Lindsay Clancy Could Follow Andrea Yates' Path

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
If this jury finds Lindsay Clancy not criminally responsible, she does not walk free. Contrary to popular belief, she's not going to be like, where are you going next? Disneyland! That's not what's going to happen. Massachusetts law sends her basically back where she's been, psychiatric facility for observation and long-term commitment. She's already been at Tewksbury State Hospital for more than three years. The question isn't whether she'd be released. It's what happens next inside that system. Shavaun Scott, psychotherapist and author is with us and Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent, Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. So under Massachusetts law, the court can order a 40-day observation period after an insanity verdict, and the DA can petition for six months, then another six months. Andrea Yates was found not guilty by a region of insanity in 2006, 20 years ago. She's still in a state facility 20 years later.
Is commitment a shorter road or a longer one here, Shavaun? And how would this play out? Is it constantly a renewal every six months on the part of the state, or explain to the audience what would happen here?

**Shavaun Scott** (1:18)
I'm so glad you asked that question, because this was one of my jobs in my forensic history, where I was one of the people that went in every six months to do evaluations. How is this person doing in the facility? What kind of progress are they making? Are they deteriorating? Are they taking medication? Are they still symptomatic? Are they aggressive? I mean, it was a really comprehensive evaluation. And I worked for the state of California, and we had a team in our county, and it went county by county. So everybody that was in an institution like this who had committed a crime, it was a locked facility, a rather, and from what I hear about Tewksbury, the prisons, or I call them the forensic prisons, right? It was for the mentally ill folks who had committed crimes. Not a terribly pleasant place, not what we think of as a private mental health facility at all, quite prison-like in many ways, but there was more treatment going on than you would get in a prison. But that was one of the things. When we had people that were released, they went into our program, the conditional release program, where they were very closely monitored. There was a team of therapists. We each had no more than seven people that we closely monitored. We had daily contact with some, depending on how they were doing. Otherwise, it was weekly individual therapy, weekly group therapy, sometimes two groups a week. They were drug tested.
We went out and did surprise home inspections. I mean, it was really closely monitored to make sure that they were safe in the community because the number one criteria for being out after you've been in a situation like this is safety of the community.
Now, some of those people had been in that program for 20 and 30 years where they were living in the community, but we were monitoring them.
But the other piece of that job, I was the person, and I wasn't the only one. It was everyone on the team that had a group that we followed that were still in the institution. And we would go in every six months, that was the law, and we would do a full evaluation of how they were doing in the institution. And we would go through every record, we would have an interview with them. If they had had recent psych testing, we would go over the results of that. And then we could make a recommendation to the court, this person is doing so well. They're no longer symptomatic.
They have insight into their condition, and we would write all that up, document it. It was copious records that we kept. And then it went back to the team, and it was, yeah, this person is looking terrific. They've made so much progress, we believe they could go into the conditional release program, and they would have a shot at life outside. Now, that could be 10 years later, it could be 20 years later, or it could be never. And there were many, many people who were never gonna be well enough to get out. So it could, in essence, be a life sentence. And very seldom, in fact, I can't think of one that I went in and interviewed and recommended that this person should be looked at closer for possible release. So it's rare, it's rare to get out, and it does happen. Some people make tremendous progress and do have a recommendation to get out, but it's not common.