It’s Day 20 of the Lindsay Clancy trial, with a mistrial rejected and rebuttal witnesses being called. Follow along here…
12:04 p.m. Court is breaking for lunch.
12:58 p.m. Reddington asked about whether Heilbrun thought that his office had anything to do with scheduling his evaluation with Clancy. Sprague objected. All parties are sidebar.
12:56 p.m. On re-cross, Reddington asked about Heilbrun’s testing of Clancy and the lack of “malingering” that she showed.
“Did you look up and cite Mr. Resnik’s report?” Reddington asked, (Resnik testified for the defense). Heilbrun said yes.
“Are you aware sire that what you cited was outdated?” Reddington asked. He then asked Heilbrun if he was aware that autditory hallucinations could come from within or without, Heilbrun said no.
12:54 p.m. Heilbrun said that someone experiencing psychosis can still appreciate the wrongness of what they are doing and can conform their behavior to the law.
12:48 p.m. Sprague is drawing a distinction between being over medicated and having adverse effects from drugs, but Heilbrun won’t answer the question because he said that that’s medical expertise and he is a psychologist.
12:45 p.m. Sprague asked how Heilburn determined Clancy’s intrusive thoughts that started in December 2022 were not hallucinations.
He said he asked her whether they were external voices or internal thoughts: “She said except for on Jan 24, what she was experiencing were thoughts.”
Heilbrun also testified that Clancy never told her providers that she had thoughts of harming her children or a plan for her suicide.
12:32 p.m. On redirect, Heilbrun said that those were also symptoms of depression, major depressive disorder, bipolar i and ii.
He also discussed his diagnosis of bipolar ii for Clancy being based on Tewksbury Hospital’s diagnosis: “Having had the chance to see her, prescribe her medications… they really think she has a mood disorder of a fluctuating sort.”
ADA Jennifer Sprague asked Heilbrun about the timeline of interviewing Clancy, which he said wasn’t ideal, she noted he had seen a video interview another doctor did with Clancy three months after the killings.
He also said that he’d had more records available to him in this case than any other.
12:30 p.m. Reddington took Heilbrun through Mass General’s criteria for postpartum depression and psychosis, and Heilbrun answered that she’d had all the depression symptoms and most of the psychosis symptoms, including thoughts of killing her children.
12:14 p.m. Heilbrun agreed that disassociation is considered an “altered mental state” in the DSM-5.
12:07 p.m. Reddington asked about Heilbrun description of Clancy’s impression of the killings, that she was watching herself do it. “Is that consistent with profound disassociation?”
He said no.
Reddington asked again, taking profound out.
Heilbrun said it was consistent with peritraumatic disassociation.
12:01 a.m. The parties are at sidebar.
11:57 a.m. “She’s one of those few people where the reactions were very different, very poor,” Heilbrun said of Clancy’s reaction to taking antidepressants and other medications in the fall of 2022 into January 2023.
11:45 a.m. Reddington asked about Heilbrun’s notes about what Clancy said when her husband found her the night of the killings.
Patrick Clancy had told him that Clancy said she’d tried to kill herself and the kids were in the basement, and that if she’d been in psychosis, she likely would have reported that she did what she needed to do.
Heilbrun said he didn’t listen to the 911 tape and hear the way Clancy struggled to communicate that night.
11:35 a.m. We’re back after a brief morning recess.
10:57 a.m. Heilbrun said that Clancy wasn’t admitted to a program at Women & Infants in Rhode Island because she appeared to have a condition that was more generalized and not postpartum.
But Reddington asked whether he recalled the facility citing overmedication for not admitting her. He had Heilbrun read from his report, that quotes the Rhode Island hospital record.
He said that they noted she has generalized anxiety and depression “without further specifications ‘due to adverse drug effects.’”
The judge is calling a brief recess.
10:54 a.m. “She was trying hard to get healthy,” Heilbrun said.
10:49 a.m. The psychologist thought the conditions being related to postpartum was less likely because by December, when things were getting intense, it had been seven months since she had Callan.
10:46 a.m. Heilbrun is going through Clancy’s mental health spiral before the killings, per questions from Reddington.
10:28 a.m. By all accounts, Reddington asked whether Heilbrun said Clancy, “is and was an incredible mother?”“I would describe her as a very good mother,” he said.“There hasn’t been anyone who’s had a bad word to say about her expect these two,” Reddington said, pointing at the prosecutors.The assistant district attorneys objected.
10:17 a.m. Reddington asked if Heilbrun had ever written an article about postpartum psychosis, and he said he hadn’t.
10:15 a.m. Reddington read off something Heilbrun had done on “Handling difficult cross examinations.”
He said forensic psychologists “have to convey what they done in a way that is effective.”
10:11 a.m. Reddington is going through Heilbrun’s CV.
10:03 a.m. “Have you ever treated a woman who had postpartum psychosis?” Reddington asked.Heilbrun said he’d worked at Florida State Hospital in 1982 “I had a therapy group which was comprise of women who had killed her children, they were severely mentally ill, and at that time it was important to recognize the severity of their mental illness,” he said.“And this was 44 years ago?”“Yes.”The psychologist said there were four or five women in the group.
10:00 a.m. “The sooner I am able to evaluate somebody after they’re involved in the alleged offense, the more closely I can come to that current state information that is relevant to their mental state at their time of the defense,” Heilbrun said when Reddington asked about whether interviewing Clancy years later was “good medical practice.”
9:57 a.m. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington is cross-examining Heilbrun. He is asking him about the disparities in Clancy’s comments about the voices at the hospital versus how she characterized them to him in April.
Reddington also asked if Heilbrun was aware that patients coming out of intensive medical intervention are sometimes confused or delusional.
9:54 a.m. According to Heilbrun, Clancy was suffering from a mental disease or defect at the time of the killings, but retained her appreciation for the illegality and wrongfulness of the crime and capacity to conform her behavior to the law, thus making her criminally responsible for the crime.
9:43 a.m. Heilbrun said that Clancy experienced peritraumatic dissociation during the killings.
“She talked about feeling like it wasn’t her, like she was watching herself,” he said, adding that she described, “No thinking, no decision making, only responding to the voice.” That might appear to be like psychosis but it’s not, it’s a common occurrence for people who experience a trauma, Heilbrun said.
9:31 a.m. The jurors are back in the courtroom this morning. There was another long line to get into the courthouse and the courtroom this morning. The media section of the gallery continues to grow, while more reporters are outside.
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