Newz(AP) — Jurors walked through the Massachusetts home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, a rare visit Friday that let them see firsthand the place where an outwardly ordinary family life unraveled into tragedy. After being driven past two businesses relevant to the narrative of the January 2023 killings, jurors were escorted in groups of six to view the inside of the house, including the basement where the children died. During the roughly 40-minute visit, the jury also saw the yard where Clancy was found after jumping from a second-story window.
Journalists were kept away by a police barricade, but court officers could be seen through the trees escorting jurors to and from the bus along the site of the Clancy family’s former driveway. Clancy herself did not attend the visit to the home, which she hasn’t seen since the day of the killings. Her lawyers argue she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
___ EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
criminal cases often are expressly told not to visit the scene of the events in question. There are a number of rationales for not doing so — among other things, the site may have changed in the interim between an alleged crime and a trial. But courts sometimes allow juries to make a supervised excursion as a group, for reasons that can include assessing distances or features that aren’t thought to come across fully in photos.
Such excursions have happened in a number of high-profile cases, including the 2023 murder trial of South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, the 2022 sentencing trial of Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas Cruz, the 2015 Massachusetts murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez and the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Jurors in Clancy’s trial retraced the route her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, took when she asked him to pick up takeout food and medicine for daughter Cora on the night of the killings. He returned to find the children dead and his then-wife badly injured and bleeding in the yard.
The panel was driven past the restaurant —… Defense lawyers say Clancy was ill with postpartum psychosis when she killed three children in January 2023Jurors walked through the Massachusetts home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, a rare visit on Friday that let them see first-hand the place where an outwardly ordinary family life unraveled into tragedy.After being driven past two businesses relevant to the narrative of the January 2023 killings, jurors were escorted in groups of six to view the inside of the house, including the basement where the children died.In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123.
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