Tense cross-examination marks psychiatrist’s testimony in Lindsay Clancy murder trial

A judge interrupted the cross-examination of Dr. Jennifer Tufts after the psychiatrist repeatedly answered before Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer finished asking questions, turning a key medical witness into one of the trial’s sharpest exchanges. Tufts had just completed several hours on the stand in Plymouth Superior Court as jurors weighed whether Clancy’s mental state before the killings mattered in the three murder charges she faces.

Tufts was the first psychiatrist to treat Clancy in the fall of 2022 and testified about several visits in which she prescribed different medications. The testimony placed Clancy’s treatment history at the center of the defense case, with lawyers pressing the question of whether her declining mental health was properly addressed before the deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan.

Clancy, 35, has pleaded not guilty in the deaths of her three children in the family’s Duxbury home. Coverage from the trial said the children were 5 years old, 4 years old and 8 months old when they died. The case has become a detailed examination of postpartum psychosis, depression, sleep deprivation, hallucinations and other symptoms that jurors have heard about as they consider the mental-state evidence.

The defense also pointed jurors to Clancy’s nearly five-day stay in a psychiatric hospital before the killings. That episode, along with Tufts’ treatment notes and medication changes, has become part of the larger dispute over whether Clancy’s condition worsened in the weeks and months before the deaths.

In May 2023, Clancy’s attorney said she was permanently paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from a second-floor window in the family home on Jan. 24, 2023. A 2025 court report said the trial was slated to begin in early 2026, and the case was underway in August 2026 in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The testimony from Tufts mattered because psychiatric evidence can shape how jurors understand an insanity or mental-state defense. In Clancy’s trial, the argument is not only whether she committed the killings, but whether her mental health history, treatment, and hospitalization before the deaths show signs a jury should consider when deciding criminal responsibility.