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387. The Lindsay Clancy Trial Part 15

115m 39s

387. The Lindsay Clancy Trial Part 15

This episode of The Prosecutors covers the final day of testimony from Dr. Halburn, the prosecution’s key expert in the Lindsay Clancy trial, followed by the start of a new witness. Dr. Halburn concluded that while Lindsay suffered from bipolar II and major depression—a mental disease or defect—she still appreciated the wrongfulness of her actions, making her criminally responsible for the deaths of her children. He attributed the killings to a serious suicide attempt combined with altruistic filicide, not psychosis, noting she retained control over her decisions. The hosts are highly critical of defense attorney Reddington’s cross-examination, describing it as chaotic, emotionally charged, and ineffective. They argue he missed numerous chances to use Dr. Halburn’s own admissions—such as her being a "very good mother," her extreme suffering in December, and adverse medication reactions—to sow reasonable doubt. Instead, Reddington engaged in petty attacks, referenced conspiracy theories, and fixated on labeling the illness as postpartum, which the hosts felt undermined the defense. The prosecution’s redirect successfully restored Dr. Halburn’s credibility, emphasizing his thorough review and the legal nuance that psychosis does not automatically excuse criminal behavior. The episode concludes with the introduction of Dr. Gregory Sattoff, a highly qualified forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Lindsay via Zoom, setting the stage for further testimony. The hosts express frustration with the defense’s strategy, believing it failed to serve Lindsay’s best interests in such a close and emotionally charged case.

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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. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we limp slowly and painfully to the end of the Lindsay Clancy Trial. (upbeat music) Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors, I'm Brett. And I'm joined as always by my red hot co-host, Alice. Red hot, steamin' mad, or maybe just a little bit of a rascal flat's fan. (laughing) There are just so many jokes to be made about today. You know, don't have too much fun. I'm getting a little tired of Readington Stick. I'm not gonna lie. Like, seeing it back to back to back to back to back with all these witnesses with no variation, in the sense that he's treating them all with the same playbook right now. It is, it got me mad. I had to turn it off at one point today. Look, I thought whatever you think about this case, whatever you think about Readington today, he was completely ineffectual. It was a mistake how he approached this witness. He had a lot of missed opportunities. I sat on X. This was the first time that I was irritated at him on behalf of Lindsay Clancy, because he could have done so much more for her case with this expert. We talked about this yesterday. I mean, here's the thing about this case. And, you know, I don't, episodes long anyways, 'cause I'll try and keep it short. But here's the thing about this case. Those jurors, and a lot of them, they're people who feel strongly one way or the other, that's absolutely true. But I think the vast majority of people, and probably the vast majority of the jurors, are really in this middle. And their views are sort of shifting back and forth as the case goes, as they're hearing things. It's close for them. Well, guess what? That's a good place to be if you're the defense, because the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. And you have this expert who, yes, his conclusions are bad for Lindsay Clancy, because his conclusions are that she's guilty. But, even he acknowledges how close it was, and how hard it was to reach those conclusions, and how thoughtful he had to be. And there is such a good argument there that Reddington could have used for reasonable doubt. Respect your opinion, understand why you think that. But this was tough for you, too, wasn't it? It was really hard for you to get there, wasn't it? And you're a doctor with 30-something years experience. I mean, there were so many opportunities there to take that approach. And instead, we just got typical standard Reddington defense attorney cross-examination theatrics. And I just think it was a complete missed opportunity. He really needed to come in. He could have dealt with all of this with a scalpel, because all he had to do was excise one little bit, essentially the ultimate conclusion. All the things leading up to it, stick for him. He said there was a mental defect. He said that at the end of the day, remember his words, 'cause it stood out to me in the direct, when she said, she asked the ultimate question, did she know the wrongfulness of her conduct? And he said, I have to be very careful about this. Why do you have to be careful? Good doctor? Is it perhaps because it was so close to the line? This is me being Reddington, what he should have done. Is it because you're so close to the line that maybe one additional fact that you don't know could push you over to the fact that no, she is not criminally liable. I think he would have said yes. I truly do, because if you heard him, he spoke in a very careful, kind of tortured manner, because he was right on that line. So Reddington today needed to come in with precision, like a surgeon, with a scalpel. All he had to do was get Helburn, and he kept calling him in the third person, very bizarre, kept calling him Dr. Helburn to him, as opposed to saying, you. All he needed to do was lead him up to the conclusion, and then say, that was a close one. So this jury actually is the one who makes this decision, not you. You've given us all the pieces of the equation. Thank you, doctor. Thank you for the painstaking 180 hours you've spent on this trying to get truth. Thank you for giving the ladies and gentlemen of this jury all the puzzle pieces they need in order to reach the ultimate truth in this case and there. Instead he came in and just started throwing blasting rockets and cannonballs every which way, didn't know where they were, they were misfiring, they were going backwards, and they were so loud he couldn't even hear them. And Rascal Flats was blaring in the background, and I'm making a joke about Rascal Flats only because these sorts of missteps, like the Rascal Flats, we're all laughing and talking about it right now, I'm not minimizing that, is it detracts from all the good this doctor would have done for Reddington's case. All we remember are baseless questions and missteps. - And look, I think we should just call it like it is. Reddington has started paying attention to TikTok, Twitter, YouTubers. He has started paying attention to that. You can tell by some of the questions he's asking in the way they're ways asking them, and I think it actually had an effect on him. I think if this weren't tell of us, if it weren't such a big case, he would have handled this witness very differently. You know, you mentioned that where the doctor is literally talking about how difficult it was and how careful he was in his conclusion, and not only did Reddington not use it, he objected. He objected to him describing it that way, and I'm like, what are you doing? But he did it throughout, and we'll dive in and talk about this whole thing. So remember, this ended yesterday with Dr. Kirk, is what I'd call him, the whole mortal sand thing. So that ended the day, so we come back, and we just go right back into it, we skip the whole mortal sand part. But we start with something called peritromatic disassociation. And this is when something traumatic happens to you, you can feel like you're watching yourself, and people can remember it as an out-of-body experience when something traumatic happens to you. And this is actually fairly common, happens a lot. She is described at times watching herself do this, and that has been presented by the defense as evidence of psychosis. Dr. Kirk says, no, any traumatic event can make you do that, whether you have mental illness or psychosis or anything, it's not necessarily, or even really a symptom of psychosis, it's a symptom of a traumatic experience. Whatever you think was behind her doing this, still traumatic. Killing your children is a traumatic thing, and she obviously was involved in that. She said, when she was describing this to him, that she was fully under control, there was no decision making involved. Prosecution did a really good point here, of pointing out that is simply not true. The voice tells her to kill her children so she can kill herself. But that's all it says. And in fact, she tells us that the voice says that over and over and over and over again. But it doesn't tell her all the other things she has to do, and there were a lot of decisions to be made. Why the basement? Which child goes first? What do you say to the children to keep them calm? Where do you do it in the basement? Remember, she didn't kill the kids all just in one room. What do you use to do this? Who's the middle, who's the last? And then when she does decide to take her own life, what ways to do it, where to do it? And in fact, she had three different decisions to make on the method of suicide. So I thought that was interesting. And he basically said, when you look at all this stuff, you have these two real choices for how this went. This is either a truly psychotic event where she is for lack of a better term out of her mind, and she did this horrible thing. Or it is something a little bit more ordinary. And unfortunately, a little bit more common that we see, which is suicide, a serious suicide attempt, accompanied by this altruistic philocyte. I'm gonna take my kids with me because it'll be better off with me than if I left them behind. And he says the evidence for the second is much stronger. At this point, there's sort of a weird thing that happens. And I don't know if the prosecution was trying to imply there was some sort of conversation with Lindsay by some outside person between the first two days and the third day. And remember, he's with her three days. He's there two days for the interview, first and third day. And then in the middle, he does psychiatric testing. And he's asked where the Their differences between how she was the first and second day and the last day. And he said the first two days she had incredibly good recollection. She was attuned to the questions. She had memory for things as small as dates, when she was prescribed things, what she was prescribed, what the dosage was, even though it's been three years. By the third day, it was much more I don't remember, I don't recall. She couldn't remember little things like what arm she wore her apple watch on. And he asked her about her initial statement at Brigham and Women's, which she wrote down, that she felt horrified. And she said she didn't remember writing that and didn't remember why she would have written that. Then we go to something we've talked about, the differences in the statements, and about how what they said is problematic, and that she has told different people different things. This is going to be fleshed out even more as we go on. He also noted it was very unusual to have the crime interrupted by a phone call. It's a very strange thing and something that it's helpful because it helps you give a timing of the events, but also difficult to fit into a truly psychotic event. Notice that she was future-oriented at Brigham. But he also says, "Look, when I say that, and this is why he could have been used." He says, "When I say that, I'm not saying she's over this, or that she's thinking only about herself. She is still grieving. She is still in mourning. She told me she lost everything and she doesn't want to be here. This is not a self-centered person. This is not someone who's only focusing on themselves." And this was just yet another opportunity. There were so many places that if Reddington had just been taking his notes and gone back through this, essentially take all the good things he says in that direct and put them all together and make him your witness for a while. Don't argue about silly stupid stuff or asking where he stayed. Get on the things that matter. He could have done that and I think really made some "Hey, not only with a jury, but with a lot of people." It was such a missed opportunity and it really bothered me because I just think everyone involved in this case and we've said this about the prosecution. We've complained about the prosecution because everyone involved in this case deserves the best possible representation to reach truth here and we didn't get that. And the thing we said this about this doctor yesterday as well of every single medical professional who's testified, including Zizel, who really liked and cared about Lindsay Clancy, I felt like Dr. Helburn really showed a care and empathy for Lindsay that I hadn't seen any other expert. And he truly saw the suffering in which she was. Like there were questions that he answered including in the cross where he said she was a very good mother. It wasn't qualified. It wasn't. She kind of was sad. So everything he said in terms of being able to help the defense's case was actually absolute and unqualified. She was a very good mother. It was a very serious suicide attempt. She was incredibly low in December. She had never been that low before. It seemed like nothing was ever going to get better for her. There were not shades of that. It was not great. He was kind of black and white in terms of the suffering that Lindsay was undergoing. More so, I thought that even the defense's own experts, so I was very confused when Reddington didn't seize upon that and really milk it for all its worth. Look, if he just reaches the other conclusion, if he just looks at all that and says, and yes, I don't think she's culpable, you could have the exact same testimony with him as a defense witness and you'd have been fine with it. And that's what's so wild about Reddington's absolute failure to take advantage. And look, you know, you never know it might work. I mean, maybe the jury's going to go back there and be like, man, all those prosecution witnesses really is. Absolutely what the defense did to him. And if that happens, you know, more power to him. But I just feel like in a case, this close, this difficult, this emotional that the jury is looking for something a little bit more sophisticated than that. And then, of course, I thought Dr. Helbern really stood out because he really was driven by this why. You know, he thinks she's a good mother. He thinks that she truly loves being a mother, in fact, and how then can one day she wake up and decide to end it all. So she had obviously been struggling with difficult months leading up to this. But why did she now want to take her life? Her whole life, he said, Lindsay had been someone who wanted to do well. She wanted to control things and he didn't say that in a negative way. He said that she was able to control things in that she could control and self-discipline herself. She could run. She could exercise. She could work hard so that she could accomplish things. And it had worked up until that point. Her efforts to deal with her problems this time around though didn't work in the way that it had always worked before. She couldn't control her mental health and it just wasn't something that you could solve through hard work, which would probably hit someone a little bit harder who was always able to use their own hard work and ingenuity to get themselves to accomplish something. So again, that control for him wasn't a negative. It was an explainer as to why someone like her who didn't seem to have any risk factors before would be in the position she is now. She said that she was suffering from a mental disease or defect, the first part of the McCool standard. She had bipolar too and depression along with insomnia and depression obviously may kind of the bipolar worse. She did, however, appreciate the criminality of her actions. So that's the second part that you have to show in order to qualify for the insanity events. He said this. He was very careful. He said I was very careful in my report at this point. He didn't just answer with a yes or no even on direct when he's talking to the prosecution. He says after I reviewed everything, looking at the decisions she had to make and the thinking that she expressed to me, she did appreciate the criminality of her actions. Her moral awareness was influenced by her strong desire to die. So what was driving this was as some sort of hatred for her kids or not wanting to be a mother. What was driving this was her wanting to end her own life and not leave her kids behind. Now this serious suicide attempt along with altruistic filicide is what he thought this episode embodied. It was influenced by her depression and her desire to end her life, but she did retain control over weather, when and how she carried it out and the inclusion of her children in this suicide murder plan. And because of this, she was criminally responsible. For what it's worth, I don't think I've heard another expert describe it quite in that way, the driving force being the suicide. Honestly, I begin to understand how a mother who is very, very attuned to her children, seemingly loves her children very much, how she could do this, the way he described it. And again, because he said he wanted to know why made sense to me and I don't want to spend yet another episode hammering the prosecution. But why this wasn't the story they told from the beginning, I don't know, because everyone wants to know why and he's the first person who told us he tells us exactly what happened. And I understand I get it that there's a risk that someone might hear that and think, well, I think if she did that, she's not able to conform her actions or she's obviously not thinking with moral clarity or whatever. That's a danger. That's a legitimate danger. But I also think it's the truth. I think he's absolutely right. One of these two things happened. It's not Patrick. She's not a psychopath. She either was under the grip of some sort of psychosis or this is what happened. That's all there is to it. And I think the prosecution should be trying to convince people it's the latter and the defense should be trying to convince people it's the former. But there should be no mystery about this. You know, it shouldn't have taken us to day 20 to get someone to explain this in such an intelligent, incredible way. But that's where we were at. I still think it would have been funny if Reddington had just said we're not going to call any witnesses. Like, what would the prosecution have done at that point? I mean, they would have asked to reopen. I don't know. Like, you can't do that. So anyways, okay. So now we get to the cross and this is where everything goes wrong. I was very hopeful that we would see, as I said, a very effective cross. Instead, Reddington absolutely starts off at 11. He begins asking about these contradictory statements, which makes sense because this is a problem for Lindsey. But the way he does it, instead of trying to harmonize them somehow, which I think you probably could try and do and might even be able to accomplish, he almost makes it seem like that the kill your children and kill yourself statement is somehow made up. It was like a creation of Dr. Kirk and Dr. Mack that they, this is not really what she said. The problem with this might work for the jury. He never comes out and says it directly. That seemed to be what I thought it was implying. For all of us watching, we know that in her civil complaint, she literally has that in her civil complaint that that is what the voice said. So he's not lying about that. She absolutely said that and you've got other people, defense witnesses, by the way, who said that she talked about protecting her children. The voice was saying that her children would be harmed if she didn't go, which is just not consistent with what she said in her civil complaint and what she told Dr. Mack and Dr. Halburn. So then, as Alice mentioned, he not only does the whole yes or no trick where he asks the questions clearly flawed and then demands yes or no answer, but he also starts referring to him in the third person. So he says things like, what would Dr. Halburn say about this? And it's such a weird thing. And you can see the doctors like, he hasn't done that with any other witness, I thought he got confused who he was talking to, but he did it so many times and he was clearly addressing Dr. Halburn. I was like are we experiencing like a little bit of an annual? It was very strange and I think it I guess to the extent it was effective like in the first five minutes of cross Kirk seemed me in our close friends now, so I'm just gonna call him Kirk. Dr. Kirk Halburn, I just preferred to say Dr. Kirk because his last name was he was like looking at him like Are you asking me a question and it was awkward and weird for the first five minutes? Reddington would say something weird and the doctor just kind of sit there for a second and then be like I don't I don't think that's exactly what I said and of course the judge jumped in healthfully for reddington a few times and Admonished him, which is totally appropriate for a judge to do So then we go through it took three years to see her again, which we all know why I mean at this point That's been testified to us. I don't know why we're still dealing with that now a good reason That he does get out eventually is that it is the sooner the better It would be better to see her immediately of course, you know It is a somewhat of a limitation for him. He asked him much money. He made every time he says I don't even normally ask this question Be as you don't normally ask that question you ask it in every trial of every expert witness whether the government Ask it if your witnesses are not and I'll just tell you this might sound like a lot to you guys $300 an hour and nothing. That's nothing He just paid an expert 750 an hour. Yeah, he got totally ripped off. I don't know why they only I guess it's the state or Commonwealth that might be what it is, but his credentials he could easily Be double that easily be double that. I mean 54,000 dollars sounds like a lot But he's been working on this for a really long time. He's put 180 hours into it That's just not a lot for an expert. He could have made a lot more than that so now The jury doesn't know that and so they may think wow what a hard gun this guy is right, but there's no reality He's not that much for an expert. So then we go through whether he is Experience with postpartum women. He's going to do the thing again by the way where he goes through every single one of his Credentials, which is I just don't understand why does that back in 1982 he worked at the Florida State hospital with a group of women who Would kill their children and that's his main experience in this area. He's a generalist otherwise, so you know Does that really matter? But it's an effective cross because then you can say oh see you don't even know about women like Lindsay So how can you make the final judgment even though he's obviously an expert on the mental diseases and defects that we're talking about Then we have to talk about part dates again, which I guess look the chance is that anyone on that jury What what is what is the controversy with them? I don't even know he's test He's kind of like Warner spits or whatever like he's seen as kind of a hired gun guy He's testifying a ton of cases. I think he testified in the Domarkett and that's the guy who owns part dates. Yes Okay, I didn't even know that he testified in the first Andrew Yates trial, and there was this moment where this is how I understand it and somebody can correct me if I'm wrong But there was a moment where he suggested that Andrew Yates got the idea for having killer children from a law and order episode But it turned out that the law and order episode he was thinking of actually came out after the murders And that was one of the reasons that her first conviction was overturned, and then her second time around she was found not guilty by reason and Sandy I think that's why he's bringing it up the chance that anyone on that jury knows that or knows who he is or knows anything about him I would say is pretty slim, but he keeps bringing it up and maybe there will be somebody and if there is I guess they can explain it to the rest of the jurors and say well, I know who that guy is and he did all this bad stuff So anyway, thanks for his point me to me because I didn't know what the controversy was Yeah, so he knows Dr. Mack unsurprisingly He has never met him before this he met him in the lobby of the hospital We have to go through once again where he stayed He asked him if he stayed in a van down by the river and the doctors like I Stayed at a hotel and once again, I don't know where this comes from My only assumption I truly believe there is some tick-tock conspiracy about this that either The two of them spent like a ton of money and stayed at like the Ritz Carlton or that Dr. Mack was staying with his secret girlfriend in Massachusetts or something like that There has to be something like that going on because otherwise it's just absurd It's just an absurd series of questions that I'm making sense He wants to know how much time he spent with her he spent 4.5 hours with her on day one He administered psychological testing for three hours and then on day three Three hours as well. So he spent 10.5 hours with her over three days, which is No one years much time as Dr. Zazel, which was weird but is a lot of time for someone in his position and Writing says you spent all that time. They are trying to prove that she you know the Commonwealth's right He said no, that was not my job. I was not there to prove anything. I was there to perform an assessment So then and we're not going to do it justice, but truly the substance of what Reddington was trying to ask could have been really good But the way he asked it had nothing to do with the answers It very much was kind of like how he ended with Dr. Kirk, but I don't care right He didn't ask questions that he really wanted answers to he asked the question in order to say things like doctor doctor I don't want you to go off and lecture me just yes or no Yes or no repeatedly kind of did that stick again today What was more frustrating to me today was that the judge really let him have free reign as the cross went on Reddington got more egregious which I think hurt Lindsay's case Because the judge didn't come in that's such a good point. It is not just when a judge Doesn't reign in a defense attorney that does not necessarily mean He is helping the defense because you're absolutely right on this Yeah, the judge I mean truly let him go, but it became more unwieldy honestly as I was watching it It was like when you have a hose on and then you let go of it But it's on full blast. It just starts going crazy. It started out. Okay. No one's holding the hose All right spraying and then when the judge didn't step in and in fact kind of Whenever he came in he would do so in a way where you thought maybe he was on the like on the defense team Like not allowing the witness to answer the question for example It was like the nozzle was turned all the way up and the hose was just going crazy and spraying in all different directions Meaning everyone gets wet in other words the defense is not scoring the points that they need to and so He really should have just wrapped himself in this particular diagnosis that the prosecution's expert made Dr. Helburn said my diagnosis is bipolar too Reading to honestly didn't even stop to acknowledge that that meant she had a mental defect He blew right past it and started fighting him on it And was like do you think she's controlling and the way he phrases all these questions are meant to be combative and not meant for a real answer And of course because dr. Helburn is a careful psychologist He does not automatically agree with everything that said because he'd never said if she was controlling What reading to his questions are coming from are honestly attacking the narrative that the prosecution has been saying So the prosecution the commonwealth has said in their presentation of the case in in their opening statement She's a controlling mother But that is never what dr. Helburn said So they're kind of grafting on their anger at the prosecution's theory of the case on dr. Helburn who has actually not said that about her That she is a person who's able to control herself That's not a negative in his mind If anything it shows self-discipline right And so again, it's just like hit after hit and it felt like someone who was just punching a bag The bag being Helburn except he did hold up very well We'll find out later that he teaches courses or teaches others on how best to withstand cross-examination And what a good answer he said yet because see why he teaches the class Readington says something like so you teach people how to sit through cross-examination, huh and he's like no I help people be able to convey their opinions accurately while on the stand I was like expert expert way of saying it and that's true because the purpose of a cross-examination is to poke holes Or to make it to twist around your opinion, right? So then readington the expert doesn't know this but readington kind of brings in those notes to the babysitter Remember the prosecution made a big deal that she wrote notes about like what time the bottles were I had for Callan and how to dice up the vegetables those sorts of things Readington is like you don't think this is control. You don't think this is weird You don't think this shows that you're like a crazy mother, right? And he's like no that there's nothing unusual about it. Okay, I don't know that that's a great point to score with him And honestly, that's fine. I think it's a very minor point over here Now he says that he did not review her five star reviews at the hospital and this Honestly was the best point but it would have gotten missed if you were just listening to tone Because readington is still just punching Dr. Helburn non-stop as he gets her to say without any prompting really He thinks Lindsay's a good mother on qualified statement. She's a good mother a very good mother And then in the midst of this, which is a fantastic Note admission by the other side's expert before he can even dwell on and say I to agree that she is an excellent mother He throws and is like even know who ask what flats is Dr. Helburn who's like 70 years old like he's not He himself has said he's not very young He's like no, I really don't Which was a laugh out loud moment and it did not land because like what he was trying to get across was that Lindsay sang I guess a rascal flat song to Cora at night before bed But growing away that do you even know who rascal flats is and having the doctor really not know who rascal flats is Which is just a country band was a detraction from an otherwise fantastic testimony for the defense So for what it's worth, I've heard of Rascal Flask. But it was just so perfect that he hadn't and he also went on the fact like Lindsey made a snowman that morning and There are no risk factors for her. You said her yourself. Oh, he had he I'm sorry I'm saying it way nicer than Reddington did Reddington is saying this all in an attack manner He says she was raised by loving mother and father right and he's like this is a random killing man There's no reason she would kill anyone. Dr. Kirk says it's not random and he's like this is it random This was the altruistic filiside and so I will say Reddington never got under Helburn's skin Then he mentions how he interviewed Pat and these husband and Pat was the one who said that she had difficulty leading the kids And that in fact on their date night for their fifth anniversary She was anxious to leave the kids now Reddington is so weird and acts like this didn't happen This is not a bad thing. I think it's probably super normal to not want to leave your kids now Of course the doctor's opinion is it went to an extreme and that's why she ended up murdering her children to come along with her in death But the doctor keeps giving him information that can be very helpful for her and Reddington just cannot accept it He's offering these things on golden plates and Reddington just smacks it out of his head repeatedly and even the doctor is like man Learned what I'm trying to do here And you know you've said so many things so you know number one Why is Reddington so worried about her being described as controlling? I get that the prosecution said that but the prosecution or idiots and that's not going to be their actual argument What he could have done is he could have played into that he could have played into things that he she was anxious to leave her kids A lot of people are anxious to leave their kids, but normal anxiety doesn't lead to what we see here, right? So this much must have been an incredibly horrific Anxiety if we would lead this war like it's not hard to get him to agree that yeah Man her mental illness this wasn't just depression. This was serious depression. This wasn't just anxiety It was serious anxiety and it was all coming together and along with her natural tendency to be to be in control things Which isn't a bad thing? Combined to just you know steal her will away from her and even if he's not willing to come with you to the final point Which he's not you get him to agree with you on everything except the final diagnosis and then once again in closing You can tell that jury the doctor agree with me about everything except his final decision And you know what he said about it that it was hard. He took him a long time to reach it And he had to be careful and he had to be thorough and when you heard him Did you feel like he was 100% sure? Did you feel like he was sure beyond a reasonable doubt that this is what happened because that's not when I heard from him I heard doubt from that expert the prosecution's best expert and if even he is doubting then you should have doubt too That's what you do. It's not even hard But he cannot bring himself to do it. He can't bring himself to come down And afterwards he's asked why he was so hot with these and he said well They were trying to hurt Lindsey and that made me angry Well, then you need to take a step back because you're hurting Lindsey. Exactly. You're now doing the same thing The prosecution did where you've let your emotions get in the way and you're no longer functioning as the advocate you could be You need to be smart not angry and this was just one of many mistakes. 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He goes through the failures of each of the doctors He said that before she went to Tufts, Lindsey was happy But the doctor says well not exactly she goes to Tufts because she's anxious about going to work And then they go through the text to her mom asking her mom to come up and help and they go back through her Descent into worse and worse mental health that he testified to yesterday And this is another point where he should have wrapped his arms around Dr. Helburn. Dr. Helburn said yes December was horrible Objectively across the board. That was a horrible month You know like that he you could see that he hurt for her what she was going through He didn't say she was faking it. He didn't say that she was minimizing or not saying the truth He was like that was a very hard month for her Reddington asks if Lindsey ever asked if it was ever asked by any of the practitioners if she was having auditory hallucinations now This is where they get into a tussle back and forth and I think I hope the jurors heard this but the tussle led to nowhere except more clarification which the answer is yes She was to ask every single time if she had thoughts of harming her children And if she had auditory hallucinations and every time she said no But she's also having dark thoughts and he says yes. She said that she had dark thoughts And now he keeps infantilizing her more and more she was a young woman and now she's a girl He keeps calling her but she's just a girl And he said that Patrick needed to get more information from her She's been failed by everyone her practitioners her husband and he asked questions a mental health professional would ask and Helburn said she was asked all of this she denied it She was asked if she had a plan and she repeatedly said no she just had thoughts Lots of people have thoughts. That's why practitioners ask follow-up questions to understand in what context they put these thoughts to best treat them And she was asked these repeatedly and she denied them Now Lindsey herself told dr. Helburn that she had intrusive thoughts and not auditory hallucinations Which underscores all the other times she was asked by all the other practitioners Whether she had auditory hallucinations. He says that she's cooperative and answering honestly Again, reddington wrap your arms around Helburn here. This is good. He believes her He says she's honest and a good mother wrap your arms around these answers This is very good for your case, but he just cannot do so And he said that December 15 was one of the worst days in her life In December she was seven months away from giving birth to callin And so he said what she was going through very serious very horrible real struggles Not postpartum though because it is not tied to postpartum triggering what this is she was having Mental issues it was depression and bipolar too. I don't actually completely understand Why reddington has to tie this to postpartum because we've been very clear gospel I think everyone can get to the point where she clearly had very very deep issues For her to have a mental defect it doesn't have to be postpartum psychosis It can be psychosis It's self, but I think this is where tiktok has grained rotted him That this entire case has to be about postpartum mental health only I think it's become very clear that this is a case of mental health issues And it doesn't have to rely on whether it's actually triggered by the postpartum time Think you've nailed it on that. I think he has become and there are people out there there who it's like they need this to be about postpartum. They need it to be about postpartum because they want to raise awareness about it because they've suffered from it and they've had similar and I understand that that's fine but it doesn't actually matter for the case if she has the mental illness and Reddington could clarify this very easily. He could say to the doctor, so you and I agree, she's depressed, she's majorly depressed, you and I agree she's bipolar. Now you don't think it's postpartum and that's just because of the DSM-5 and the months and I mean, if the exact same symptoms had happened eight weeks after birth, would you say it's postpartum depression? Yeah, so if I think it's the postpartum depression because I think it lasts a year, you don't because you're arguing about the timeline, we're not really arguing about anything, are we? We're just arguing about what we want to call it. At the end of the day, her symptoms are exactly the same, whether she had postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. They're exactly the same, right? And you've said she had major depression, right? So it's not even that important that it's not postpartum. He could have done that and still maintained that it could be, like maybe you're just wrong about the timeline, but instead he fights these weird battles with people who are agreeing with him, who are giving him things like she's bipolar. Take that and run with it. Why is it so important to you that her bipolar is caused by a postpartum issues, as opposed to just the fact that she took the Zoloft maybe, you know? I mean, why does that matter so much to you, but he keeps bringing it up. And maybe there's somebody on that jury who will be irritated at the doctor's not calling it postpartum depression. Maybe there is, but I really think the core issue is, is she suffering from some sort of mental disease and defect? He's giving you that. You don't have to fight anymore. You don't have to prove it was postpartum depression anymore. He's given you that she had that. The only thing you have to fight about is whether or not the thing he gave you was serious enough to keep her from being able to conform her behavior. And it's just, he's fighting over the wrong things, but that's what he does. So then we go through this, her not fitting into women and infants program that she was offered treatment for medication management, which was a complaint she had, that for general mental health program or continued outpatient management. And this is one of those times where he, it's just their times where it seems like he's heading in the right direction that he's about to get good information out of Kirk. But he's so out of control of his own emotions that he just can't get out of his own way. And he keeps trying to act like Kirk doesn't know what he's talking about. But he so obviously does. And instead of just getting good information out of him, he keeps trying to beat him down and failing. And I think it sends a message to the jury that he's afraid of him. And he's concerned that the jury is going to believe what he says. So we go through this whole thing where Reddington has him read the discharge information from women and infants because Reddington is just adamant that the whole reason they did not allow her in was just about the medication. And that's just not true. And you know it's not going to go well when the experts trying to find it and you want to find it. And then your opponent's like, oh, it's the exhibit 182, pay J, you know, that's probably where you want to look. Commonwealth obviously wouldn't tell him that if it wasn't good for him. And sure enough, when we actually look at the records, it turns out that the medication aspect, it's only a minor aspect of why she was not allowed into women and infants. The real reason was this postpartum issue that was so late in the game. There's a minor indication of possibility of medication side effects that we're going to talk about later, but the whole reason they even put that is because Lindsey and Patrick said that was the problem. And so it's a rule out diagnosis, which means it's possible. It's something to rule out, but it's not that the hospital is saying this is the issue. They're saying, hey, people in the future, this is something she's concerned about. You should figure out whether or not that's true. At this point, Reddington, he wants to confront him with records, but he's not prepared to do so, so we have to take our break so he can dig through his boxes and get out the records. So, then we come back and we do go through the records. Reddington asked him about some quotes, some of which he used in his own reports. This was a little frustrating because he would read long quotes. Remember, he looked at what, thousands of pages and he did write a report, but it's, I don't remember everything I write. And he'd be like, where is this coming from, he said, did you not read the records? He's like, there are a lot of words in all of these records that I want to be precise in how I answer them, but he kind of does that stick with the doctor. They go through her issues as we have many times, again, no need to harp on this. This is where, again, you can hug the doctor close because he agrees with you on all these issues. He doesn't minimize them at all. Now, once again, they highlight that gelata, and he called, he called her Dr. Gelata, and then Dr. Helper was like, Dr. Gelata, nurse practitioner, gelata. And then he was like, it's like major and colonel number. Yeah. That works. It was just another example, honestly, where at least Dr. Helper kind of held his cool and showed that he was the expert in the room. How gelata didn't call women and infants back. Now, they talk about Patrick asking her questions, and he said, what did you do? She said, when he found her outside, this factored into Dr. Helper's opinion, when he said, what did you do? She responded, I tried to kill myself. He said, where are the kids? She said, in the basement, yet again, and I don't say this lightly, I think this is actually what's happening. This is why it's affecting the way Reddington is crossing. I think Reddington's been scrolling through too many TikToks, which is now suggesting that these questions are not on the 911 tape. And so, it's unclear why this particular part would necessarily be on the 911 tape. And it's unclear if Reddington is saying that Patrick lied about that, what she said at the time or not. Remember, Patrick is on the defensive side. So, it's not really clear, there's no conspiracy here. Patrick himself, who testified, is suing the doctors and is on Lindsey's side of all of this, that she has no criminal liability, said this himself. So, I don't know what Reddington is trying to do except to make hay. And I'll just say this. Number one, I don't know if when he asked that, he'd even called 911 yet. But the other thing, all of us should be angry at Reddington for this. I was angry at Reddington for this. Patrick certainly should be angry at him for this. This is the conspiracy theory. This is part of the conspiracy theory. The Patrick said, she said that, there's no way she could have said that because of her injuries and that's proof that Patrick is the one who did it. So, you know, Reddington, I've given him credit when he asked questions to debunk the theory which he did with the hypothermia where he got the doctor to explain that. But this was BS. He should be ashamed of himself. He never should have done this. It was completely inappropriate and improper. He did nothing for him. All it did was stoke the crazies out there who want to blame a man whose children are dead for murdering them when he knows his client did it. This was complete BS. And I didn't like it. There are a lot of ways to address what she said without lying to the jury because I essentially think that's what it is. I feel like he just lied to the jury. He fed them a conspiracy theory. This was a low point in this trial. It was a low point for him. And hopefully this is the last time he engages in this kind of conspiracy theory BS and brings it into this trial because it doesn't belong in this trial. Amen to that. Then he continues his cross and the doctor talks about Lindsay's poor reaction to medication and how she's a kind of person who has the opposite reactions than you'd expect from these drugs. And Reddington says, "You look at her right now and you say whether or not she had adverse reactions to medication," which is literally what he just testified to. And so he's like, "Yes," that's exactly what I just said. Again, it was like he was doing the script, but the words didn't match. And he says, "Yes, she had adverse reactions up to and including January again, a great opportunity for Reddington to have wrapped him up and said he wanted this whole medication-induced psychosis or whatnot. He's giving it to you right here right now. He admits she's not drug shopping. She's trying really hard to help herself, but these drugs, they're affecting her in a way that they shouldn't. Maybe it's the bipolar. Maybe it's something else. Maybe she's one of the small percentage of people where these drugs are not reacting in her body like they should. You're right. They didn't take blood. Test. They didn't take thyroid tests. I don't know what that would have told you about what you prescribe her. Wrap them up. I think the doctor would agree with you here. Exactly. And he could have said, "You've already admitted. You've acknowledged that she had negative effects. You've acknowledged they were causing these problems. The drugs were causing these problems. You've acknowledged she was bipolar. SSRI is not great for bipolar, right? Can you say for certain that the effect of medications didn't cause what happened on January 24th? Can you say for certain that that didn't happen? I don't think there's any way the doctor would have said, "Oh no, there's no way the drugs caused that." He's not going to say that. He might say, "Well, I think it's unlikely." You know what unlikely means? Possible. You know what you can argue to the jury later on? Their own doctor said it was possible that the medication caused this. Like, normally, normally, the beyond-reasonable doubt standard is completely irrelevant. It doesn't really matter. People either believe they did it or they don't. They don't really quibble about beyond-reasonable doubt. This is not that case. This is a case where beyond-reasonable doubt really matters. We're there going to be jurors struggling with that. Who believes she's guilty, but am I sure? Am I sure enough? And being able to point to testimony by the expert where he says, "I'm not sure." That would be so powerful, but he. just can't get there. And so we move on. So at this point, he keeps asking like, you're saying, there's no problem with her taking notes. There's no problem with doing this. And he keeps saying, I never said there was a problem with it. I'm just looking at the information. I don't know why Reddington is trying to downplay her symptoms. I don't know why Reddington's trying to make it seem like everything she did was normal. And like, you would think Reddington's looking for their being problems. And what's things to be unusual? But instead, he keeps harping on how none of this stuff is actually unusual. And you would think he could use them in his favor, but he can't. All he can do is argue with the doctor, even when they're in agreement, then we get to the whole beach blanket bingo thing, which is beach body. I guess he's trying to say that her being one of the millions of people who's involved with beach body and sales beach body products is risky behavior and therefore mania. He never really quite gets there, but I guess that's what he's trying to say 'cause she lost money on it completely irrelevant. I don't think the jury would see that. And then they start arguing about mania. And whether or not, you know, are you sure that clean out the basement in mania? Are you sure that their size isn't mania? The doctor has literally diagnosed her with bipolar too. He agrees the mania is probably there. We just don't have the evidence to see it. And it's so weird. It's one thing to fight with the last doctor who said she wasn't bipolar about possible manic episodes. It is weird to argue with him about it, but he continues to do it anyways. Now, it's possible that being in an active psychotic state could affect your ability to process information. This was a good point. You know, Reddington makes like three good points in three hours or whatever. And he could affect your memory. This is the way to deal with inconsistent statements. You know, he should have started with this. The reason she's telling you something different three and a half years later, if she was in a psychotic state, what you expect there to be inconsistencies. Of course, there would be. And guess what we have? Inconsistencies. But instead, we bury this in the middle of this whole circus. They talk about the screen being cut. Apparently it was not cut. This is something Lindsey told a bunch of people. I don't know why she said this. And Dr. Kirk's like, "Densling like a big deal to me." You know, there were inconsistencies that mattered. That one didn't seem like a big deal to me. They go back to this whole disassociation thing and he explains it again. That's the sense you're removed from yourself. It is an altered mental state, but it's not necessarily any evidence of psychosis. - So then they returned to that whole thought broadcasting thing 'cause we're going back to whether she heard a voice or not, right? He said that she said it to other people. Now, Reddington loses his mind over this because the doctor doesn't say specifically who Lindsey said it to. This is honestly a weird attack. I didn't understand where Reddington was coming from because if Lindsey had thought broadcasting and was telling people about it, I don't know how that would necessarily help Reddington. - It's only done helping him that he isn't knowing specifically who she told. - Yeah, that's fair. - I mean, yeah. - But it's just one of those things where he's taking cheap shots. It don't get him anything. - Right. Then we go back to his favorite DSM and they spend some time attacking the DSM. I think this is a little bit of a waste of time here because you can all just agree that it's not in the DSM and maybe that's a problem. And this is part of the bigger problem we need to have about mental health and postpartum health for women. But they do some of that. And then, so remember the doctor concluded that she did not have a command hallucination. But if she did have a genuine command hallucination, would that mean she couldn't conform? And this is a good question. And the doctor tries to answer because again, this is where you could argue in closing. So he thinks she doesn't have a command hallucination. Who are you gonna believe? The mother sitting here before you today who loved her children, built snowmen with them and she tells you that she heard this voice. Are you gonna believe her? Or some doctor who spent a couple hours with her read some papers about her. He doesn't know anything about her. That's how you argue in the closing. But instead of letting the doctor answer, rethink 10 just does a lot of answer. After being like cut off multiple times, the doctor just said it depends. I don't know what to say about that because that actually could have been a really good answer for retting 10. Now, retting 10 once again goes to the depression symptoms and asks if they are consistent with postpartum depression, which they obviously are. And the doctor doesn't disagree with him here. Then he does the same thing with psychosis. I can't just say I'm insulted every time he says, I'm not talking about some guy who lost a job. And people who lost their jobs can be in legitimate depression. Deep major depression. Like you don't have to belittle those people. And once again, you don't know everything that's ever happened in the background of the jury. There may be some juror over there who lost their job and was really depressed about it. And every time you say that, they're like FU buddy. Like he just throws stuff around like he knows these people deeply and he doesn't. And I don't understand it. And that's a really good point. I hadn't thought about it in this way until really the past couple cross-examination. In order to lift up postpartum mental struggles, you don't have to push down all other mental struggles. And that can actually be hurting your case here if the jurors are like, yeah, with there with you, bipolar two, major depressive disorder, all of these things. Does it really matter if it's postpartum? Can it just be that it's really serious depression? 'Cause I get depression. I understand that. It may not be postpartum depression, but I understand that. Is that bad for the defense's case? No, I think it's actually really good. So I don't understand why he has to draw the stark distinction between the two and not just draw a stark distinction between mental health and the postpartum mental health, but he actually has to minimize all other mental health, which I don't think helps Lindsay's case. - All right, so that's the end of that. And what did he accomplish, really? I mean, did he do anything to demolish the doctor's ultimate conclusion? Did he do anything to bring him over to his side? Did he score any points, really? Honestly, he didn't. He belittled a man who obviously knows exactly what he's talking about. Was very cool, very calm, very collected, a great expert. When you see an expert like that, you better turn him to your side, 'cause you're not going to make him seem like he's not credible. Maybe he succeeded with Mac, because Mac's kind of a weird guy, to be honest, and a little bit of a weird affect, a little bit of a weird way of approaching things, and then the Zoom thing helped him. So maybe he did. Maybe the way he acted with him worked. But a really good lawyer would have seen, can't do that with this guy. I'm gonna bring this guy close. I'm gonna get as much out of him as I can, and then I'm gonna get done. That's what he should've done. He didn't do that. So now we're on redirect. And the prosecution makes the point. I guess, hopefully, for them, I don't know, that, hey, I'll just talk about postpartum. It didn't really matter, right? Because the symptoms for postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are the same as general depression, major depression, and psychosis, which, of course, he agrees. And he also agrees that the symptoms for depression are the symptoms of bipolar too, which, once again, you would think is helpful for the defense. And he says, look, absolutely, better to interview her earlier, but he also had the ability to watch the interview that Resnick did because it was recorded. And he said the records in this case were exceedingly thorough. He said, hey, normally I have to work a lot harder to be able to do this just to get 10% of the information records I had in this case. - In fact, he said, and he's done so many of these. I'm like, he's the expert of experts. And he said, this is the best record case I've ever gotten. I had more to work with in this case than any other case I've been in an expert in. I thought that was actually pretty astounding, especially given his experience. - So once again, prosecution's making points, and I would assume would be good for the defense, but the prosecution is now rebuilding him and restoring his credibility by going after things that he was crossed on, that he probably shouldn't have been crossed on, 'cause they actually helped the defense. So now we have the prosecution pointing out that Lindsay had legitimate concerns about medication and had a lot of adverse effects, particularly Sarah Quail, and the Sarah Quail had affected her really badly. So they make that point, which is a good point for the defense and you think one of the defense would have wanted to make. Now a good point for the prosecution that they do bring out is the worst medications for her and the ones that affected her the most. She was off of after she left McClein. So September to December, including in December when everything was the worst, she gets off of that when she leaves McClein. And I gotta tell you, the more I think about this and the more I think about what he said yesterday about how with people who were in severe depression, the most dangerous time is when they start to come out of it. When they start to have more of that energy and more of that ability to follow through. And that's when you start seeing suicide. And then thinking about how yeah, December was the really bad time. Like January doesn't seem like the really bad time. The symptoms aren't as bad. She's even sleeping some in January. More than she was before. She's off the really bad drugs and yet January's when this happens. The more I think about that, the more I think about what he said. It's like, man, this all really does fit together on this being more about suicide than about psychosis. So he also talks about the differences between what she said and thought broadcasting. 'Cause this comes out a lot. So thought broadcasting is when you hear a voice like you're hearing my voice and you turn to somebody and you say, "Did you just hear that?" And they're like, "What are you talking about?" Trope from every haunted house that I've ever seen. So it's that kind of thing. It's not she was having these intrusive thoughts and they were powerful and they were so powerful that she did, I guess at one point I asked her mom, like, "Man, these thoughts I'm having, "which are my own thoughts are so loud." Like I've worried people can hear them sometimes. So different from thought broadcasting, still like a bad symptom I would think, whether it's thought broadcasting or not, and this is one of those things where I feel like red intents should have been like, I got it. It's not thought broadcasting, but let's talk about what she actually said. Seems pretty bad that your intrusive thoughts are so intrusive that you think maybe somebody could hear them, right? That's bad. Like whatever you wanna call it, not thought broadcasting, but that's bad. I feel like you could have hit on that more, but instead we're arguing about once again, about terms. Is it postpartum depression or just depression? Is it thought broadcasting or just very intrusive thoughts that are so powerful that you think people can hear them? That would have been a good point to hit on, but he doesn't do that. - That's a great point here. Remember, the people in the jury are not medical professionals. They don't know the DSM, they don't have, they're not bound by what's in the DSM. I can see a very effective closing argument that says, call it what you want. I'm no doctor, intrusive thoughts, voices. Whatever you wanna label this. What we know is this was so overpowering. Sure, these doctors wanna call it intrusive thoughts. It was so intrusive that it crowded out. All rational thinking, all criminal liability. How can she possibly have any space left in her mind? She sent this over and over. So you wanna call that intrusive thoughts? You wanna call that thought broadcasting? I don't care about labels. I wanna talk about what was going on in her head. And in her head, there were these thoughts that forced her to do these things. That her own hands would never do to her own children. That's what you do. And this is why mental defect is a legal term. It's not a DSM, I'd harp on that. You're not asked to be doctors. You're not asked to be a diagnostician. You don't have to write a diagnostic code. You don't have to go by those check boxes where it says check bipolar one, check bipolar two. You use your experience and what you heard here today. Does this sound like a cold-hearted killer in front of you? Or does it sound like a woman's suffering, trying so hard to do everything she could, she could not because these thoughts crowded out every ounce of rational thinking until all she could do was action, action alone, actions that went on her own. That's what she do, Reddington. I'm sorry, I just convinced myself that she's okay. Right? I mean, the whole time I was actually very frustrated with him because I could see where this cross-examination could be so effective and strike at the hearts of the men and women on this jury. They're not doctors and they're not called to be doctors. They're called to be a jury of her peers and he could have used that to his complete strength in talking to these experts. - You know, I had to say this 'cause I had to even, I kept thinking, what would Alan Jackson do with this? - Yeah. - 'Cause I feel like Alan Jackson would have used this in a much different way. I think he would have done that. Because Alan Jackson knew when to be, I didn't like Alan Jackson. I don't like Alan Jackson, just be clear. But I can respect the fact that he knew when to be the hammer and he knows when not to be and he's able to do both. And I don't know, everyone talks about how Reddington's is great lawyer and maybe he is and maybe he was, I don't know, but didn't see it today. Now let's just authorize to it. - And don't worry, those of you in the chat, we're like, don't give Reddington ideas for his clothing. Don't worry. - He's not listening to us. - He's not showing up on his algorithm, y'all. (laughing) No algorithm over here. (laughing) (upbeat music) - You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressive save over $900 on average. They make it super simple. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with coverage options tailored to your choices. Plus, you'll see which discounts you may qualify for, like the online quote discount or savings for paying in full. In fact, 99% of progressive auto customers earn at least one discount. See if you could save when you switch to progressive. You'll feel good about making a savvy choice. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little extra cash back. 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Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com/prosecuters. That's Q-U-O.com/prosecuters. (upbeat music) Then they talk about where this anxiety started. And he says this process started with anxiety about returning to work, again, such a human thing that I think Reddington can really use to his benefit. He doesn't know those jurors, but I bet every one of them understands something that may seem wrote that actually can cause immense anxiety, like returning to work after having a baby. Now she never told any providers or hospitals that she had thoughts of harming her children. And they go through the women in infants records, which may clear that their program was not for her because of the postpartum issues, but they did recognize she needed help. We've been through this multiple times. I'm very convinced by this. She was not someone who was turned away and said, "You don't need help, go home." She was given three options of programs that better fit her. Honestly, it's like, I can't even think of a good example here. Like, I'm going to the shoe store and they only sell men's shoes and my feet are too small for them. And they're like, we can't serve you, ma'am, because none of these shoes fit you. If we sold it to you, we'd take your money and you can't use these. Instead, why don't you go to these three other stores which carry your size? They're not turning her away. They're saying, this is not what you're suffering from, which, by the way, goes along with the experts. They're not saying she doesn't have serious mental issues. They're saying, it's not postpartum tied. And this program, you can imagine, I don't know. I haven't been to the women in infants program, but I can imagine if it's focused on specifically the postpartum era three to four weeks after having a baby, there may be some very different things that they are geared towards her that just won't apply to Lindsay. And someone sent us an email about this and it's total speculation and I don't know. But they had suffered from some of these issues and they talked about the stigma that mental illness carries. And they wondered if part of this was that Lindsay and Patrick really wanted to believe this was postpartum because postpartum issues can be cured, they're temporary, and they go away. And when it was suggested that she might be bipolar, what was the response? Silence from Lindsay and Patrick saying, "My wife is not bipolar." So women and infants is offering other treatment. They're saying, look, you don't really fit postpartum. What about some of these other programs? And those were just not going to be something that she was going to want to do, that they were going to want to do as a couple because for whatever reason, they were resistant to the idea that it was a, and I don't mean this in any negative way, a typical mental illness rather than a postpartum, mental illness. - And then they go through how in the records, it's actually Patrick and Lindsay who say that she was overmedicated and that they listed rule out on adverse drug effects, which means it's possible but not yet confirmed. So Lindsay's mental health did get worse through December, then it's got somewhat better after that. So what would it depend upon for a command hallucinations? What are the symptoms of psychosis that don't necessarily take away your control and responsibility? And this is where he's clear, you can be psychotic or even have command hallucinations but still have control and responsibility. Now, someone experiencing psychosis can conform their behavior to the law and you know the difference between right and wrong? Yes, in some cases. So this is a very nuanced thing, this is why again, we said that there's a trial in this case. It's not enough even if she had psychosis, even if she heard voices. I think thus far the evidence shows she did not hear a voice and she was not in psychosis. - And what was so interesting about this point is it made me think about something we've talked about before. How so many people, when we've questioned whether or not she was in psychosis. And we've pointed to various evidence that she's not. We'll say, well, if you're in psychosis, you can care on a normal life. You can carry on normal conversations. You can answer a telephone call. You can look up directions on. And it's like, when he said this, I was like, oh yeah, you can't do all those things. And if that's this kind of psychosis you're in, you also can conform your behavior to the law and know the difference between right and wrong. So if that's the kind of psychosis she had in that bad for and it goes back to this whole can you say no to the voice thing that we talked about a while Now, experts are talking about two, you know, and we kind of treated it in the beginning like if psychosis is not guilty, right? That's sort of the way I think all of us have talked about it. If she's in psychosis, then she's not guilty She wasn't able to conform her behavior, but now it's like, actually no, it's more nuance than that. It's not if psychosis guilty. You still have to show that inability to conform and so that evidence, even if it's not evidence that she wasn't in psychosis, may still be evidence that she could conform her behavior and other differences in the right and wrong. And this was a really interesting point. The the prosecution brought out right at the end of their redirect. Then we get to recross. Reddington brings up the MMPI and the K-scale. It's not elevated on anything, but suicide. She wasn't malingering. She wasn't doing any of that stuff. We talked briefly about Resonance Most Recent Research on Auditorial Illusionations. Dr. Kirk had cited one of his articles. He did not cite the most recent one. The way Reddington describes it is like his old articles out of date I don't know that Resnick would describe that. It's just he now has an additional article on this an additional study. The doctor had not read that study. Apparently, you know It's auditory hallucinations can be internal is the way that Reddington describes it. I don't know that anyone is saying that's not true. It's just When you conceptualize the auditory hallucination, it seems like it's an outside voice. I mean, I think it naturally would be an internal voice. I don't know. I didn't really understand exactly and he didn't go into it enough. Frankly, if that was the point he wanted to make, he really should have spent more time on that and maybe done it in the cross. But he didn't do that. So we got just a very brief blurry image of that and he didn't and I think why didn't you talk to Resnick about that? Like if you're gonna make the argument that these really were auditory hallucinations, not intrusive thoughts, shouldn't we spend some time on Resnick about this latest Research, which makes me think the latest research is not actually as helpful to Reddington as he tried to make it out to be because if you really dug into it You would see that it's not. So instead, it's a throwaway thing and recross that he hopes will convince some juror. Oh, okay. Well, that's probably what happened So that's how it ends. Then we have what we think and what we hope and what we pray is the last witness of this case. I am as ready to go to Closings as I've ever been in a case. Honestly, I'm not even sure it was a good idea to call this person I don't even know that we needed this person, but we called him anyways. Dr. Gregory sat off and he's an interesting guy very Slow talker if you're listening to this before listening to the testimony Good for you because that means you can put it on at least 1.5 you might be able to do two on this guy I'll listen to trial 1.5 and people kept talking about this guy and I was like sounds fun and then I slowed it down to one and I was like oh I say one it is a little different. He's very very deliberate. He's very thoughtful. He often will be asked questions and he will He thinks about the question. Not a bad thing, but it can go on for several seconds where he's just like thinking about it Be like you know, what's your name? Sat off I don't know so he has a very good exaggeration. That's why I laughed so hard because it was a really good impersonation He really does that. Can't wait to see we're heading to him because it's gonna be an interesting experience But he is a professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences at UVA very interesting guy He is the senior psychiatrist for the behavioral analysis unit in Quantico and has been so for a while I need to ask Julia if she knows him and ever worked with him or anything, but very very experienced guy when it comes to behavioral analysis and I'll say this about the prosecution. They really went out and got I think incredibly qualified Experts in this case like all of these people. I'm not necessarily dogging the other side's experts These are just very qualified experts and I'll say this much especially as it relates to Dr. Kirk I think when they went out to get them they went on their resumes and each of these experts were so qualified and they had a lot of experience They didn't necessarily need to work on this case, which you want someone who was just looking at the case rather than chasing fame Was a bit of a risk taking they did not know how these doctors would come out and you'll see what they're slightly different They don't give they're not like completely in the bag for everything the prosecution wants to say So I will say Props to the prosecution on this because I think they went out and got these experts Not knowing what they would say and then as they got these experts reports back They were very convinced that this is indeed a case that needed to move forward with prosecution So I know we've been very hard on the prosecution, but I will say props that they've done great on cross examination And they've done great on the rebuttal I mean they really have they've had a few little mess ups, but generally speaking You know as long as they I love Jesus, but we didn't keep Jesus out of this and If they could do that they'd be a little bit better off as I said he's in the behavioral analysis unit He's testified 40 to 45 times as a forensic psychologist. He is not board certified which normally might be a bad thing But the reason is because he went into the military as a psychiatrist and then moved over to FBI because As we're gonna see he did something really cool and frankly he didn't have time to do a one-year fellowship Which is what you have to do to get board certified so he said forget that noise I'm just gonna actually work in the field He's evaluated five to seven women who killed their children Diagnosed them and worked with a team to address their obviously serious mental issues He's treated thousands of patients who've had psychosis He works at the state hospital and Charlottesville because he is a UVA Professor and he's dealt with some of the most severely mentally ill people imaginable What a really interesting thing he did So I guess there was something called bromo krypton Which essentially it stops lactation So if you're someone who doesn't want to breastfeed they would give you this drug and stop lactation Apparently he and a couple of the people discovered that it also causes postpartum psychosis and he and foreother Psychiatrist wrote an article on it and eventually it led to the FDA taking this drug off the market in 1994 So kind of a big deal Apparently this was the article that got the attention of the FBI and he ends up at the VA You so interesting guy especially at 1.5 speed Especially at 1.5 speed Yeah, so he then talks about hallucinations He says that auditory hallucinations are the most common of hallucinations Though you can have other perceptual disturbances Now psychosis can show itself through delusions fixed false beliefs And they can be bizarre or non-bizar but he says psychosis is a symptom of mental illness rather than a mental illness in and of itself I thought this was interesting Now there are many different possible causes for psychosis Everything from mental health issues to drug abuse to brain tumors that like push against your brain and cause it to have auditory hallucinations Now some people can benefit from mental health treatment But some serious mental illnesses are pretty much beyond full treatment Which is terrifying but I think that also shows you how For him to recognize this I think is very serious because it also cuts against this whole If something goes wrong you've been failed He's saying I've treated the worst of the worst We don't understand the human brain There are illnesses that basically you cannot treat That was just very enlightening for me as we're having these broader discussions about mental illness Now he did a forensic evaluation of Lindsey Clancy and he does his work through UVA So unlike the other experts who are retained or paid hourly He doesn't get paid directly by the Commonwealth Rather the department at UVA receives any funds and he gets a salary from them So in this case he reviewed the records, videos, reports from the government and the defense And it was a very significant list of materials that were available to review Which is what we've heard from the other experts as well And he interviewed Lindsey by Zoom for about five hours total He said that of course it'd always be better to interview someone in person But he's also done Zoom interviews before and it's worked just fine He said there are advantages since you don't have to take notes as it's being recorded So you can actually focus more on the questions and the answers of the person you're talking to He said that he also interviewed Patrick Clancy on Zoom And let me just say tomorrow when you're watching the cross examination Do not drink every time Reddington says television Because he's going to say it at least 50 times and you will be dead So don't do it Now he's going to do that even though his experts have his experts have been on Zoom But that's okay And we are, we're definitely going to hear that tomorrow So I have these running list of pieces that I've always been hunting forever Because they're just at such high prices I can't quite bring myself to buy them Whether it's just the perfect dress from Tucker Nuck Or honestly, these football jerseys that my kids want but they're so expensive I think and I think and then all of a sudden they're gone from online I can't find them anywhere until I found them on Poshmark for way less Then what I could get them for anywhere else I have to tell you guys about Poshmark because I love it Poshmark is the leading fashion resell marketplace Shaped by real people and real style Millions of new and pre-loved items items from daily wardrobe staples to vintage and luxury fashion, archive worthy pieces you thought you missed forever, to current essentials, and one of a kind vintage finds. 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I think, frankly, she was killing Callen when the call came in, and then she went upstairs, took the phone call, and if you see her phone, then she goes up another flight of stairs where she ends up in the bedroom and then the phone ends up on the bed. So it really seems like that's what she's doing. She says that the refrigerator was open. She was getting chicken nuggets for the kids, and that's when the call came in. She has the call with Patrick. She misses the call, I guess, because she's getting chicken nuggets or whatever. She calls him back, and then after the call is when the voice starts, it's after the call, not when he leaves. Now this is problematic for a couple of reasons. Number one, we know for certain that at least one of the kids was already eating chicken nuggets on the couch when Patrick left. We know that for certain. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that 15 minutes after he left, 20 minutes after he left, I'd have to look at the exact time line when the call comes in, but it's not exactly in the middle, as Dr. Kirk described it, I think it's 18 minutes after he leaves. There you go. That she's still getting chicken nuggets, I guess, for Cora, despite the fact that it seems like the snacks that already started when Patrick was getting ready to leave. This seems like an inconsistency, and inconsistencies like that are important as they shine lights on her mental state and whether or not what she is reporting back to you is true or not. And these widely divergent reports can raise questions. Now, as I said, she says to him, "Called him back, hung up, here comes the voice." Interestingly, and we never heard from this doctor, this is not the story she told Spinelli, which is the defense expert, the defense expert who was supposed to testify about postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She told Spinelli what I'm going to call the truth, which is that the voice came as soon as Patrick left on his errands. Now I say that's the truth. I think that is her initial story, and I think that's the story she's told for a long time. If there was a voice, it literally happened as he's driving away. If it didn't happen then, there was no voice. That's my position on this, and that's what she told Spinelli, and it's an inconsistency with what she told all of the prosecution experts. She said to him, and remember, he's not with Mack and Dr. Kirk. He's talking to her on Zoom. She tells him the exact same thing. She told the other two doctors and the exact same thing that's in her complaint. Kill the kids so you can kill yourself. This is your last chance, and that this is over and over and over again. She also indicated that her children would suffer if she didn't do that. One of our great theories of true crime is that there's truth in every lie, and what's interesting about this is she's got both of Dr. Kirk's choices in this statement. He said it's one of two things, psychosis due to command hallucination, or altruistic philocyte after a suicide. She tells him both. I had the command voice, and by the way, I was concerned that my kids wouldn't be okay if I killed myself. He tells them both. She said this was an external voice, and it was constant. It repeated over and over and over again. But as soon as she finished strangling Callum, it stopped. Now he said there are a few things that are significant about this. Number one, it's significant that she had not spoken about hearing this voice before that, or really any voices before that. That is not typical. It is also not typical to hear a voice that's constant like this rather than intermittent. And he has never seen the voice stop once the act is done. That is not typical. Hearing the act does not cure the psychosis and it's also not typical to hear a voice without an accompanying delusion. And look, I know we're going to get into his expertise or not, but like he literally discovered how a certain drug caused psychosis and really has treated women who have committed philocyte. And unlike the other experts that a Reddington has tried to say, you've never even written an article about this. He has, specifically about postpartum psychosis and a drug that helped cause it, right? This was really stunning to me because he has experience in this. And we know that this all sounded atypical for him having treated women, five to seven, who've killed their children and helping them through their mental issues before and after this to say he's never seen the voice stop. And how interesting I had never thought about that. I guess I could see some sort of reasoning that you do the action to make the voice stop. But if you're saying the voice does not ever stop even when the act is done, but that is what's reported here. I thought was a very, very blast of cold air in my face of truth. If you did this in the voice stop, when the first thing you do, call 911, I mean, or why and kill yourself. Because I can imagine if she said, and then the voice changed, that it was kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, that would be different. But the voice, you know, the command hallucination, you're a puppet in your own body. And I almost imagine it's like it's, she snaps out of it, the voice ends and she's looking down and there's Callan with an exercise band wrapped around his throat. And I can imagine wanting to kill yourself at that point. I can imagine that. But also it's strange to me that at that point you wouldn't immediately unwrap all the bands from all your children and call them, wouldn't be like, oh my goodness, I was under this command hallucination. I did this horrible thing. Please come save my children, but that's not what happens. So I don't know. So at this point, Reddington asks for a dobbert hearing, which is where you challenge who's being put on him as an expert. A dobbert challenge is just to say, they're not qualified to be an expert. Is it too late for this? Don't you have to do dobbert hearing support? So I don't know what's going on here, but I will note. Reddington has been constantly objecting every time he makes any kind of opinion stipend. Maybe there was a dobbert ruling before that the judge has held over. I actually don't know what's going on. And I don't understand why this person would not be an expert. Like it? He literally wrote postpartum psychosis articles. Yeah, when he gave his background. And it's like, clearly, he's an expert on this stuff. So I don't really understand. - And just so you know, so it's not uncommon to challenge the expertise of someone, and that's what a dogbert challenge is. Very often, there's even dogbert challenge deadlines within a scheduling order, and they are not typically in the middle of trial. You can imagine why. You wanna know what's going to be able to come into trial. This is usually something that's briefed and argued well in advance of trial, and you know ahead of time because if they're disqualified as an expert, usually you're scrambling to find another expert, or you don't build your case around it because you know it's not going to come in. So I was confused by this because if it's the first time he's challenged his expertise, it would seemingly be too late. The only thing I can think of is he previously challenged his expertise, I don't know on what basis because he seems very qualified. The judge already ruled against him, and he's objecting and asking for it to preserve it for appeal, but it's already preserved for appeal when there's a ruling against you. So again, I'm not really sure, but the judge over rules his request for a Dobbert hearing so they don't stop dismiss the jury and have a Dobbert hearing. - And maybe, honestly, this may be something we see tomorrow. When the prosecution rests, it's possible, he's gonna ask for a Dobbert hearing, jury's gonna be sent out, we're gonna do some Vordire, and the judge could strike his whole testimony. That can happen. The judge can say, you're not an expert after all, jury disregard all that testimony. Very rare for that to happen, and I don't know on what basis that would happen, but that was pretty interesting to me. I'm really curious about what, we're at least gonna see his questions. - Was it because he interviewed her by Zoom? I mean, oh yeah, I'm trying to see if anyone else interview her by Zoom. That's not the basis of Dobbert 'cause the Dobbert isn't about how you do it, is it because he's not board certified, but that's not a requirement. - And just to be clear, because we're talking like everybody knows what we're talking about. So Dobbert is the Supreme Court case, called Dobbert by a certain Senator from Louisiana, that is the basis for whether or not you're an expert. So rule 703, I think, covers expert opinions. Experts are not fact witnesses. They can give opinions about things of which they have no personal knowledge, right? Based on expertise. - Exactly. Exactly, they can consider hearsay, they can consider a lot of different things. You don't have to have a degree to be an expert. Once again, most famous example of a qualified expert, my cousin Vinnie. If you've seen my cousin Vinnie, what he's asking for is exactly what happened. When he says, I wanna Dobbert him, exactly what happens at the end of my cousin Vinnie with Marissa Tomay's character. The prosecutor asks her a bunch of questions. She proves she's an expert. She doesn't have a degree in car mechanics, but she has so much experience that she has the ability to opine on these issues. - And let's also be clear to you because we talked about this a little bit with Dr. Mack who was disqualified as an expert in the Florida case. This isn't about how good you are as a doctor. It actually has to say whether your knowledge in your field is what is needed for expertise in this case. So you can have this doctor, for example, would probably not be qualified as an expert on, I don't know, breastfeeding. Or apesiatomies, for example, right? He is qualified, but he's also a doctor, but it doesn't mean that he's qualified, even if he knows what an apesiatomy is. Even if he's studied that in school, but he has no experience to be able to testify as an expert on apesiatomies. Does that mean he's, so if he were disqualified as an expert to testify on apesiatomies, doesn't mean he's a bad doctor. It's not saying he's not a good doctor. So it's actually, it's a very legal thing. It's whether their knowledge can qualify for the expertise needed in this case. So he goes on to say that Patrick did not know that Lindsay was taking medication in nursing school. And in numerous text messages, she would tell people that she was doing well, even leading up to the day of the murders and the day of the murders. And it portrayed something that was different from what was going on inside of her. And I think we've heard this from some people that all the things she might even minimize some of the suffering that she was going through. Now her mother-in-law suggested someone named Rose to meet with Lindsay. And she did. The doctor suggested Lamotra gene and she also discussed Lamotra gene with Dr. Tufts. Now, Lamotra gene is approved for use for bipolar, but it is also used for epilepsy and depression as well. Ultimately, three different providers suggested Lamotra gene for Lindsay. And Tufts was the one who wrote the prescription. Lindsay got the medication, but she decided not to take it because she was concerned about a serious rash. It's not clear if Tufts knew she didn't take the Lamotra gene, also known as Limitol. And Lindsay told the doctor that she felt like a zombie. And the McLean records demonstrate that she was not doing well, but she characterized it differently to them, which makes it harder on providers because they do depend on you telling them what's going on inside of your mind. So she apparently told him that she was able to maintain her appearances around family. And one thing she talked about, I thought this was an interesting callback. So you remember the friend who went to visit her after the murders? It was kind of a, why did they call her type thing? We didn't really know. I guess they called her for this reason. So that friend met with her and had conversations with her. Apparently Lindsay was upset about how this went because she felt like spaulting where she was at the time did not treat her mental health very well or really at all. And then this led to her being unable to interact with her friend and it hurt her friendship. And the point the Commonwealth is trying to make is even now at this late hour, Lindsay still doesn't believe that the people treating her know what they're doing, much like she didn't before the murders. Whether it was Dr. Tufts or nurse practitioner Gelata or McLean or whoever it was. And she told him that she was upset that spaulting prioritized her spinal cord injury over her mental health treatment. Obviously they're rehab facility. So the primary thing they're doing is the spinal cord injury. But her medical records indicated that she did get significant mental health care there while she was there, which is inconsistent with what she's telling this doctor. Now we get into some really interesting things that frankly I hadn't even thought about. So this was some cool stuff. So we go back to the 24th and we go back to this question, was this a plan? Was this a setup? That she sinned Patrick out specifically to have enough time to commit this crime. And they asked him about the takeout order on the 24th. And he notes something that I had noticed, but this is why it's good to have FBI agents who are also a psychologist. That she had already searched 3V and the distance in time it would take before she sent the text to Patrick about whether or not he wanted to get takeout. And she didn't just say, do you want to get takeout? She specifically said, I want to get takeout from 3V. And she told the doctor that the reason she did this was fairly simple, because 3V was the only restaurant she could remember that they had gotten takeout from. That is not true. According to Patrick, they had never gotten takeout from 3V. Typically, when they got takeout, they got it from much closer places. 3V was a restaurant they had visited, but it was a good ways away. And so it wasn't the kind of place they would go for takeout. But on this day, the day of all days was the day that she just so happened to send him for the first time to go to 3V to pick up takeout. - This in my mind was a huge moment. I didn't know this. I didn't know about her searching it beforehand. I think I kind of did, but the fact that they had never gone to 3V before goes to what Dr. Kirk was saying about the planning. This in my mind, in all these interviews were asked, what are the bombshells? Few bombshells, I'm horrified. Do I need a lawyer? And then the phone call, where do we stand with Patrick? This I would put up there with it in terms of being a bombshell of her intentional planning. - And let me just say, many of you have said, and you've pointed to Andrea Yates, that it is possible to plan while in the midst of psychosis. So even if this was an effort to get him out of the house to do this perfectly consistent, but we have a problem here. That is not what Lindsay says. Lindsay doesn't say that she was hearing the voice when she looked up 3V. She doesn't say that she was in psychosis at this point. In fact, she says the opposite. To this day, she says she was perfectly fine then. This is a coincidence. The voice came on after Patrick left. So if there is evidence of planning, it is evidence that what Lindsay has told us is a lie. And I think that's important. If you believe this was planned, then the story Lindsay has told you about the voice and about the psychosis isn't true. And that's why this was so important. And I don't know if it came across at one speed, but at 1.5, I was like, wow, that's some really powerful stuff. And then there's CVS. Now she searched for Miralax about an hour before and she had looked into all this stuff well before she taught to Patrick. In fact, she did not mention CVS to him or the need to pick up the medication until literally, just before he left. So even though she'd looked it up considerably before, she sets up the trip to the 3v restaurant, and then right as he's leaving, she says, "Oh, by the way, on your way, can you stop to pick up this medication?" This obviously lengthens the trip, and it adds a stop, which means it's going to take longer for him to be able to complete this trip. So then he says that it was a serious suicide attempt. It required sequential decision making. She got a knife from the butcher block downstairs. She went up the stairs. She cut herself. She also took pills, and when he asked her about how many handfuls did she take, she did not say that she took handfuls of pills. In fact, she did not describe the overdose. She said that she slashed the screen and dove out the window in all of this. So this sequential decision making, she had to go to the kitchen and she got the knife. She ascended to the bedroom. She cut her neck and a throat. She took pills. Now what she omitted, and he asked about like handfuls because you can imagine you're just grabbed and pills along your way and stuffed them in your mouth. But she didn't say that she crushed the pills when she was telling him the story of what she did. And this is significant to him because the pills were crushed up in the wine tumbler, which he learned this from Patrick. She said that she took it with lemonade, but they didn't have lemonade in the house, typically according to Patrick. So he can't remember specifically this day because that's not something that we have. She said it had been in the wine tumbler the night before, and that this is significant to the doctor because crushing up pills, it's kind of a challenge without the right tools. It's laborious. It takes time, especially if time is of the essence. Now she doesn't recall locking the door. She said she didn't lock the door. The door is locked. But it was locked. That's right because Patrick had to go find a key to unlock it. I mean, look, you know, what's interesting about this and something I kept thinking is we're almost to the point where you either think she's guilty or Patrick did it. And I don't say that with any joy in referencing that conspiracy theory. But some of the stuff Patrick says is so damning to her. And I don't think Patrick's in on it. I think Patrick's just telling the truth, like the lemonade thing and he points out why is it important to have the lemonade when you crush up these pills? What do we know about pills? People crush them up and they snort them, right? So what have people been doing for a long time to try and prevent you from doing that? They've made it such that you don't want to do it. So he notes, when you crush up these pills, they are incredibly bitter. You don't want to take this stuff. You need something like a strong drink, like a lemonade with a strong taste to it to cover up that bitter taste. So it makes it seem like if you don't typically have lemonade in the house, that you went out and got some lemonade because you knew what you were going to do. This once again points to planning. This once again points to a plan suicide that included taking your kids with you that points to point to as Dr. Kirk talked about. I mean, all these things are sort of like coming together in this, but a lot of this information we're getting from Patrick, we get the information about what she said, we get the information that the door was locked, we get the information that they didn't keep lemonade, right? A lot of this is coming from Patrick. I think that's perfectly legitimate. There are people out there who won't. But if you're someone who doesn't think that Patrick's involved, this is all really damning stuff that he's bringing in. In its subtle, and I don't know that the jury's necessarily going to get it without a really good closing, and we haven't seen that closing, but there's some really good stuff in these witnesses that you can pull out. So then Lindsay tells them that after she has that phone call with Patrick, she took Dawson down to her husband's office to strangle him. And when he asked her what she told him, she said she couldn't remember, which is interesting because we know that she just filed a civil complaint where she said, you know, go to God. Then she said she brought down Korra and then Callan in that order. She said that Callan was probably in the playpen, so it was fine to have him be last. And he was, in fact, the last one to be strangled, which comports with the fact that he was the only one who they could get a heartbeat on when they found the kids. The voice did not tell Lindsay how to kill the children. The children, which we saw in their autopsy, have a strong will to live. They were active kids. They played outside and they fought for their lives. And then that's it. We just break in the middle of his answers, like the middle of his answers. Usually what you do is counsel, well, we're nearing the three o'clock hour. It's time to go four o'clock hour. It's time to go. Can you wrap it up? But he was like literally in the middle of his answers. And the judge was like, oh, let's break for the day. See you everybody, which is very unusual. This is so weird. And another reason I really have just come to dislike this judge. So the prosecutor asks him why is it significant what she used to kill them? And so he's going through it. Well, these are active kids. You know, they have a will to live. We see them on the video. They're young, they're energetic. He's clearly building up to the answer that she used the exercise bands because she knew they were going to fight back, but it was something she could control. And that's why she picked that. Then Reddington objects in the middle for no apparent reason just because he sees how badly this is going to go. We go to sidebar and then all of a sudden we're done for the day. And it's like, what are you doing, your honor? What basis are we ending court literally in the middle of his answer? And I get it. He talks slow. He might have talked for not 30 minutes. Who knows? But let him finish the answer before we go. What are we even doing? But that's this judge. And I mean, not ready for prime time this guy. But that's where we're at. And that's how today ended. All right. We're almost there guys. Y'all been with us through this whole thing. This has been a roller coaster. I think for everybody. You know, I can see the end barring something. I'm pretty sure what I'm going to say at the end of this case. And I will tell you my opinion on this case has changed at various times throughout it. This has been a really enlightening trial. I'll say that. Now I think a lot of people have felt that way. So there's a lot of divergent opinions. We've seen a lot of divergent opinions. It's been so interesting to get your emails. We have gotten emails from people who suffered from postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis who think Lindsey Clancy is absolutely guilty. And we've gotten emails from the same kind of people who think she's absolutely not. We've gotten emails from people who work in this area of the law who think she's not guilty. People who were forensic psychologists who say she absolutely is. It's fascinating. And it's going to be so interesting to see how the jury handles this at the end of the day. Keep sending us those emails. We really appreciate them. [email protected] if you have thoughts. If you want to open, interact with us on social media. Add Prosecutorspot for all your social media. X TikTok or Instagram. We're always on those. If you want to have conversations about this case with really smart people, go to the gallery on Facebook. They're talking about this case 24/7. You'll have a lot of fun there. If you want to see us record these episodes early after the trial, the night of the trial. Basically at this point, we're recording every night. You can join Patreon for $3 a month. If you want to get the episodes early and add free, Patreon for $3 a month or Apple subscriptions. If you want to see the videos edited, you can do that on our sub-stack. Just Google the Prosecutors podcast sub-stack, True Crime Times, and you will find it. All right, Alice. I'm just about to say so much pressure, because you always say something so profound. I was just going to say I'm too tired to say anything tonight. Do you have anything that you would like to add? Before we sign off, before the final day, we hope. If Reddington pulls out a ceremony. I was going to say I don't know. I know we keep changing our estimate at the timeline. I think because of the many breaks this court takes and the refusal to go past four o'clock, I actually think there's a good possibility we don't get closing arguments tomorrow that we get them on Thursday morning. Oh, we definitely are. We're not doing closings tomorrow because I don't know how to say that. At the very end, he said that. I missed that because I was too shocked that he cut off the expert. Okay, well, there's that. I was just updating where I was and because I don't know how long I think we get closing arguments Thursday. I hope, I hope. I want to watch that lunar eclipse on Thursday, man. If we get closing arguments on Thursday, do we get a verdict before the end of the week? What do you think? I don't think so. I am still hopeful that we don't get a hung jury. I think if we have closing arguments on Thursday, I still think there's a possibility we have closing arguments Thursday afternoon, to be honest, because Reddington's tactic so far has been all over the place and I don't know if he can can find himself what he should do is just finish this witness on cross and not drag it out for multiple days. But I think there's a possibility if they don't get the jury, because the jury charge is going to take a while too, especially if they have fights about this. If they don't actually go back and start deliberating until Friday, I absolutely do not think we have something before the weekend. If nothing more than the fact that this is a serious and long case that they may want to give their time to. I don't think we get a verdict before Monday. That's my call. I think they'll start deliberating on Thursday. I think we'll get a verdict on Monday. I am okay. There's still so much left, including closings, which are going to be So illuminating, but I moved from thinking that this was, when this trial started, I thought this was going to be more likely than not, not guilty. And then I thought this was going to be a hung jury, and I thought we were going to be a hung jury for a very long time. I'm beginning to be hopeful we actually reach a conviction in this case, famous last words. But I will say that's the journey that the roller coaster that I've been on. I really thought it was going to be not guilty, like when the trial started, based on no evidence yet. And then pretty soon after the first couple, basically as soon as Patrick got off, I said, I was like, "Hung jury, no one's going to be able to reach anything. This is too sad." And then when we got no answers from experts for a very long time, I was like, "Hung jury, hung jury, hung jury." The rebuttal witnesses have been really enlightening to me. I don't know if it's enough to move the needle for people who may have already made up their minds, but I am hopeful that it will not be a hung jury. That's where I am right now. By the way, people, I don't know if you got big plans for the Monday holiday coming up. But Monday is not Labor Day. Labor Day is a week from Monday. So, did people think it was this? People are mentioning that it's holiday. It's not holiday. Oh, no, not this week. Next week it is. Yeah. So. Yeah, I know that. Yeah. I think we will get. Well, definitely have a verdict before Labor Day. I do not think we get a verdict before the weekend now that I think about it. Even if they get it on Thursday, partly because I do not think the jury will be fully charged and sent back to deliberate till Friday. And then we get juries all the time that go back on a Friday, they'll just wait through the weekend. So, I think the jury gets the case at lunchtime on Thursday. I think they'll have a second half of Thursday, which means. You have so much faith in Reddington being able to keep it straight. 30 minutes. Because it's Massachusetts. You can only deliberate till 4 o'clock. And then they'll deliberate on Friday and then I think we get the verdict Monday afternoon. And I do think we're going to get a verdict. I think I was in hunting jury land for a while, but I think they'll be a verdict. And I guess we'll see. Yeah. Now we'll see. All right, guys. Well, we will see you guys soon. No doubt. But until then, I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. All right. All right, all right, all right. I'm too old for this. I'm so tired. Yeah, you know, we were talking about this would be like episode 15, and ordinarily, that's essentially four months worth of episodes. You know what this means. We're lazy. We are lazy. Clearly, we kind of done more. Yeah. We didn't have so much. Alice. And just like, just imagine if we recorded like every night, you guys would get sick. I'm so tired because we are, because we are recording every night. Yeah. All right. All right. All right. So the thing that I forget about covering a case in real time is all the interview requests in real time as well. Oh, God. So it's like, it's actually double because like, people make hair if you're covering ad none. But like decades later, you know, it's not like there's news breaking every day and they need someone on TV. All right. All right. Welcome to Pluto, foe. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV. We're all your bloodbusters favorites are landing all summer long. Catch anchor man, the legend of Ron Burgundy. Fantastic. The Matrix trilogy. Welcome to the real world. Mean girls. Side book. Titanic. Run the key in the world. And so much more. For showtime. Press. Hey, they're free 24/7. That is so. On Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The podcast episode reviews Day 20 of the Lindsay Clancy trial, focusing on the cross-examination of prosecution expert Dr. Halburn (Dr. Kirk) and the beginning of a new witness, Dr. Gregory Sattoff.
  2. Dr. Halburn concluded Lindsay had a mental disease or defect (bipolar II and depression) but appreciated the criminality of her actions, deeming her criminally responsible, driven by a serious suicide attempt and altruistic filicide rather than psychosis.
  3. The hosts criticize defense attorney Reddington’s cross-examination as ineffectual, emotionally driven, and full of missed opportunities, such as failing to leverage the expert’s admissions (e.g., she was a "very good mother," suffered severely, and had adverse medication reactions) to argue reasonable doubt.
  4. Reddington’s tactics included attacking the doctor’s credentials, implying conspiracy theories (e.g., questioning Patrick’s account), and fixating on postpartum depression labels, which the hosts believe hurt Lindsay’s case.
  5. The prosecution’s redirect reinforced Dr. Halburn’s credibility, emphasizing thorough records and the nuanced point that psychosis does not automatically negate criminal responsibility.
  6. The episode ends with the introduction of Dr. Gregory Sattoff, a forensic psychiatrist with extensive experience, who evaluated Lindsay via Zoom and is expected to testify next, with the hosts anticipating more contentious cross-examination.

Summary:

This episode of The Prosecutors covers the final day of testimony from Dr. Halburn, the prosecution’s key expert in the Lindsay Clancy trial, followed by the start of a new witness. Dr.

Halburn concluded that while Lindsay suffered from bipolar II and major depression—a mental disease or defect—she still appreciated the wrongfulness of her actions, making her criminally responsible for the deaths of her children. He attributed the killings to a serious suicide attempt combined with altruistic filicide, not psychosis, noting she retained control over her decisions. The hosts are highly critical of defense attorney Reddington’s cross-examination, describing it as chaotic, emotionally charged, and ineffective.

They argue he missed numerous chances to use Dr. Halburn’s own admissions—such as her being a "very good mother," her extreme suffering in December, and adverse medication reactions—to sow reasonable doubt. Instead, Reddington engaged in petty attacks, referenced conspiracy theories, and fixated on labeling the illness as postpartum, which the hosts felt undermined the defense.

The prosecution’s redirect successfully restored Dr. Halburn’s credibility, emphasizing his thorough review and the legal nuance that psychosis does not automatically excuse criminal behavior. The episode concludes with the introduction of Dr.

Gregory Sattoff, a highly qualified forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Lindsay via Zoom, setting the stage for further testimony. The hosts express frustration with the defense’s strategy, believing it failed to serve Lindsay’s best interests in such a close and emotionally charged case.

FAQs

It is the official podcast from the True Crime series, The First 48, hosted by Carter Roy. Each Thursday, it revisits a landmark homicide investigation with in-depth, long-form storytelling.

The hosts are Brett and Alice. They discuss legal cases, including the Lindsay Clancy trial, providing analysis and commentary.

He diagnosed her with bipolar II disorder and major depression, concluding she had a mental disease or defect. However, he believed she appreciated the criminality of her actions and was criminally responsible.

It is a type of filicide where a parent kills their children out of a belief that it is in the children's best interest. Dr. Helburn thought this, combined with a serious suicide attempt, explained Clancy's actions.

They felt he missed opportunities to use Dr. Helburn's favorable testimony for reasonable doubt. Instead of using precision, he was combative and ineffective, failing to capitalize on the doctor's admissions.

It refers to the critical first 48 hours after a body is found before the trail goes cold, as highlighted in the True Crime series The First 48.

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