What to Know
- Jurors are debating the fate of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of killing her children.
- Prosecutors say Clancy strangled her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — on Jan. 24, 2023, in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home after sending her then-husband Patrick out for some errands. She then jumped out of the home’s second-story window and was paralyzed from the waist down in the fall. The defense says she was in the grip of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible.
- The options before jurors are to find Clancy guilty of first- or second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, or to find her not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
Several quarters placed on a table during closing arguments became a key part of a strategy for both the defense and the prosecution in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial on Thursday.
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WATCH HEREProsecutors say Clancy strangled her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — on Jan. 24, 2023, in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home after sending her then-husband Patrick out for some errands. She then jumped out of the home’s second-story window and was paralyzed from the waist down in the fall. The defense says she was in the grip of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible.
Many eyes are on the high-profile case and the strategies employed by the attorneys. The quarters came into play during closing arguments on Thursday.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington put coins down as he made points he wanted jurors to remember.
These types of theatrics can be a useful tool in making a point during a legal case, explained legal expert Margo Lindauer on NBC10 Boston’s "Commonwealth Confidential."
"This idea of performing your advocacy and knowing what’s going to land is part of effective closing,” she said.
Reddington "is trying to condense this very, very long trial into some very simple facts and doing so in a visual way, having four quarters, four issues, four times that he is alleging that the prosecution overstepped or misrepresented the facts, is something that is going to stay with the jury,” she explained.
NBC10 Boston courtroom insider Sue O'Connell also noted Reddington's use of tokens, not just with the quarters but with items throughout the trial.
"The entire trial, holding up poster boards and holding up the drawer and the Apple Watch," O'Connell said, reminded viewers of Reddington's extensive use of props throughout the trial, including closings.
But Reddington may have made a judgment error in leaving the coins on the table after he finished his closings, the experts said on "Commonwealth Confidential." It left an opening for prosecutor Jennifer Sprague to later pick the coins up when she disputed his points in her own closings.
“Alternatively, that prosecutor picking those quarters up and saying, 'Nope, not today,' is also very powerful," Lindaeur said.
Margaret McLean, a true crime podcaster and former prosecutor, agreed with the assessment that the prosecution's closing arguments were powerful.
"I was really surprised," she said. "I thought they nailed it and I was worried for them because I didn’t think they were doing the best job ever."
"I think, wow the ending is where they really nailed it," she continued. "They left the jurors -- remember jurors are going to be focused on the victims, those child victims -- left the jurors with that vision of the poor victims being left on the floor by the mother."
The jurors were handed the case just after 12:30 p.m. on Thursday. They remained in deliberations throughout Friday and were dismissed for the day without reaching a verdict, set to continue on Monday.
This story originally appeared on NBCBoston.com.
