) We're here. Speaker 4 (1:52) Look, I'm not gonna, I'm limping to the end over here. I was ready for this to go Speaker 3 (1:57) to the jury, I gotta tell you. Yeah, and Speaker 4 (1:58) you know what, for once this was shorter than predicted because they said six weeks at first, we're in what, technically week five. Yeah. Speaker 3 (2:05) You Speaker 4 (2:05) never know how long trials will go, but. I was afraid when they estimated six weeks, it'd be more like seven weeks. And I'm really glad it's on the other end. Speaker 3 (2:13) I was really glad defense did not call any rebuttal. It ends with the prosecution's case, the prosecution's experts. Speaker 4 (2:21) You can cut this out later, but I keep forgetting and I need to say it because Megan Hicks is in the chat. I'm so sorry, Brett. It's all me. Don't cut this Speaker 3 (2:31) out. Speaker 4 (2:31) Don't cut this out. I need to apologize to Brett for a second because I have completely wronged him. But hopefully you now understand how we cover cases. When we're wrong, we will admit it. Okay. Megan, you're amazing. Megan, needle pointed. The most hilarious. I left it in the other room. I'll bring it tomorrow for closing arguments. The most amazing needle point cheese pun I've ever had in my life. Even my kids laughed out loud when I explained to them what it meant. It says, I'm mature for my age. Hilarious. Brett did give it to me. He did give it to me because remember I moved. And so he went to our PO box and he got it and it was beautifully wrapped, but he didn't tell me he gave it to me. Instead, he put it in Speaker 3 (3:14) a bag. Speaker 4 (3:14) I'm not sure that's true, Speaker 3 (3:15) but that's okay. Speaker 4 (3:16) He put it in a bag. So we, our kids are very close in age and we like send clothes back and forth to each other because our kids are like. just right after another. So one kid wears clothes, we send it back to the other person, they wear clothes. So I got it back in a bag of little boy shoes, but Allison was too small to wear those shoes for a very long time. And so we moved, the shoes were in a bag and Megan's present was in the bag and I never opened the bag because I didn't need those shoes yet. I went up to the attic yesterday. to get shoes for Allison because he's a giant. He's bigger than Brett. True story. They're two years apart and he's larger. And I go, oh, did Brett give me a Christmas present? This is so nice of him. He even wrapped it. Oh my gosh. I'm so mean to him. I should really be nicer to him. And I opened it and I was like, oh, I totally blamed Brett and said that he never gave me the cheese cross stitch. The truth is out. I'm so sorry. So Megan, nine months late. Thank you for the best Christmas present ever. I'm so excited for my pun-erific cross-stitch. And I'm sorry, Brett. I'm wrong. You're right. You're awesome. I stink. While Speaker 3 (4:31) we're doing this, we have so many new listeners. Speaker 4 (4:35) They have no idea what we're talking about. She did not Speaker 3 (4:36) actually name her kids, Brittany and Allison. I just want to make that clear. That didn't actually happen. Some people get confused. By the little code man. Why did Speaker 4 (4:46) you have to kill the joy? Speaker 3 (4:48) You know, I've been thinking about it. You've mentioned Allison and Brittany several times. It Speaker 4 (4:53) is confusing because Allison sounds like a girl. I Speaker 3 (4:55) need to note this for the new people. But Speaker 4 (4:58) I'm just doing it now. I told you how Brittany's preschool teacher was like, when I looked at the roster, I really thought it was going to say Brittany. Speaker 3 (5:09) That's hilarious. Speaker 4 (5:10) Anyways. All of you who hate chitchat, I'm really sorry, but I kept forgetting to apologize to Brett, but really thank Megan for such a thoughtful gift. It's beautiful. I would love to learn how to cross stitch. So maybe at the next ClientCon, someone can teach me because I feel like I would love it before, I don't know, my eyesight goes because I feel like I'm getting up in age. Okay, that's all. Speaker 3 (5:29) All right, so that was a nice moment in the Lindsay Clancy coverage. Now we're going to get back into the murder of three children, which is what we're talking about. We're back with Dr. Sathoff. Someone said on the gallery, I think it was on the gallery, and this was such a perfect description. If any of you have ever seen Zootopia, the scene with the sloths, Speaker 1 (5:52) that Speaker 3 (5:52) is Speaker 4 (5:54) Dr. Speaker 3 (5:56) Sathoff. Speaker 4 (5:57) He is. And we're not making fun of him. Truly. I didn't fully appreciate it yesterday. I think maybe because it had been a long day. I was listening while running errands, talking to people, pretending I wasn't listening to a trial about murder in my ears. But today, multiple times, I was listening on 1.75. I know you listened even faster. I kept looking at my phone because I thought it froze. But he was just thinking. He Speaker 3 (6:22) was a thoughtful man. He did not answer off the cuff. He thought it through. And I mean, look, I thought he was a great witness. I thought he withstood cross-examination very well. But he definitely was deliberate in the way he answered. And I listened at two today, which I don't normally do, two. But you can listen on two, and there were still noticeable pauses at times. So very interesting guy. Anyways, let's get back into his testimony. So we start off. Remember, he was interrupted in the middle of a question yesterday where he was basically asked, you know, how does the method of how the children were killed influence your thoughts about whether or not Lindsay Clancy was psychotic or whether or not she was in control of her own thoughts? And so the prosecutor runs through some things the voices did not tell her. The voice did not tell her where to kill the children, how to kill the children, what to use to kill the children, in what order to kill the children, where to kill herself. or what way to kill herself. And he was asked that this was significant. And he says it was because this was a very short period of time that she had to carry out all of this. She had to add quickly and methodically. And it indicated that she had control of the sequence of what she was doing throughout. And look, I just think this is all we're trying to reconstruct her state of mind and not just her state of mind in the way we might with any case. but really trying to get into her psyche about how much control she had. Was she really a puppet on a string, which is what she describes it as? Or was she in command of her own behavior, at least to some extent, sufficient to be responsible for her crime? And he's going through, and I thought the Commonwealth really came to its own on the defense case and on rebuttal. There was a lot to criticize about them in their... case in chief. There was stuff to criticize about them at times in the defense case, but I think they've really come into their own and they've really started. It's strange that it took them this long to get to what the story is they're going to tell. That is unusual. You'd think they'd have that from the very beginning, but they didn't. But now they're sort of getting into their own thing. He's then asked about this theory about how suicide works. Now, this is obviously a theory Some of you who've struggled with suicide, I don't know, maybe you'll find this deeply insightful. Maybe you'll think it's completely wrong. Obviously, always interested to hear your thoughts. But he said really there are three components to suicide. Isolation, burdensomeness, and capability. So isolation is feeling like you're all alone. I think that one's pretty obvious. burdensomeness is you are a burden on the world. The world would be better off without you. And so you taking this extreme step is something that you should do. And capability, having the ability to do it. And this sort of goes into what we talked about with the sort of oxymoronic fact that as people start to feel better, suicides actually increase. And this goes to the capability. You know, when you're really in the throes of depression, It's like you're so depressed you can't even act on the depression. But as you start to get better and your energy increases, sometimes we see an increase in suicide. And this is this capability thing. And I also think in this case in particular, it goes somewhat to her mental state and her mental ability. The fact that she was able to put together this, what he's described as a serious suicide attempt, means that she was capable. in sort of a mental way. And one of the things that's really interesting about this case is how often we've seen this, the theories flip. So for most of this case, the defense has been arguing this was a serious suicide attempt and the prosecution has been trying to push that off. Now with these doctors, it is very much the position of the Commonwealth that this was a serious suicide attempt. And that that feeds into their theory. And you almost wonder if Reddington would have been better off at arguing that her failed suicide somehow played into her psychosis. I don't know, but this is where we are. And you need all three to get there, which is the theory. And her medical records reflected that she had all of these three working together. Then, one thing he pointed out, which I had not even thought of, but this was, once again, fascinating. The Ativan. We talked about this before, that the Ativan helped with her intrusive thoughts. Now, the intrusive thoughts have been reinterpreted by the defense as voices, as signs of psychosis. They weren't really intrusive thoughts. They're actually additional auditory hallucinations that she was experiencing. And that's evidence that this day she had another one. What's significant that Ativan helped? Because Ativan is not a medication. that addresses psychosis. It addresses anxiety. So if these symptoms were from psychosis, Ativan shouldn't work. It's kind of like taking Narcan when you're not on an opioid. It doesn't work. If you're overdosing on something else, it won't work. It's a similar thing here. The Ativan targets a completely different thing than psychosis. So the fact that it worked for her indicates that those earlier voices were not a symptom of psychosis. Speaker 4 (11:48) We know it worked because obviously she kept going back to it against medical advice. This was her fallback drug. It was supposed to be used only as needed, but she kept getting so anxious that she needed to go to it. Why would she do that if it didn't help? So then Dr. Satov said, even if you're under a hallucination though, so let's say, don't think she was under hallucinations here, but even if she were under hallucinations and even command hallucinations. The person who's undergoing these hallucinations can still know the difference between right and wrong. And in that knowing right and wrong, you can still stop yourself and have control over yourself, especially when it's very serious what the command to hallucination is demanding you do or against values. Now, I know we're like, we're not going to go into the whole morality thing, but even more so here, I know we've used the fact that she's a labor and delivery nurse as saying she understood. you know, reporting requirements, mandatory reporter requirements or medications or things like that. So she knew how to malinger or not malinger. I think this point actually is so interesting because she definitely knew as a labor and delivery nurse who worked with small children, what was right and wrong, what you could do with babies. Everyone should know you do not murder babies, of course. But I think there's this even more heightened level that I had not thought about in this way, because they're trying to ask these questions about, is she Catholic? Does she understand it's a mortal sin? Those types of things. I'm like, guys, we don't have to go down that road where you're going to really anger the judge. She's a labor and delivery nurse who's charged with the lives of small, vulnerable children. More so than just about anybody. Everyone should know, again, that children are vulnerable. she would be held to that higher standard because of her profession. Now, he says someone who's undergoing these hallucinations can conform their behavior to the law. It is possible. So we go through the whole legal question thing. Was she suffering from a mental defect? He says yes. So just like Dr. Kirk before, he says yes, she was suffering from a mental defect. It was bipolar II. And he concluded this based on her reaction to the Zoloft. He does not believe she was overmedicated, but she did have an adverse reaction to the drugs. And even in her state, she appreciated right and wrong. And she talks about planning and she's able to control her behavior. And therefore, despite having a mental defect, he does not believe that she qualifies for this defense. Because she absolutely knew what she was doing and could have controlled herself, but she didn't. So his theory is very consistent with what Dr. Kirk said right before him. Speaker 3 (14:28) Yeah, and he did a really good job of walking through all of those aspects that confirms in his mind this theory that he and Dr. Kirk are pretty much aligned on. And it's interesting because you have three Commonwealth witnesses. They all basically reach the same conclusion, but... the bipolar versus not bipolar, is a big distinction. And once again, this is a gift in many ways to the defense because Reddington has been saying this is exactly what happened from the beginning. Bipolar, it was activated by the Zoloft, and then we see what happened. But, much like with the last doctor, he is not going to take the position that he should attempt to use this doctor to get good things for him. Instead, he's going to take the same approach. He's taken up to this point. He starts off that he saw her through Zoom. We know how much Reddington hates technology. And of course, it would have been better to be there with her, but he wasn't able to do that. And so that's the way it went. He was engaged earlier this year to do this and contracted in April. And this is another, you know, I just don't think the jury is as stupid as Reddington thinks they are. He's like, why are you waiting for the contract to be signed to see her? Does he think just anybody can just walk in and start chit-chatting with Lindsay Clancy or set up a Zoom? Speaker 4 (15:51) I mean, I will say this. We know attorney-client privilege is very similar. While we are recording this right now, I'm on my computer and I see my text popping up on my computer. I have a potential client who keeps texting me saying, has the entity that needs to sign our engagement letter so I can represent him signed it. Texting me what? At 830 at night. Because he's like, I can't talk to you. You can't represent me until we have a contract in place, which is true. So I am like telling him, nope, don't have the engagement letter. Cannot help you right now. I'm just a lawyer. I'm not even a medical practitioner. So yeah, no, he can't just start evaluating her because then he'd just be any guy off the street. And Speaker 3 (16:30) I think most of the jurors know that. He then goes through the whole, how much money did you make? Doesn't really work because it all goes to UVA. And, you know, I don't think that the doctor is just so loyal to UVA that he really wants to make a lot of money for them by doing this evaluation on Lindsay Clancy. So he taught her on May 29th and June 4th. And we do the thing again. We go through his entire CV. It's really, really impressive. This dude was so impressive. Really impressive Speaker 4 (16:58) guy. Speaker 3 (16:59) He was doing like anti-terrorism stuff. And he was working for the Department of State and DOJ. I mean, just. Really cool guy. Reddington tries to make him, he even says, you're a government man, right? But in fact, at one point, he's working for both AUSAs and federal defenders. And he thinks federal defenders work for the Department of Justice. This is a common misconception. Reddington corrects him incorrectly. Because federal defenders do not work for the entity that Reddington names. That's the panel, which is different. Speaker 4 (17:30) It's the Speaker 3 (17:30) CJA, Speaker 4 (17:31) yeah. Yeah. Panel Speaker 3 (17:32) attorneys work for that. The federal defenders have this whole special quasi-governmental private board thing. Speaker 4 (17:38) Which might sometimes fall under the judicial branch. Like, it's very bizarre. Speaker 3 (17:42) And they're not all the same. Like, they're not all. It's very strange. It's a very weird. thing, the way the federal defenders are set up. But anyways, nobody really understands it. But either way, he's working for both of them. And I think that just, once again, sort of gives this whole feeling that he's neutral. Now, look, Reddington is doing this again because he wants to point out that he is not an expert on postpartum women. But can we just say it at this point? Lindsay wasn't under postpartum depression either. She wasn't actually under postpartum psychosis. And the way I know that, the man who first introduced me to this thought was Reddington himself. At the beginning of this trial, Reddington doesn't describe Lindsay as being in the throes of postpartum depression. He describes her as being someone who had undiagnosed bipolar, who went to Dr. Tufts, who took Zoloft, and Zoloft is what activated her bipolar and everything that happened from that point forward was the result of bipolar. And when he initially said that, I didn't really buy it. I was like, I don't know about that. And people wrote in and said, yeah, I mean, that can happen. You know, I was like, okay. And then like the doctors start coming in. His doctors are diagnosing her as bipolar. This Commonwealth's doctors are diagnosing Speaker 4 (19:05) her as bipolar. That's what she is. And for the last three years. Which is no one is arguing that she's currently postpartum. She's bipolar. Exactly. Speaker 3 (19:12) And she still needs the medication. She still needs the treatment. She's bipolar. Speaker 2 (19:17) So in reality, it Speaker 3 (19:20) never mattered, really, whether they were experts in postpartum issues or not, because once again, as has been established a thousand times, they can recognize the major depressive disorder and whether or not it has the modifier of postpartum. Isn't the critical question. But in this case, I don't even think it's postpartum. I think it's possible her anxiety was postpartum anxiety that led her to go to Dr. Tufts in the first place. But I feel like it's been pretty well established now that what actually led to her downward trajectory in her mental health was not having a baby. It was taking Zoloft when she was bipolar, too. I mean, that that's never been made. that express in this case. But as he was saying this, it just all kind of came together for me. Like, this is completely irrelevant. And I understand why he keeps doing it, because it's been very valuable from a public relations standpoint, because there are many people out there who have suffered with postpartum depression, who have suffered with postpartum psychosis, who have not been treated properly by the medical community, who feel like they were abandoned and let down. And they see themselves in Lindsay Clancy, and it makes them sympathetic to her. And it makes them more likely to support her. So it is valuable to continue to paint her as that. And when we started this case, that's exactly where I thought we were going to end up. But now that we've seen the evidence, I think if you look at the evidence just clearly and plainly, without any bias, without any preconceived notions, there's no real evidence that she was in postpartum psychosis. There's real evidence that she was bipolar that may have led to psychosis. but not postpartum psychosis. So that's sort of where I am on this and makes us even more pointless that he continues to go through this whole, you're not an expert on postpartum issues. The DSM-5 is terrible, all that stuff. It's even less relevant now that we're at the end of the trial than it would have been if that had been his theory from the very beginning. Speaker 4 (21:17) You know that feeling when you finally clean out a junk drawer that's been bothering you for months? That's what switching to Gusto felt like for my business. Payroll, HR benefits, all the admin chaos that has been piling up, finally organized into one place. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from... anywhere. They make it so easy with automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it. 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But rather than just leave it there as if he hasn't written anything, which I think would have been pretty smart, because then you're like, oh, man, this guy hasn't written anything. Instead, we go through his like 10,000 articles and books and book chapters. They're Speaker 4 (24:14) all really awesomely titled. Like sometimes you just get like the boring, like the history of psychosis. The History of Psychosis Part Two, right? Like that's the way articles, all of his were like the negotiator on the bridge and how to diagnose. I know. It was like really interesting stuff. And Speaker 3 (24:32) there are so many that at some point he's like, did you write this? And he's like, I don't know. I'd have to look at that to even remember. Maybe I Speaker 4 (24:37) was on a panel. I wrote a lot of stuff. Speaker 3 (24:40) But anyways, we have to go through it all for some reason. We once again note that he's not an expert on postpartum psychosis, which no one says he is. We talk about how postpartum depression is major depressive symptoms that