00:00This probably will go down, win, lose, or draw, as one of the best presented insanity defenses
00:08that we have seen. In my humble opinion, this jury is going to struggle, and I would not be
00:15the least bit surprised if there were a hung jury. Hi, I'm Randy Zellen. I am a criminal defense
00:22attorney, a former prosecutor. What resonated with me with the government, the government's case was,
00:28first of all, for the government to be able to show the jury the day of, everything that Lindsay
00:34Clancy did that day, everything that she accomplished that day before she killed her
00:39children, that goes directly to this notion of she had her wits about her. She was sane. She was able
00:48to look at a dinner menu and think about dinner reservations, take one of the children to the
00:54doctor, have a conversation with the pharmacy about the proper medication, prepare a list for her
01:00for her husband to go out. All of those things go and go to the heart of the government's view,
01:08which is this was not a psychotic episode. Then when you talk about psychosis, and this is where
01:17the experts disagree, it's never just one voice. It's never just one time. I know the government
01:23tried to sneak one in, in closings by bringing up the Yates case, which the judge wasn't too happy
01:30about. But that's kind of common sense. I mean, what are the odds that you hear one voice one time,
01:38and you kill your children? And then the suicide attempt to be the suicide attempt shows consciousness
01:45of guilt, and plays into again, the government's theory of that this was a filial suicide, which is,
01:54I'm going to kill my kids, because I can't live without them. They can't live without me, and I'm
01:59going to kill myself. So if I kill myself, I have to kill them, too. That's not a psychotic episode.
02:05That's a conscious decision. Definitely tainted by mental illness, but not a psychotic episode.
02:13Then on the defense side, the fact that the government's witnesses could not agree,
02:19the experts could not agree whether or not she was suffering from bipolar illness. That to me was
02:25important, because the jury may look at the government and say, okay, wait a second. Your
02:31own experts can't even agree what illness she was suffering from. So how could I put any trust into
02:38what their opinions are? And then there's a wild card. You have a jury comprised of nine women,
02:43and three men. Do nine women look at her and be able to understand the depths of her mental illness
02:55as a woman? Because only a woman can understand pregnancy, and only a woman can truly understand
03:05postpartum illness? Do those nine women, can they relate to her at any level? Or do nine women backfire?
03:16Because nine women say, I know what it's like to be stressed out. I know what it's like to be
03:22able
03:22to manage. And this was not insanity. I don't know if the nine women help or hurt Lindsay Clancy.
03:31I was really taken aback by the prosecutor's almost change in direction going from this was a broken
03:42woman who was clearly suffering from mental illness, but did understand the nature and consequences of
03:49her actions. And then switch into she left her children like broken toys. This was not some random,
03:59cold homicide. I thought that that was a flippant, unnecessary, almost offensive argument. She would
04:09have been much better off going down the road of this is a woman who was mentally ill, and determined
04:14that her children were not going to remain on this planet without her. And therefore, before she could
04:20commit suicide, she had to kill them first.
04:24To me, if you go down that road, you've got a better shot at a conviction. Conversely, you have the
04:34defense
04:34and whatever with the quarters. If I were the prosecutor and the defense attorneys playing quarters,
04:41I would have gotten up and smacked those quarters right off the table that this is no time for theatrics.
04:46This is no time for parlor tricks. Three children are dead. There could be four possible verdicts.
04:52You take the extreme. Convicted on the top count. Government wins. Other extreme. The jury unanimously
05:02decides that Ms. Clancy was unable to appreciate the nature and consequences of her actions. She was
05:10unable to understand the difference between right and wrong. She was unable to confirm or conform
05:16her behavior to what the law requires her to do. Therefore, she would be not guilty or not responsible
05:26by reason of insanity. That's the other extreme. Then you have the in-between, but the jury could come
05:32back and say, okay, let's compromise. We believe that she's guilty. We don't believe that she's not
05:39responsible by reason of insanity, but I can't convict her on the top count. So they come back
05:47with something lesser, a lesser included offense, whether it's second degree murder or manslaughter.
05:52And to the extent that they could say she snapped and it was the heat of passion moment,
05:57that plays right into a manslaughter verdict. So you could see a compromise verdict here. And then
06:05there is one other possibility would be a hung jury. And here, if the jury cannot agree one way or
06:11the
06:11other unanimously, the judge would declare a mistrial and there would ostensibly be a do-over. I don't
06:19believe that there is going to be a unanimous verdict in this case. By mere virtue of the fact that
06:28experts
06:28can't agree, imagine trained medical professionals looking at the same person, the same set of facts and
06:41being 180 degrees going in opposite directions on what they see. But the reality is if the experts cannot
06:52agree and quite frankly, all of the experts presented credible arguments and were credible from the
06:59standpoint of their qualifications and the work that they put in, if those experts could not agree,
07:06how the hell can we expect 12 ordinary citizens to agree? Experience tells us criminal trials
07:16where a defendant puts his or her insanity into the mix and the defense is not guilty by reason of
07:24insanity, not responsible by reason of insanity. Those defenses rarely are successful. This probably
07:32will go down, win, lose, or draw as one of the best presented insanity defenses that we have seen,
07:41at least in my lifetime. This was thoughtful. It had a chronology to it. It had a context to it.
07:51It had a
07:52human element to it. In my humble opinion, this jury is going to struggle. This is going to be a
07:59monumental
08:00task of jury deliberations and I would not be the least bit surprised if there were a hung jury.
