Jury deliberates Lindsay Clancy’s fate; Woman accused of fatally shooting real estate agent – TCN Sidebar

**Joshua Ritter** (0:10)
Hello, and welcome to The Sidebar, presented by True Crime News, taking you inside the courtrooms of high-profile and notorious cases from across the country. I'm your host, Joshua Ritter, I'm a criminal defense lawyer based in Los Angeles and previously an LA County prosecutor for over a decade. We are recording this on Wednesday, August 26th, 2026 In this week's episode, a cold case indictment that attorneys want thrown out 15 years after the fatal shooting of a Des Moines real estate agent. Plus, another long unsolved murder case unfolds with additional testimony against Duane Davis in the killing of Tupac Shakur. But first, Lindsay Clancy's case heads to the hands of the jury as the triple murder trial nears its end. I'm flying solo today, so let's go ahead and jump right in. First, out of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the fate of a mother charged with strangling her three children will soon rest with the jury after the conclusion of witness testimony this week. Lindsay Clancy doesn't dispute her part in the slaying of her kids, Cora, Dawson and Callan, but maintains that she was suffering from psychosis at the time. Will Clancy's mental health struggles and pleas for help from medical professionals convince jurors that the mother was unconscious of her actions? Or will jurors be swayed by prosecutors' arguments that Clancy enacted the murder with cold, calculated malice? Both sides presented conflicting testimony from experts who alternately asserted their opinions on the mother's sanity or lack thereof. Now the experts will be out of the room as 12 regular people try to make sense of the devastating tragedy that has shocked the nation.
That last part, I think, is the part that makes this already difficult case so much more difficult for jurors. Think about what these poor people are going through. I'm talking about the people who are sitting on this jury. First, you have a case that is incredibly emotionally charged. You've got on one side a defendant who has suffered through mental health crises. She struggled to get help. She even got to the point where she wanted to take her own life. And she sits in court as a mother who has killed her own children and now sits there paralyzed for the rest of her life. And on the other side, you have those three dead children who lost their lives in an incredibly nightmarish and tragic way. This case is one of those cases where these jurors, no matter what decision they make, and they know this, no matter what decision they make, they're going to live with it for the rest of their lives. It's probably going to be in the back of their mind for the rest of their lives how this thing came to a conclusion. And then add to that that they're not being asked the question of, did Lindsay Clancy do it or not? They're being asked a far more nuanced question of, she's already admitted to doing it. Now what was going on inside of her head when she did it? And to aid them in all of that are experts. Experts testifying to an incredibly esoteric and rare mental health illness.
Postpartum depression, we have learned, is something that afflicts many women. It is very common. Postpartum psychosis is incredibly rare, something that many of the testifying physicians and experts have never experienced in their entire careers. And on that topic, that incredibly rare topic, you have experts who are as equally qualified on both sides giving diametrically opposed opinions. And it's up to these jurors to decide which of those opinions is more reasonable.
Many cases, we talk about them being a battle of the experts. This case is really, truly an example of that. You're not concerned with the evidence telling you whether or not something happened. You're not concerned with the evidence telling you whether or not a person was the person who committed that crime. You are coming down to, what do I believe on a topic I know nothing about? What is the more reasonable interpretation of the evidence? They're just going to have to decide which of those experts are more reliable. The other thing that's unique about this trial is that I really feel it's going to come down to perhaps closing arguments. Rarely in a trial, doesn't come down to closing arguments. As much as we talk about closing arguments being important and trial advocacy and the experience and the charisma of an attorney being important, all of that is true. But for the most part, jurors who've sat through weeks long presentations of evidence have made up their minds. It's true. They're told to wait, but they make up their minds. They know where they're leaning at least. In this case though, I really feel like they're going to need someone to convince them, and that might be up to the very end in those closing arguments. What are they going to believe? Whose interpretation of the facts and whose presentation of expert opinions was better and easier perhaps for them to grasp in those final moments? And then take all of that and try to come up with a decision that they feel like they can actually live with.