Make New York Post a Preferred Source PLYMOUTH, Mass. – Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer asked “where is the evidence” that the Massachusetts mother of three strangled her kids – an apparent flip from the defense strategy at trial that she was psychotic at the time.
Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington asked a judge to find the 36-year-old Duxbury, Massachusetts, mom not guilty on three counts of first-degree murder following a six-week trial that ended with a deadlocked jury earlier this month.
“Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington asked.
The 75-year-old veteran attorney claimed the DNA and fingerprint evidence were “woefully deficient” and the police investigation was so inadequate that it was basically non-existent.
The stance in court Tuesday – the first hearing since the Sept. 4 mistrial – appeared to be an about-face from Reddington’s strategy at trial, not to contest the killings but to claim Clancy should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
But Reddington said the fact that Judge William Sullivan denied his request to split the trial into two parts put him in a “conundrum” of having to admit she carried out the crimes in order to put forth the insanity defense.
“We are put in a conundrum where we have to admit culpability in order to raise the issues of criminal responsibility,” he said Tuesday.
Afterward, prosecutor Shanan Buckingham claimed Reddington was raising questions about her carrying out the stranglings for the first time.
“What we heard over and over from the counsel during the trial were objections when we presented evidence of the actual crimes where he objected, ‘She admits that she did this’… but now he’s saying there’s not enough evidence,” Buckingham said.
“The suggestion that there is not enough evidence, I’d argue is a laughable argument,” she said.
Prosecutors claimed at trial that Clancy coldly planned and executed the slayings of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months.
Reddington asked that his client be found not criminally responsible, claiming she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis at the time and hallucinated a voice commanding her to kill the kids and herself.
At the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Reddington told Sullivan he wouldn’t be ready for a second trial until June, as both he and prosecutors asked for the judge to hold off on picking a trial date until they return to court on Nov. 2.
Prosecutors also didn’t confirm Tuesday whether they wanted to retry the case, saying they first wanted to find out the judge’s rulings on Clancy’s post-trial bids to get the charges tossed.
