Attorneys for both sides made closing arguments on Thursday before the jury started deliberating.
Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s attorney, repeated the defence’s argument that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed the kids with train bands at their home and then tried to finish her own life by leaping out of a window. Clancy was paralysed by the attempt and has attended the trial in a wheelchair.
“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect,” Reddington said, including that he believed prosecutors were “not going to be able to prove otherwise”.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) defines postpartum psychosis as a uncommon and severe mental health sickness that can have an effect on someone soon after having a child, and which should be handled as a medical emergency.
One of the more tense moments of the closing arguments came when Reddington straight addressed the prosecutors and requested them to clarify why they tried to show Clancy’s suicide attempt was not severe. The decide interrupted and ordered him to deal with only the jury.
Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague did not dispute that Clancy was mentally unwell, but instructed the jury that the defendant could inform the distinction between proper and mistaken at the time of the killings.
“It’s not the system or the DSM that caused her to strangle her kids,” Sprague instructed the jury, referencing the US encyclopedia of mental heath diagnoses, which does not give postpartum psychosis its own classification.
Sprague also said Clancy had an “abundance of care”, but had hidden ideas from docs about harming her children.
If you are struggling misery or despair and need support, you could communicate to a health skilled, or an organisation that presents support. Details of help obtainable in many international locations can be discovered at Befrienders Worldwide. www.befrienders.org.
In the UK a checklist of organisations that can help is obtainable at bbc.co.uk/actionline.
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