Judge in Lindsay Clancy trial denies mistrial motion after witness testifies about Catholicism

The judge in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy declined the defense’s motion for a mistrial over a witness’s testimony about Catholicism but reprimanded the prosecution over the matter.Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist who has testified as to the competency of defendants to stand trial in roughly 330 cases, was the second witness of the day on Monday. He began recalling his interview with Clancy in April, during which he touched on the topic of Clancy’s religious beliefs. “That was part of her expectation was that she and her children would be together in heaven with God,” Heilbrun said. “She was raised as a Catholic. As I understand Catholic considerations, that’s not necessarily what happens. But when I asked her about that, when I said, ‘Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?'”Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom over the comments, with Judge William Sullivan halting the trial to huddle with the attorneys. The defense demanded a mistrial be called, claiming the comments would inflame the jury.“It’s a concern I have because this is just over the top,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington said, CBS News reported. “It’s the same thing again, talking about religion, talking about heaven, talking about killing people and the impact it would have on Lindsay as well as her children.”Sullivan rejected the call but reprimanded the prosecution over the testimony. He later told the jurors that the comments were “immaterial, irrelevant, and to be disregarded.” The trial was called off for the day, with plans for Heilbrun to finish his testimony on Tuesday.Catholicism has come up previously in the trial in the form of questions from the prosecution, which likewise drew condemnation from the judge.Before the comments about Catholicism, Heilbrun had cast doubt on the central argument in Clancy’s defense, suggesting that her behavior wasn’t consistent with postpartum psychosis.“The way she described these is they were not auditory hallucinations. Instead they were her own thoughts,” he said of her behavior in the two months before the killings.Clancy described hearing a voice in her head telling her to kill the children only on the day she allegedly carried out the killings, but never before.“To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation for how this kind of thing comes about. Very unusual,” he said.On Jan. 24, 2023, Clancy asked her husband to go pick up takeout dinner for the family at a restaurant they did not normally go to and to stop by the pharmacy on the way. While he was running the errand, Clancy allegedly took their three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, into the basement and strangled them to death with exercise bands. She then cut her own wrists and throat and threw herself out of a second-story window, paralyzing her from the waist down.In a phone call with her husband the next month, Clancy allegedly claimed that she heard a voice telling her to murder their children and kill herself.FUNDRAISER FOR LINDSAY CLANCY RAISES OVER $850,000 IN UNDER ONE WEEKClancy had searched the restaurant she sent her husband to on Apple Maps just before asking her husband to go, something prosecutors allege shows premeditation, calculating whether the trip would buy her enough time to murder the children.Clancy’s defense attorneys do not dispute that she murdered her children but claim that she should not be held criminally responsible due to mental illness. She faces up to life in prison if found guilty, and if found not guilty on the grounds of insanity, she will be put in a state mental health institution.