22 AUG 2026.
The prosecution need not prove Lindsay Clancy was mentally healthy. Plainly she was not. Its burden is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that mental disease or defect did not deprive her of substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or conform her conduct to the law.
The evidence of treatment, paranoia, suicidal thoughts and alleged hallucinations establishes illness. It does not automatically establish legal insanity at the moment of the killings. Under McHoul the decisive inquiry concerns her capacity when she acted.
The Commonwealth will focus on contemporaneous behavior. Could she calculate how long Patrick would be away? Did she arrange dinner, discuss medication and communicate coherently? Did she create an opportunity to be alone and act only after an adult departed? If so the prosecution may argue that her conduct was organized, purposeful and concealed because she understood someone would intervene.
Her earlier warnings about harming the children cut both ways. They support psychiatric distress. Yet they may also demonstrate awareness that the contemplated conduct was dangerous and wrong. If she recognized the danger why did she not remove herself, demand hospitalization or ensure she was never left alone with them?
The jury must compare later reports of hallucinations with actions before, during and after the deaths. Those accounts may be genuine, exaggerated, misunderstood or incomplete. The legal question remains fixed: what capacity did she possess at the moment?
If the Commonwealth proves she understood her actions, appreciated their wrongfulness and could obey the law, the legal defense fails.
Lindsay Clancy trial live updates: ‘Psychotic’ killer mom told son Dawson, 3, to ‘go to God’ as she strangled him, then 2 siblings, doctors say
Follow The Post’s live coverage of the Lindsay Clancy murder trial Friday in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Clancy, 36, is charged with murder for strangling her three young kids while postpartum in 2023.
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“To the Runner,” the closing movement of Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sunhillow, feels like a radiant farewell after an otherworldly journey. Anderson’s layered vocals, acoustic textures and celestial harmonies give the piece a sense of spiritual release. It is less a conventional song than a benediction: hopeful, mystical and weightless, carrying the listener beyond the album’s strange, beautiful imagined world.
Olias of Sunhillow by Jon Anderson 13 (To the Runner)
From Wikipedia: Olias of Sunhillow is a progressive rock concept album by Jon Anderson, the lead singer of the band Yes. Released in 1976, it was his first solo album and the most successful of Yes’ solo efforts, reaching #8 in the UK charts and breaking into the US Top 50.
