Defense lawyers say she will formally admit to the killings if jurors decide her actions and mental responsibility in separate phases.
PLYMOUTH, MA — A Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three young children is willing to formally admit her role in their deaths if a judge agrees to split her upcoming murder trial into two parts, according to a new filing by her lawyer.
The filing adds a new twist to one of the state’s most closely watched criminal cases before a trial now scheduled to begin July 20. Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, has pleaded not guilty and plans to pursue an insanity defense. Her lawyer argues that, if she stipulates in writing that she caused the children’s deaths, the central issue for jurors should be whether she was criminally responsible at the time, not whether the acts happened.
Clancy is charged in the January 2023 deaths of her children at the family’s home in Duxbury: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 7 months. Prosecutors say the killings were intentional and carried out while Clancy’s husband, Patrick Clancy, was out picking up food. Authorities have said the children were found gravely injured inside the home, and Clancy then tried to take her own life by jumping from a window. She survived and is now paralyzed. Since then, the case has moved slowly through pretrial hearings that have centered not only on evidence and scheduling, but also on the shape of the trial itself and how jurors should hear claims about Clancy’s mental health.
That dispute came to the front this spring. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked the court to divide the case into two stages, with the first phase addressing whether Clancy committed the acts and the second focusing on whether mental illness left her not criminally responsible. Judge William F. Sullivan rejected that request in late March, ruling that the issues overlap too much and that a split proceeding would be inefficient and potentially confusing. In a new motion asking the court to reconsider, Reddington said Clancy is prepared to remove any dispute over what happened by formally admitting her role in the killings. “The sole issue,” he argued in substance, would then be her criminal responsibility. The defense has said Clancy intends to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Prosecutors have pushed back on that approach. They have argued that Clancy has no automatic right to a bifurcated trial and that two phases would still require much of the same evidence and many of the same witnesses. In earlier court arguments, prosecutors said the case should proceed in a single trial because the facts of the deaths and Clancy’s mental condition are tightly connected. They have also maintained that the killings were premeditated, a claim that goes directly against the defense theory that Clancy was in the grip of severe mental illness. The new filing does not amount to a guilty plea, and it would not end the case. Instead, it is a strategic offer meant to narrow what a jury would decide if the judge reverses his earlier ruling.
The case has drawn sustained attention in Massachusetts because of the nature of the allegations and because the defense has tied the killings to Clancy’s treatment in the months after she gave birth. Her lawyers have said she suffered from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and was prescribed a long list of psychiatric medications before the deaths. In related civil lawsuits filed by Clancy and by Patrick Clancy, the family has accused medical providers of failing to properly diagnose and treat her worsening condition. Those lawsuits are separate from the criminal case, but they have added detail to the defense narrative and sharpened a public debate over where severe mental illness ends and criminal intent begins. Prosecutors, for their part, have not accepted the defense description of the case and continue to argue that the evidence supports murder charges.
Clancy has faced three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation in the children’s deaths. She has appeared in recent court proceedings from medical care and later in person, in a wheelchair, at Plymouth Superior Court. Her February 2026 appearance marked the first time she was seen in the courtroom rather than by video from a hospital setting. Family members attended that hearing, and after court her mother, Paula Musgrove, told reporters that Clancy had always been a loving mother. Public sympathy in the case has remained deeply divided. Patrick Clancy, in remarks made publicly after the killings and in later interviews, has said he forgave his wife and described her as someone who became gravely ill, not a monster. Those comments have become part of the broader public story, even as the criminal case turns on what a jury will ultimately accept as evidence.
The coming weeks are likely to shape how the case is presented at trial. A status hearing is set for April 23, and the court has also been dealing with questions tied to forensic mental health evaluations and discovery. If Sullivan leaves his earlier ruling in place, jurors in July would hear a single trial that combines the prosecution’s account of the killings with the defense case on Clancy’s mental condition. If he changes course and allows a split proceeding, Clancy’s written admission could streamline the first part and put the legal fight squarely on whether she can be held criminally responsible. That would not erase the need for extensive testimony. Doctors, mental health experts, investigators and family witnesses would still be expected to play major roles in explaining what happened before, during and after Jan. 24, 2023.
For now, the case stands at a tense point between settled facts and contested meaning. Few people publicly dispute that the three children died inside the family home and that Clancy is accused of causing those deaths. The unresolved questions are the ones that often define insanity cases: what state of mind she was in, what she understood, and whether the law treats her as criminally responsible. The defense says the answer lies in mental illness so severe that punishment is not the proper legal response. Prosecutors say the evidence points to an intentional crime. The judge’s next decisions will determine how that argument is put before a jury.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.