Commonwealth v. Clancy

Commonwealth v. Clancy, August 24, 2026

Reddington's cross of the Commonwealth's rebuttal expert ended some time between 10:43 and 10:47 — NBC News's national live blog is the only outlet to describe how it closed, on a last question about whether Clancy's thyroid should have been checked by blood work while her doctors were prescribing her a number of psychiatric medications; Mack agreed in general terms but resisted the framing, and Reddington answered "I don't care" and told the judge he was done.

It came after Dr. Avram Mack said he found no evidence of psychosis in Clancy's record and that he takes no position on the care she was given. On redirect the Commonwealth had him say he is paid whatever opinion he reaches, and offered the videotape of his two interviews with Clancy at Tewksbury Hospital into evidence; Judge Sullivan took counsel to sidebar and no ruling is reported.

After the sidebar the Globe reports him acknowledging that a Florida court had struck his opinion in a separate case, where earlier in the morning he said he did not believe it was.

NBC News adds that the Commonwealth spent its last minutes with him seeking to reaffirm that Clancy had been diagnosed with postpartum depression and not postpartum psychosis, and that Reddington interjected over Mack's evidence that he had had a difficult time seeing Clancy while she was hospitalized. He stepped down at about 11:08, on the same major-depressive-episode diagnosis he arrived with.

NBC News also carries a morning the other outlets only partly recorded: the judge telling Mack to listen to the question and answer it after Reddington pressed him on his annual earnings, and directing him again during the exchange in which Reddington told him postpartum is not a disease; the Commonwealth objecting that he had answered a question repeatedly; and the name of the instrument behind the sharpest exchange of the morning, the K Scale.

The jury came back from the morning recess at about 11:51 and the Commonwealth called Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, the forensic psychologist who ran the psychological testing at Tewksbury and diagnosed the bipolar II that Mack declined to adopt.

Jennifer Sprague took his direct, which by 12:15 had covered his publications, some 330 appearances as a witness mostly for the defense, the retention and confirmation biases he says he works to guard against, and the three days he spent with Clancy at Tewksbury in April over 180 hours of work on the case.

Asked about working with Mack, he said the two of them interviewed her at the same time but wrote separate reports and did not agree on the diagnosis.

At 12:13 he set out the evaluation itself — about ten hours with Clancy, interviews with her former husband and former mother-in-law, and a documentary record he has been reading since January 2025 — and the Patriot Ledger, summarizing the direct at 12:28, gives both time figures together as about 180 hours on the case including about 10.5 hours of interviews.

By 12:22 he had reached her history: a fairly limited mental health record before September 2022, anxiety tied to achievement and to leaving her children, no childhood abuse or trauma reported, and then an autumn in which she became very anxious about going back to the night shift while her youngest would not take a bottle, was prescribed Zoloft in October 2022, and, in his words, found things getting very difficult from that point.

From there the direct followed the record forward: her former husband's account that her anxiety worsened on Zoloft, a text to her mother-in-law from an emergency room in November 2022, and her own belief that the medications were causing the reactions; a December of numbness, weight loss, hopelessness and what she called horrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself and at times her children, which Heilbrun said she described as her own thoughts rather than a voice from outside her head — an important distinction, he told the jury at 12:31, because an external voice would likely be a psychotic symptom.

At 12:34 he said a Rhode Island postpartum program found in late December that she did not meet its criteria, and that she admitted herself to McLean Hospital on January 1, 2023 on suicidal thinking; Boston 25 has her leaving McLean with no psychosis and no suicidal or homicidal thinking, and the suicidal thoughts back a week later.

By 12:38 he had put the McLean admission at five days, with insomnia her primary complaint, her mood numb, and her telling staff that her children and her mother were the reason she would not kill herself.

At 12:37 the Globe has him aiming the intrusive-thought distinction squarely at the defense case, contrasting what she reported before the killings with the auditory hallucinations the defense says she experienced while she strangled the children.

At 12:43 he said she told her providers the medications were making her worse, and listed the diagnoses she was given between the fall of 2022 and January 2023 as generalized anxiety, sleep deprivation, postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis — the last of them a diagnosis Mack said this morning he found no evidence of anywhere in her record.

The Patriot Ledger, posting at 12:46, names South Shore Hospital as the emergency room she went to in mid-November, dates her doubts about the medications to mid-October, and runs the intrusive thoughts through December and into January.

Then, at about 12:49, he gave the jury his diagnosis: bipolar II, reached, he said, only after long consideration, because he could not find a manic episode in her history before the killings and would not call the cleaning out of a garage mania.

What settled it, on the Globe's 12:54 account, was that Clancy is now being treated for bipolar disorder at Tewksbury Hospital and that taking her off a mood stabilizer had produced a response in her straight away; the Patriot Ledger has him calling bipolar disorder the diagnosis of record there and writing that he declined bipolar 1 because he saw no clear example of manic behavior until January 24, 2023.

He said the disorder typically emerges in a person's twenties or thirties, that he was focused on evaluating criminal responsibility, and at 12:57 that he had run psychological testing looking at her response style and checking for hallucinations, delusions and a lack of focus.

The Patriot Ledger, filing at 1:28 p.m. after the court had risen, names the instruments — the MMPI, screening her response style for exaggeration, minimization or fabrication of symptoms, and a second test measuring tangential speech and cognitive disorganization — and has him going on to review her symptoms around January 24, 2023, including depression and suicidal thinking, before the recess was called.

That is the first report of his direct reaching the day of the killings; no outlet reports what the testing showed, or what he concluded about that day. It is a diagnosis the Commonwealth's first expert declined to make. He has not yet been asked what he concluded about her mental state on January 24. Judge Sullivan sent the jury out for lunch just before 1 p.m., with testimony to resume at 2 p.m.

NBC News's own account of the diagnosis, posted at 12:57, is the fullest reported statement of his reasoning: bipolar II is a classification not associated with mania, and the diagnosis was difficult because Clancy had depressive episodes but described nothing that seemed to him like mania — the periods when she was higher in energy looked to him like her simply feeling good, feeling close to her husband and her children and getting back into exercise.

NBC News also carries a stretch of the autumn the other outlets did not: racing thoughts, lost appetite and difficulty sleeping through the fall of 2022, a fear that she had become addicted to or dependent on benzodiazepines, and her sense by late fall that she had reached what she herself called the end of her rope.

It dates the intrusive thoughts about harming herself to late November and those about the children to January, where the Globe puts both in December and the Patriot Ledger dates the onset to early December; CBS Boston, whose account of Heilbrun's evidence appeared later in the day, gives a fourth version, late November and early December, with the thoughts about the children undated.

The conflict is logged unresolved. CBS Boston also carries his history evidence in terms close to the Globe's, dates the Zoloft to mid-October, and describes his roughly 330 appearances as cases about competency to stand trial where the Globe puts the same number on cases dealing with mental health issues in adults and juveniles.

Two outlets read for the first time in this compilation, Hearst Connecticut's News-Times and Fox News Digital, add to his direct examination that he does contract work for Park Dietz Associates — the firm through which the Commonwealth engaged Mack — that Clancy had about six months of treatment for anxiety in nursing school, that she got the Zoloft prescription from Dr. Jennifer Tufts and did not begin it until October, and that he settled on bipolar II because it was the diagnosis of the hospital holding her.

Hearst Connecticut states flatly that the lunch recess came before he gave any conclusion on criminal responsibility. Court resumed at about 2:15 and the direct examination is still running.

The first evidence filed from the afternoon is the result of that psychological testing: the Boston Globe has him saying it showed a slight tendency to underreport symptoms, calling Clancy a bright woman, and saying it showed she was and remains at risk for suicide, and Boston 25 has him putting her one-to-one suicide watch at Tewksbury State Hospital at three years and continuing.

Shortly after half past two he reached the day itself.

He told the jury the ordinary motives for killing did not fit Clancy, that acute psychosis with command hallucinations was one possible explanation, and that people also sometimes kill their children when they are about to end their own lives believing they are sparing them further suffering — and he placed Clancy in the second category, even though she had told him a voice told her to kill her children and herself.

Boston 25 files the same answer as a belief that she killed the children as part of a serious suicide attempt, wanting them with her so they would not suffer when she was gone, and NBC News quotes him giving both explanations in one answer. From about 2:35 p.m. he turned to why he does not accept the command hallucination.

Four outlets have him telling the jury that Clancy heard the voice only across the 18 minutes or so the killings took, never before that night and never since, a pattern he called very, very unusual to put it mildly; that she gave different people different versions of what it said, and that the more inconsistency there is the harder it becomes to credit any one account; and — the Boston Globe alone — that genuine psychotic hallucinations can be intermittent where hers was constant, and that she never reported trying to stop it or distract herself from it as people in the throes of psychosis often do.

NBC News and the Patriot Ledger have him saying he treats with caution a symptom said to have appeared only while an offense was being committed, since that timing conveniently reduces the blame. NBC News also has him allowing that if she truly heard the voice as described, that would be a command hallucination and a symptom of psychosis.

He told the jury he had weighed a second motive, that she feared the children would be taken from her and knew as a mandated reporter that saying so could cost her them, and no outlet reports what he made of it. From about 2:55 p.m. he stopped listing reasons to doubt the command hallucination and gave the jury something in its place.

The Boston Globe reports him saying his assessment suggested Clancy was describing exaggerated or fabricated hallucinations, and NBC News reports the count behind it — about three points on which her account more closely resembled an exaggerated or fabricated hallucination, one on which it looked more genuine, and one mixed.

The point in her favor was that she described the voice as external rather than as something inside her own mind; against it, on his evidence, were the absence of any accompanying delusion, which he put at about 88 percent of command hallucinations and which the Patriot Ledger also carries, the brevity of the episode, and her failure to report any attempt to stop it, which the Ledger reports him illustrating with praying or listening to music.

What he offered instead was an unwelcome intrusive thought of the kind she had been reporting for months, an explanation four outlets carry, and he used her own answer to her husband as a test of it: asked what she had done, she said she had tried to kill herself, where he said someone acting on a command hallucination would more likely have been vague.

The Boston Globe also has him doubting that her conditions were connected to a birth eight months earlier at all, and calling the postpartum psychosis explanation appealing and a convenient way of lessening culpability.

At 2:58 p.m. he told the jury that months of thoughts and impulses preceded a serious suicide attempt, that she was in pain, suffering and even desperate, that she was convinced her children would suffer without her, and that she said “Go to God, baby” to each child expecting to be reunited with them in heaven; the Patriot Ledger states the conclusion flatly as a suicide attempt rather than a psychotic episode.

The same post carries the first line in his evidence to touch the legal test — that Clancy told him the wrongfulness of what she was doing had not been in her mind at all — and it is her statement, not his opinion. The lawyers were then called to a sidebar.

At the time of this compilation, about 15:09, that is as far as his evidence has been reported: an opinion on why she did it, his reasons for rejecting the explanation the defense relies on, and nothing yet on whether she could appreciate that it was wrong or conform her conduct to the law. In the minutes after that, two outlets diverged on the central point.

The Boston Globe at 3:00 p.m. has him naming the killings “suicide combined with altruistic filicide,” or killing your kids out of love, describing a highly lethal suicide attempt preceded by months of thoughts and impulses about harming herself, in which the decision to kill the children was likely an attempt to keep them from suffering without her.

NBC News at 3:07 p.m. has him saying that her first words to her husband — that she had tried to kill herself, with no mention of the voice or of the children — lead him to think this was not altruistic filicide but an extreme suicide attempt. The site records both and resolves neither.

Boston 25’s courtroom posts corroborated the pain and suffering testimony, the exchange with Patrick Clancy and the “Go to God” evidence, and added one thing no other outlet has: that he told the jury he had asked Clancy, a devout Catholic, whether that was a mortal sin, and that an objection and a sidebar followed. At 3:04 p.m., after a sidebar, Judge Sullivan sent the jury out for a brief recess.

The direct examination was unfinished when he did, cross-examination has not begun, and Heilbrun has still not been reported being asked whether Clancy could appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or conform it to the law. The afternoon did not end with the evidence.

At about 3:04 p.m. the judge sent the jury out after a sidebar without giving a reason, and what followed, out of the jury’s hearing, was a defense motion for a mistrial — the first this compilation has recorded in the trial. The subject was the defendant’s religion.

Boston 25 had reported at 2:54 p.m. that Heilbrun told the jury he had asked Clancy, a devout Catholic, whether that was a mortal sin, and that an objection and a sidebar followed; NBC News reports him describing her statements about the children going to God as contrary to the belief of her Catholic religion, offered as part of his evaluation of her view of moral wrong; the Boston Globe, reporting the argument, describes the question as concerning her faith’s doctrine against suicide.

Reddington called it intentional misconduct by prosecutors. Sprague said her question had nothing to do with religion and that Clancy had told Heilbrun she “had knowledge” of Catholicism treating suicide as a sin, and that this went to whether she knew the killings to be morally wrong; prosecutors said the witness had not intended to be inflammatory and asked for a curative instruction rather than a mistrial.

That is what the judge gave.

He refused to declare a mistrial, told the Commonwealth to tell its witness he could not go into that, said he would try to minimize the damage, and instructed the jury in emphatic terms that the religion the defendant was raised with is an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony, that it is to be stricken and cannot be considered, and that Heilbrun’s understanding of Catholic teaching is irrelevant and immaterial.

The jury was then sent home for the day. Heilbrun returns Tuesday with his direct examination unfinished; he has still not been reported answering the criminal responsibility question, and no cross-examination has begun. The accounts filed in the half hour after the adjournment fill in the argument and the refusal.

The Patriot Ledger and CBS Boston quote Reddington saying the testimony was “just over the top” and “the same thing again — talking about religion, talking about heaven”, and report that religion had come into the trial once before, when Sprague mentioned mortal sin while questioning Patrick Clancy’s mother; Reddington objected then and did not move for a mistrial, and CBS Boston reports that earlier question struck.

Sprague answered that she had asked no question about religion and that there was no intentional misconduct, and told the court she did not think the witness meant to do any harm.

Judge Sullivan, on the Ledger’s account, said the witness had testified that Clancy was raised Catholic and had then given an opinion on the Catholic conception of heaven, asked “How is any of that proper?”, refused the mistrial and told the prosecutors to make clear to the witness that he could not go into it.

CBS Boston published the passage itself, which contains both her expectation of being reunited with the children in heaven and his question about whether suicide is a mortal sin.

After the jury had been instructed and sent home the Boston Globe reports Sullivan saying the Commonwealth has one more witness after Heilbrun, that testimony resumes Tuesday, and that closing arguments are expected Wednesday — the first date for closings this compilation has attributed to the bench — before calling the lawyers back to a sidebar with the jury gone.

After the courtroom emptied the Associated Press filed the wire account of the day, which in the version filed at about 2:36 p.m. leads on the diagnosis rather than the mistrial motion and quotes Heilbrun in his own words on why bipolar II was a hard conclusion to reach and on the manic episode he could not find.

NBC News published the passage of testimony that caused the motion, matching CBS Boston, and put the earlier religion incident on the record as the prosecution’s cross-examination of Clancy’s former mother-in-law last week — the exchange recorded here on August 18, in which the question was whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin.

Which prosecutor asked that question is now itself in dispute between outlets. Fox News Digital, filing at about 4:10 p.m., reported the judge calling the testimony “problematic”, a word no other outlet attributes to him. By then the Boston Globe and NBC Boston had both closed their live blogs and turned their pages into accounts of the day, and no outlet had added anything further to what Heilbrun told the jury.

The last post of all, from NBC News at about 4:20 p.m., describes the room instead of the evidence: Reddington throwing down his pen as the witness began on mortal sin and Clancy’s Catholicism, Clancy and her parents not visibly reacting, and the gallery whispering through the argument until a court officer quieted it.

Later still, at about 4:34 p.m., NBC News reported the first words from counsel outside the courtroom.

Reddington told reporters he believes the jurors will follow the judge’s instruction to put the religion testimony out of their minds, said it had been a good trial and that the evidence had come out, and would not say whether the episode might give a ground for appeal — an appeal, as NBC News notes, that could only follow a conviction.

Asked about his client he said she does not have a mindset at the moment and that she sits and listens. No other outlet carries any of it, and nothing filed since the adjournment has added a word to Dr. Kirk Heilbrun’s evidence.

THE WIRE WAS REWRITTEN AT ABOUT 4:54 P.M., AND IT IS THE FIRST FILING SINCE THE ADJOURNMENT TO ADD TO THE EVIDENCE.

The Associated Press replaced Michael Casey’s earlier story with a longer one that leads on the conclusion rather than the diagnosis — Clancy was not acutely psychotic when she killed the three children, and that she took their lives so they would not “suffer” once she had taken her own — and that carries the mistrial motion, the refusal and the instruction, none of which the earlier version had.

It gives the reason he ruled out acute psychosis with command hallucinations: he did not credit her account of a voice telling her to “kill the children so you can kill yourself”, which is the wire’s direct quotation of the version NBC News reported at 2:47 p.m. It carries the eighteen-minute answer in full and the “Go to God, baby.

Go to God” quotation, both already on this page from other outlets, and it reports the jury being told to disregard the reference to “the religion that the defendant was raised with”, which the judge called “an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony”. Two minutes before the wire moved, Hearst Connecticut turned its day-19 file into a recap.

It quotes the instruction at greater length, is the first outlet to name the prosecutor the judge told to speak to his witness — Sprague, who had been conducting the direct examination — and sets out the August 18 mortal sin exchange word for word, with Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asking it.

That is a second account against the Patriot Ledger’s, which named Sprague, and the conflict is logged in the evidence file rather than resolved. Neither filing adds anything to where Heilbrun’s direct examination stopped.

An eleventh outlet filed on the sitting after five o’clock. ABC News had carried nothing of day 19 until this evening; its live file, updated at about 5:02 p.m. under the bylines of Peter Charalambous, Mason Leib and Katie Kindelan, is a further account of the mistrial motion and adds three things to the record here.

It is the first to report Kevin Reddington explaining why the August 18 mortal sin question did not draw a motion at the time: he told the court that not moving then had been a “tactical decision”, and that this second instance was too much.

It is the first to give Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague’s answer whole — that there was no intentional conduct by the Commonwealth, that the questioning was not where she had intended to go, and that she did not think the witness intended to do any harm either but was explaining his rationale — where the Patriot Ledger and Hearst Connecticut had each carried part of it.

And it is the first to give the time the sitting resumes, 9 a.m. Tuesday with Dr. Kirk Heilbrun still on the stand.

Its account of the direct examination adds his evidence that the brief January 2023 inpatient stay left Clancy with “a small shred of hope” before she worsened again, and his own explanation of why the diagnosis was hard, that a lot of providers had offered a lot of diagnoses between mid-October 2022 and late January 2023 with a lot of complicating considerations.

Its account of the morning quotes a passage of the cross-examination of Dr. Avram Mack that no other outlet has published, in which Mack said he saw no signs of psychosis or delusions in the records and Reddington told him he was being asked about the young lady sitting in the courtroom whom he was testifying against.

That post is stamped 12:37 p.m. and has the redirect examination still running, where the outlets compiled here have Mack stepping down at about 11:08; it is treated as a late filing and the times on this page are unchanged. Nothing in the ABC News file bears on where Heilbrun’s direct examination stopped.

Late in the evening boston.com rewrote its page into a recap of the whole sitting and became the fullest single account of the afternoon.

It supplies the question Heilbrun was answering when he said Clancy had not been thinking about the wrongfulness of what she was doing — he had asked her whether she was aware at the time that it was illegal or immoral — and quotes her answer as he reported it: “No thoughts, no decisions, none of that.

It was just all action.” It quotes him choosing between his two explanations in his own words, gives the psychological testing in fuller form, sets out the mistrial argument at greater length on both sides, and quotes the judge saying he did not want the jury leaving with the last thing they heard being this witness's understanding of Catholic teaching.

None of it changes what is still missing: his direct examination is unfinished, the criminal responsibility question has not been put to him, and cross-examination has not begun. CNN filed a written story at about 4:35 p.m., under the bylines of Eric Levenson and Nicki Brown, and it is the twelfth outlet on the day.

It adds little to the narrative the live blogs have already built, but it goes to both of the conflicts left open at the adjournment.

On the first, it reports Heilbrun describing the killings as altruistic filicide, which it glosses as killing one's children out of love — and it draws that description from the very evidence NBC News reported him using to reject the term, that the first thing Clancy said to her husband was that she had tried to kill herself. Two outlets now take that evidence one way and one the other; nothing here settles it.

On the second, it reports the judge saying the Commonwealth's remaining witnesses are likely to finish Tuesday and that closing arguments are expected Wednesday, and it is the only account to add that he cautioned the timeline is subject to change.

It also gives Heilbrun's meeting figure in a form that fits both of the figures already on this page, and it is the only outlet to describe what the jurors did while the judge was striking the evidence. Two further filings came in after six o’clock, both from outside the pages this compilation tracks.

WHDH’s 7News, the thirteenth outlet on the day, filed a story by Jonathan Hall at about 5:27 p.m., and Boston 25 filed a standalone article by Bob Ward at about 5:42 p.m. alongside the live blog it had run since the morning. Neither adds to the evidence the jury heard, and both are shorter than the recaps already on this page, but between them they touch two of the conflicts left open at the adjournment.

WHDH gives the words the witness was speaking when Reddington objected — a fragment no other outlet carries, and one in which Heilbrun is reporting what he told Clancy rather than what he asked her. Boston 25, whose live blog had put the Catholic doctrine at issue on murder where every other account put it on suicide, now describes it in its own filed story as suicide.

And both name Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham as the prosecutor who asked the struck question on August 18, WHDH quoting the exchange in full, which leaves the Patriot Ledger’s account of the mistrial argument alone in naming Jennifer Sprague. Nothing here is resolved on this page; the positions are recorded as the outlets filed them.

WHDH is also the first outlet to describe Tuesday as the expected last day of testimony, and a third to give Wednesday for closing arguments, although it does not say the judge set the day. A sixth filing came in after six o’clock, and unlike the two before it, it came from a page this compilation already tracks.

Fox News Digital added a post to its day-19 live blog, its first since 4:10 p.m., and it is a second outlet on the remarks Kevin Reddington made after the mistrial motion was refused.

It has him saying he expected the refusal — which no earlier account carries — and it quotes him on the jury in stronger terms than NBC News used, as having no doubt the jurors will be able to overlook the testimony about Clancy’s Catholic faith. Nothing in it touches the evidence the jury heard, and no outlet has added anything to Dr. Kirk Heilbrun’s unfinished direct examination since the wire account.

He returns Tuesday with the criminal responsibility question still unasked and cross-examination not begun.

Witnesses (2)

Rulings and objections

• 09:36Judge Sullivan sustained an objection during Reddington's cross-examination, when Reddington asked Mack whether the prosecution had described this to him as a terrible case, one in which a mother had killed her own children. The Globe reports the objection sustained and nothing further with it. Boston Globe alone.
• 11:04An objection sustained in the closing stretch of the cross-examination, on the Patriot Ledger's account. Reddington put to Mack that he has opined that postpartum depression must begin within four weeks of the birth in accordance with the DSM-5, and said it could occur within a year. Mack answered that the DSM-5 is what is used in the United States; Reddington replied that maybe it should not be. The Commonwealth objected and Judge Sullivan sustained the objection. Patriot Ledger alone. The time is the Ledger's posting time, not a time given for the exchange. NBC News's national live blog reports what appears to be the same exchange at 10:20, and puts it differently: Reddington asked Mack to stop referring to the DSM, Mack answered that he could not leave it out because all diagnoses are based on it, Reddington suggested "Maybe we shouldn't," the prosecutors objected and the objection was sustained. NBC News's account gives the exchange a place in the morning that the Ledger's posting time does not, but neither outlet gives a courtroom clock, and the two renderings are recorded side by side rather than merged.
• 09:52An objection sustained during the sharpest exchange of the cross-examination, on boston.com's account. When Reddington took issue with the look on Dr. Avram Mack's face as he was taken through questions on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory K Scale and told him "What are you smiling for? This is not funny, sir", boston.com reports the remark drawing an objection from the prosecutors which Judge Sullivan sustained. boston.com alone. Its narrative attaches no time to the exchange; the 09:52 stamp here is the Boston Globe's for the same moment, and NBC News files it at 9:48. Neither of those outlets reports an objection with the rebuke.
• 15:26THE MISTRIAL MOTION WAS DENIED. Judge Sullivan refused to declare a mistrial and said he would deal with it by instructing the jury instead. Boston 25 timed the refusal at 3:24 p.m. The Boston Globe, posting at 3:28 p.m., reports him saying he would not declare a mistrial and would tell the jury that Heilbrun’s understanding of Catholic doctrine is “irrelevant”. NBC News, also at 3:28 p.m., reports the motion denied with the judge siding with the prosecution, and quotes him saying in advance of the instruction: “I’m going to tell them that’s an inappropriate area of inquiry, and that this witness’s understanding of Catholic dogma or Catholic teaching is irrelevant.” Boston 25, Boston Globe and NBC News agree on the outcome; the two timings of the refusal differ by four minutes and neither is preferred here. The Patriot Ledger, posting at 3:39 p.m., adds the judge’s own characterization of the testimony and the words in which he refused. On its account Sullivan said the witness had testified that Clancy was raised as a Catholic and had then given an opinion on the Catholic conception of heaven, and asked “How is any of that proper?” before saying “But I am not going to declare a mistrial at this time.” He went on, the Ledger reports, growing vehement: “This witness’s understanding of Catholic teaching is irrelevant.” Hearst Connecticut, updating at 3:42 p.m., carries the question in a shorter form — “She was raised as a Catholic . . . how is any of that proper at this point?” The Boston Globe, in a post stamped 3:30 p.m., reports the denial together with the criticism of the evidence touching Clancy’s Catholic faith and what she thought about mortal sin, and CBS Boston, at 3:41 p.m., reports that Sullivan denied the motion but reprimanded the prosecution over the testimony. Five outlets now report the denial. Boston 25’s written article, updated at 3:51 p.m., quotes the refusal directly: “I’m not going to declare a mistrial. What I am going to do is bring the jury in and tell them to disregard it,” Sullivan said, adding that the witness’s understanding of Catholic dogma or Catholic teaching is irrelevant. Fox News Digital filed on the ruling at about 4:10 p.m., in a post by Adam Sabes, and is a further outlet on the denial. It is also the only one to attribute the word “problematic” to the judge: on its account Sullivan called the testimony problematic but told the jurors to disregard it. No other outlet carries that word, and the post gives no more of the remark than that. Hearst Connecticut’s day-19 recap reports that the judge, although he denied the motion, agreed the jurors had to be told to disregard the comments. The Associated Press, whose wire account was rewritten at about 4:54 p.m., now also reports the motion made and denied; the version it filed at about 2:36 p.m. carried nothing of it. ABC News, which had not filed on day 19 before this evening, posted on the motion at about 5:02 p.m. and is a further outlet on the denial. It quotes the refusal in the same words the Patriot Ledger reported: “I am not going to declare a mistrial at this time.” boston.com is a fifth outlet on the refusal. CNN, in a written story published at about 4:35 p.m., is a further one, reporting that Judge Sullivan ultimately ruled against the mistrial but instructed the jurors to ignore Heilbrun's evidence about Clancy's faith and Catholic theology. Los Angeles Magazine adds the distinction the judge drew in refusing the motion, which no other outlet reports: he said he had no issue with the reference to Clancy telling each child to go to God, which had already been introduced in the trial, and that what he found problematic was the witness’s commentary on suicide, Catholicism and whether someone would go to heaven.
• 15:26THE COMMONWEALTH WAS TOLD TO SPEAK TO ITS WITNESS. Boston 25 reports the judge telling the Commonwealth to talk to its witness and tell him he could not go into that. The Boston Globe, posting at 3:28 p.m., has him saying that in the meantime prosecutors should “strongly” tell Heilbrun to avoid further comment about her religious background. The Patriot Ledger quotes him telling the prosecutors to talk to the witness and let him know he cannot go into that. Hearst Connecticut, in a day-19 recap updated at about 4:52 p.m. under the byline of Peter Yankowski, Lisa Backus and Austin Mirmina, is the first account to say whom the judge was addressing when he told the Commonwealth to speak to its witness. It quotes him saying “Talk to him and let him know he can’t go into that” and reports the remark made to Sprague, who had been questioning Heilbrun when he made the statements. The Patriot Ledger and Boston 25 had the same direction without naming the prosecutor it was given to. boston.com reports him urging the prosecutors to talk to Heilbrun and tell him what the appropriate areas of inquiry are, which matches Boston 25, the Boston Globe and Hearst Connecticut. Los Angeles Magazine reports him asking the Commonwealth to warn its witness against returning to the subject, which matches the accounts already recorded.
• 15:26THE JURY WOULD BE INSTRUCTED AND THEN SENT HOME EARLY, AND THE JUDGE GAVE HIS REASON. Boston 25 reports at 3:26 p.m. that Sullivan said he would instruct the jury and then send them home for the day, that he would try to minimize the damage, and that the jury can follow instructions. The Boston Globe, posting at 3:28 p.m., reports him saying that once the instruction had been given he would send the jury home, testimony to pick up again on Tuesday. The Patriot Ledger quotes him saying he would bring the jury back in, give them the instruction to disregard that stretch of the testimony, and send them home. Los Angeles Magazine reports him saying the jury would be told to put that part of the evidence out of mind. boston.com quotes the reason he gave for sending them home early rather than carrying on: “I don’t want them leaving here today with the last thing they heard was a discussion of this witness’s understanding of the Catholic teaching … That’s not the last thing they’re going to hear.” It reports him saying he hoped to minimize the prejudice caused by the remarks, which matches Boston 25’s account of him saying he would try to minimize the damage.
• 15:33THE INSTRUCTION AS DELIVERED, AND THE EVIDENCE STRUCK. NBC News reports at 3:33 p.m. that Judge Sullivan gave the jury an emphatic instruction to disregard Heilbrun’s testimony about Clancy’s Catholic upbringing, telling them that the religion the defendant was raised with is “absolutely an inappropriate area of testimony”, that it is to be stricken, that it is not to be considered, and that he could not be any more clear about it. He added that Heilbrun’s understanding of Catholic teaching is irrelevant and immaterial. Two further outlets have since carried the instruction. CBS Boston, at 3:41 p.m., reports the judge telling the jurors the remarks were “immaterial, irrelevant and to be disregarded”. Hearst Connecticut, updating at 3:42 p.m., reports him telling them the comments on Clancy’s Catholic faith “were absolutely an inappropriate area of testimony” and to disregard them, and reports him telling the lawyers before the jury came back that the witness’s understanding of Catholic dogma is irrelevant. NBC News, CBS Boston and Hearst Connecticut agree on the substance of the instruction. Hearst Connecticut’s recap, updated at about 4:52 p.m., gives the instruction in fuller quotation than any account so far: “It is to be stricken, it is not to be considered, I can’t be any more clear on that, it can not be considered”, with the judge adding that Heilbrun’s understanding of the Catholic religion is immaterial and cannot be considered. That matches NBC News’s account of the same instruction, which reported the substance without the second half of the quotation. The Associated Press, in the wire story it rewrote at about 4:54 p.m., reports him instructing the jury to disregard the reference to “the religion that the defendant was raised with” and calling it “an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony”. Four outlets carried the instruction before the evening filings, and they agree on its substance. ABC News, posting at about 5:02 p.m., is a fifth. It reports the jurors instructed again to ignore the recent testimony about Clancy’s religion, the subject called an inappropriate area of inquiry, and Heilbrun’s understanding of Catholic dogma or Catholic teaching called irrelevant. CNN gives the instruction in the same terms as the outlets already recorded — that the religion the defendant was raised in is absolutely an inappropriate area of testimony, that it is to be stricken and is not to be considered — and adds one observation of the room that no other account carries: that several jurors were nodding while Judge Sullivan delivered it. CNN alone on the jurors' reaction, and it reports nothing more of it than that.
• 15:33THE JURY WAS EXCUSED FOR THE DAY. NBC News reports the jury dismissed for the rest of the day once the instruction had been given, and returning tomorrow for the rest of Heilbrun’s testimony. CBS Boston, at 3:41 p.m., has the judge excusing them for the day after telling them the remarks were to be disregarded, and Hearst Connecticut, updating at 3:42 p.m., reports the jurors excused until Tuesday morning. Boston 25’s written article reports him sending the jury home early. ABC News, posting at about 5:02 p.m., reports him sending them home for the day and is the first outlet to give the time the sitting resumes: testimony will continue tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. with the same witness on the stand.

Procedural

• 09:12Boston 25's day-19 live blog opens the morning here, with proceedings resuming at Plymouth Superior Court and Reddington's cross-examination of Mack continuing, and reports that two further Commonwealth rebuttal witnesses were scheduled for the day. Boston 25 alone on the number. Neither has been called on any account so far.
• 09:13The Boston Globe describes the largest crowd of the trial so far at Plymouth Superior Court, with press and public both trying for courtroom seats. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger, filing live from the courtroom, reports every seat taken on Monday morning with many people waiting outside who did not get one, and attributes the rise in public interest to the trial reaching its final phase.
• 09:14The jury was brought in, at about 9:15 on the Globe's account. Judge William Sullivan questioned the jurors about avoiding the weekend's media coverage of the case. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger adds that Sullivan told the jury the day would open with Reddington continuing his cross-examination of Mack by Zoom, and then set out the order of what remains: the Commonwealth continuing its rebuttal after Mack finishes, closing arguments from each side, jury instructions, and deliberations.
• 09:15OUTSIDE THE COURTHOUSE, NOT A COURTROOM EVENT. The Globe posted on the demonstrations twice, at 9:10 and 9:15; both are recorded here once. Small groups wore pink in support of Clancy, among them a psychiatric nurse practitioner from Plymouth, Kathleen Hood, who told the Globe she had come because of her own experience of postpartum anxiety. About a dozen people wore white for the three children — Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months — and said the children were the real victims. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger also posted on the protesters outside court, recalling that hundreds rallied in support of Clancy last week.
• 09:18Dr. Avram Mack resumed his testimony, appearing by video link, as the Commonwealth's rebuttal witness. His cross-examination by Kevin Reddington had been unfinished when court broke on Friday. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger reports that Mack testified from the witness stand on Friday, which makes the video link a change from how he appeared then.
• 09:21Cross-examination on his experience. Reddington asked how many times he had testified on criminal responsibility and Mack put it at one or two; Mack described himself as a generalist, naming adolescent mental health and addiction among his focuses. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger puts the same answer at two prior cases, which falls within the range the Globe records.
• 09:24Cross-examination on his qualifications. Reddington raised prior cases in which judges had questioned them; Mack said he did not recall those cases or disagreed with Reddington's characterization of the rulings. Boston Globe alone. Boston 25, filing a day-19 live blog of its own, puts the same line of questioning at 9:26 and reports Reddington pressing prior cases in which Mack was found unqualified to give an opinion, with Mack disputing that characterization. CBS Boston, in an untimed narrative, gives the same exchange: Reddington said a judge in an earlier case had ruled Mack unqualified to give testimony, and Mack disagreed with that characterization.
• 09:27The cross-examination opened testily, on NBC News's account. NBC News's national live blog, a sixth outlet on the day, reports Kevin Reddington getting into a testy exchange with Dr. Avram Mack from the outset of Monday's proceedings, with the first part of the cross largely on Mack's history of serving as a witness in criminal cases and Mack appearing to misremember or disagree with most of the questions put to him. When Mack said he disagreed with one, Reddington answered "Says you." NBC News alone. The time is NBC News's posting time.
• 09:29Cross-examination continued, on a prior case and on how this evaluation was conducted. Mack said he did not believe his testimony had been struck in an earlier Florida lawsuit concerning the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. He confirmed that he examined Clancy at Tewksbury Hospital in April on two separate days, with a colleague carrying out psychological testing, and that he stayed at a private home in Wellesley while he did so; he said he did not know where his colleague stayed. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger gives the substance of that Florida testimony: Mack testified for the state that beneficiaries of state aid should be drug tested. Reddington characterized it as testimony that needy people should be drug tested because they are more inclined to violence, drug use and suicide; Mack said that was not the correct conceptualization, and Reddington answered that this was merely Mack's own view. Asked whether he recalled his testimony being stricken, Mack said he did not believe that it was. The substance of the Florida testimony and this exchange are the Patriot Ledger's.
• 09:36Cross-examination on what he was given and whom he spoke to. Mack said he had spoken with the prosecutors by telephone before evaluating Clancy, and described reviewing Department of Children and Families records from February 2023 that included an interview with Patrick Clancy and recorded no earlier instance of Lindsay Clancy abusing her children. Boston Globe alone.
• 09:38Cross-examination on bias, fees and timing. The Globe posted twice in this minute; both are recorded here once. Reddington established that Mack did not meet Clancy until 2026, about three years after the killings, and that he earns several hundred thousand dollars a year from forensic evaluations. He also took Mack through confirmation bias, which Mack agreed he understood as gathering information to confirm an idea already held; asked whether he had hoped to assist the prosecutors who hired him, Mack said no. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger adds that Mack confirmed he had been retained by the Plymouth District Attorney's Office, and gives his answer on fees as a range rather than a figure — several hundred thousand dollars, sometimes a few, sometimes more.
• 09:41Cross-examination on the length of the interview. Mack said the first interview with Clancy at Tewksbury Hospital ran four or five hours, with a colleague present, that she did not ask for a break, and that they discussed her catheter schedule while questioning her. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger names the colleague as Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, himself an expert witness for the Commonwealth, and reports that Mack and Heilbrun together interviewed Clancy for four to five hours on the first day. The Globe left the colleague unnamed.
• 09:42Judge Sullivan told the witness to answer the question. NBC News reports Judge William Sullivan interjecting after a lengthy and contentious back and forth to tell Mack to listen to the question and answer the question, and places the intervention after Reddington had pressed him on how much money he makes in a year. The Boston Globe recorded the questioning about his earnings at about 9:38 but not the intervention. This is the earlier of two occasions on which NBC News describes the bench directing Mack to answer, and is distinct from the intervention the Globe files at about 10:39. NBC News alone. No ruling, objection or sanction is reported with it.
• 09:46Cross-examination on psychological testing. Mack acknowledged that he knew the tests Reddington raised for gauging whether a subject is answering truthfully, and said one of them measures personality rather than being designed as a lie detector. He said Clancy remained polite through the questioning, and that his colleague carried out the psychological testing the following day. Boston Globe alone.
• 09:49Cross-examination on malingering. Asked whether a person indicted for murder would be motivated to fabricate mental health symptoms, Mack said not necessarily. He said his colleague's psychological testing effectively showed the procedure was valid — that is, that Clancy was answering truthfully and was not malingering. Boston Globe alone.
• 09:52Cross-examination on the truthfulness testing, and a sharp exchange. Reddington pressed Mack on the tests used to assess whether a subject is exaggerating. Mack smiled over the video link, and Reddington asked what he was smiling for and told him this was not funny. Reddington then asked whether he knew that Clancy had shown no indication whatsoever of exaggerating her symptoms during the psychological testing; the Globe does not report his answer. Boston Globe. NBC News's national live blog, filing the same exchange at 9:48, names the instrument: Reddington was pressing Mack on the K Scale, which Mack in the end explained as an instrument clinicians rely on to catch a patient overstating or inventing symptoms. NBC News has him flashing a smile over the video link before the rebuke. Both times are posting times and neither outlet gives a courtroom clock; no other outlet names the test.
• 09:55Testimony on bipolar symptoms, SSRIs and the diagnosis he reached. Mack said he was aware of symptoms of bipolar disorder in Clancy, and that medical caution about prescribing SSRI antidepressants to patients with bipolar disorder has lessened in recent years. He put his second session with her at about three hours and said he concluded she had a major depressive disorder. Counsel were called to sidebar after that answer. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger reports the SSRI answer in more detail: Mack said the concern about prescribing them to bipolar patients was greater fifteen to twenty years ago and has lessened over time.
• 09:59After the sidebar, Mack said he had determined that Clancy was in a major depressive episode at the time of the killings but retained the ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct. He noted that a colleague had diagnosed her with bipolar II, a diagnosis he described as carrying no history of a full manic episode. The Globe's entries do not say whether the questioning at this point was still Reddington's cross-examination or had moved to redirect. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger names the colleague who made the bipolar II diagnosis as Dr. Kirk Heilbrun — the Commonwealth's own other expert.
• 10:01Cross-examination on the witness falling back on Friday's evidence. NBC News reports Mack answering a number of Reddington's questions by telling him he had covered the point the other day — a reference back to when he first took the stand on Friday, and Reddington pressing him to answer regardless — "Why don't you say it again, sir?" NBC News alone. The time is NBC News's posting time.
• 10:05Cross-examination on the onset window for postpartum illness. Reddington asked whether bipolar disorder is a precursor to postpartum depression; Mack said it depends on whether the patient has a mood disorder and on the timing of onset. He gave the medical guidelines as putting postpartum onset within four weeks and postpartum psychosis within six, while Reddington cited guidelines allowing longer periods. Mack said Clancy has not demonstrated any signs of mania at Tewksbury Hospital. This is the first of the Globe's entries since the sidebar to describe the questioning as cross-examination. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:07Cross-examination on bipolar disorder, on the Patriot Ledger's account — posted at 10:07, and overlapping the Globe's entries on either side of it. Asked to describe the condition, Mack listed flights of ideas, distractibility, engagement in pleasurable activities with painful consequences, pressured speech and grandiosity. Asked directly whether he had concluded that Clancy suffered from a major mental disease or defect, namely bipolar II, Mack said no, and clarified that what he had concluded was a major depressive episode as part of a major depressive disorder. When Reddington put it to him that she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at Tewksbury, Mack asked to be shown where. Patriot Ledger alone.
• 10:08Cross-examination on her medications and her sleep. Mack listed the medications Clancy currently takes at Tewksbury Hospital, which the Globe does not name, and said she had reported problems sleeping when a provider increased her dosage before the killings, describing her as having wanted to sleep and having tried hard to without being able to. Reddington put to him that she had gone forty-eight hours without sleep following the increase; the Globe does not report Mack's answer. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:11Cross-examination on the length of the postpartum period. Reddington listed the mental health clinicians who have diagnosed Clancy with bipolar disorder, before and after the killings, and asked whether that was a strong indicator that a person could be suffering from postpartum depression; Mack said the question confused him. Mack put the postpartum period at four weeks from the birth for diagnostic purposes, which the Globe notes other experts have rejected in favor of a year or longer. Reddington told him postpartum is not a disease and that every woman who has given birth remains postpartum. Mack held to major depressive episodes without psychosis. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger names the clinicians Reddington listed: nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta, who raised the possibility of bipolar disorder, and Dr. Paul Zeizel, Dr. Margaret Spinelli and Dr. Phillip Resnick, all of whom evaluated Clancy and diagnosed bipolar disorder. It records Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's diagnosis of bipolar II separately. NBC News's national live blog carries the same exchange over what the word postpartum means, reporting Mack repeatedly calling Clancy's condition postpartum without naming one of the illnesses that follow childbirth and putting postpartum onset within four weeks, and Reddington answering that postpartum simply means a woman has had a child and that mothers are technically postpartum for the rest of their lives. NBC News adds that in the middle of it the bench had once more to tell Mack to answer what was put to him; it is alone in reporting that direction.
• 10:20Cross-examination on her depression and her sleep. Mack agreed that the guidelines give a decreased need for sleep as one element of mania, but said that in his view Clancy desperately wanted to sleep. He confirmed she had major depressive episodes after the birth of her third child, and acknowledged that she was in distress when Reddington put to him that her score on one depression scale was nearly off the charts. He gave an inability to laugh as an indicator of major depression, and said she had reported anxiety, worry without an apparent cause and feeling overwhelmed to her providers. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:25Cross-examination on psychosis. Mack said Clancy had also indicated she had thoughts of harming herself. Asked whether postpartum depression can be followed by postpartum psychosis, he said he could not answer. He said that hearing voices would be psychosis. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:30Cross-examination on what the postpartum period is, and on her symptoms one by one. Mack said that making a diagnosis in psychiatry requires an authority, and that he uses the DSM for it. The Globe's entry in this minute gives his DSM figure for the postpartum period as four months after the birth and notes that Clancy's youngest child was eight months old; the same blog's entries at 10:05 and 10:11 give the figure as four weeks. The two do not agree, neither is corroborated by another outlet, and the conflict is recorded rather than resolved. Reddington then began putting Clancy's symptoms to him individually. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:31Cross-examination on what the records showed, and on whether postpartum psychosis is a real illness. Mack said he had come across a period in his review of the records in which Clancy worried that people could hear her thoughts. He said she was suffering, and that she at times felt things were not real, or felt uncomfortable. Reddington asked whether he believed postpartum psychosis was a legitimate disease; the Globe records Mack answering that the presence of psychosis is always concerning and that psychiatric guidelines give a time frame for its onset after a birth, and does not report him answering the question yes or no. Boston Globe alone. CBS Boston, in a short narrative carrying no timestamps, reports an answer to that question: he described symptoms of psychosis in the postpartum period as a legitimate finding, something to be concerned about and to treat. It is the nearest thing to an answer any outlet gives, and CBS attaches no time to it.
• 10:37Cross-examination on whether the records show psychosis. Mack said he found no evidence of psychosis in Clancy's record. He allowed that she had reported intrusive thoughts and had indicated that at times things did not feel real, and said that neither necessarily amounts to psychosis; nor, he said, does appearing composed between mood episodes. Asked whether a severe loss of sleep indicates postpartum psychosis, he said he could not answer the question as Reddington had framed it. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:39Judge William Sullivan intervened from the bench during the cross-examination to tell the witness how the questioning works: a witness does not ask the questions, he answers them, and if he cannot answer one as posed the court can have Reddington rephrase it. The Globe reports it as the judge admonishing the Commonwealth's expert. No ruling, objection or sanction is reported with it. Boston Globe alone. NBC News's national live blog files a different bench intervention in this same minute: the Commonwealth objected to Reddington's line of questioning on the ground that Mack had answered the question repeatedly, Reddington answered "Really?", and Judge Sullivan urged Reddington to move on. NBC News does not report whether the objection was sustained, and no outlet says whether the two accounts describe one moment or two.
• 10:40Cross-examination on her care and her medications. Mack said he held no position on the standard of care Clancy received from her medical providers. He noted that she had reported suicidal ideation, and said he was not certain whether she lacked awareness of her own condition. He said blood work can be required or needed before certain psychiatric medications are prescribed. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:43Cross-examination on what her providers did not test. Mack said he did not recall seeing records showing that Clancy's providers had taken blood work to gauge how she was reacting to the medications she was prescribed, and when Reddington put it to him directly that the testing was not done, he agreed. He said checking thyroid levels is important for psychiatric patients. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:47The cross-examination has ended and the Commonwealth's redirect examination has begun. This is the first entry from any outlet to describe the questioning as redirect, which places the end of Reddington's cross between 10:43 and 10:47. NBC News's national live blog, posting at 10:53, is the only outlet to describe how the cross closed; it is recorded below at that time. Mack said he does not regard his role as that of an investigator, that he was retained to analyze Clancy's mental state working in part from the medical records, and that he was formally retained by the government in early 2025 — the date the Globe gave on Friday, and one that remains in conflict with East Idaho News's late 2024. He said he is paid for his time and his work whatever opinion he ultimately reaches. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:51Redirect examination on his relationship with the prosecution. Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham had Mack confirm that he is paid regardless of the opinion he gives, and questioned him about Park Dietz and Associates, the retention firm through which he was engaged. His direct examination on Friday was taken by ADA Jennifer Sprague, on the Globe's account, so the redirect is being conducted by a different prosecutor. Boston Globe alone.
• 10:52Redirect examination on how the evaluation was recorded. Mack said he had not met the colleague who carried out the psychological testing before the two of them evaluated Clancy, that she was offered breaks more than once and declined them, and that the interviews were videotaped. Boston Globe.
• 10:52The Commonwealth moved to put the recording in evidence, and the judge called a sidebar. Judge Sullivan called counsel to sidebar as the prosecution moved to enter the tape in evidence. Boston Globe, corroborated by Boston 25, which puts Buckingham's motion at the same minute and describes the tape as a video interview of Clancy recorded at Tewksbury State Hospital in April. No ruling on the motion is reported by either outlet. Hearst Connecticut's News-Times, in an untimed post on the redirect examination, writes that ADA Shanan Buckingham entered Mack's interview with Clancy into evidence. It is the first account to say the recording went in, but it is the outlet's own description and it reports no ruling from the bench; the Globe and Boston 25 both record the offer and the sidebar and neither says what was decided. Recorded as reported, and the question is still treated here as open.
• 10:53The last question of the cross-examination, reported by one outlet only. NBC News gives Reddington's final question to Mack as whether Clancy's thyroid should have been checked by blood work while her doctors were prescribing her a number of psychiatric medications over the course of a few months. Mack agreed in general terms but again resisted the framing, saying he was not sure that specifically answered the question; Reddington answered "I don't care" and told the judge he was finished with the witness. The Boston Globe had already described the questioning as redirect at 10:47, so NBC News's 10:53 is a posting time for an exchange that had happened earlier. It sits with the Globe's 10:43 entry on the blood work Clancy's providers never drew. NBC News alone.
• 10:59The Florida case came back, after the sidebar. The Boston Globe headlines the entry as the psychiatrist acknowledging that a Florida court struck his opinion in a separate case, and reports that Mack said Florida had retained him as an expert in a civil case concerning a welfare program, and that the court there ruled he was not qualified to testify to expertise in addiction treatment in that matter. On his own answer at about 9:29, under cross-examination, he did not believe his testimony in that case had been struck. Both answers are recorded as reported. No outlet says whether this passage came on the Commonwealth's redirect or on a further cross by the defense. Boston Globe alone.
• 11:00Boston 25 reports the Commonwealth's redirect examination of Mack under way. It is the latest entry from any outlet at the time of this compilation. Boston 25 alone.
• 11:03Boston 25's own characterization of the morning, not an event in the room: it describes the cross-examination of Mack as extensive and challenging, ranging over his credentials, his findings and the DSM definitions, and reports the jurors engaged, with several taking notes throughout. Boston 25 alone, and recorded as that outlet's observation rather than as anything said or ruled.
• 11:04Cross-examination on how she has been at Tewksbury Hospital, and on when the depression began — the Patriot Ledger's account, posted at 11:04 under a headline reporting that Reddington had concluded a contentious cross-examination. It covers the closing stretch of that cross rather than anything happening at that minute, and the time here is the Ledger's posting time. Reddington put to Mack that Clancy has not suffered from insomnia, anxiety, mania or depression at Tewksbury over the past three years, and asked whether she had shown signs of anxiety while on the right medication; Mack said she expressed feeling anxiety but that he did not know whether she exhibited symptoms of it. Told that she has been able to bathe, communicate and carry out other functions there, he agreed. Reddington then returned to the fall of 2022 and to a period after she took sertraline in which she did not sleep for forty-eight hours and felt she did not need to sleep; Mack answered that she desperately wanted to sleep. Reddington called a decreased need for sleep a textbook symptom of mania. Mack said she had a major depressive episode within four to five months of the birth, and did not say that she had postpartum depression. Patriot Ledger, which alone names the medication, dates the sleepless period and gives the four-to-five-month figure.
• 11:05Cross-examination on whether postpartum psychosis is a recognized illness, on what the records showed, and on the tests her providers never ordered — the Patriot Ledger's account, posted at 11:05, again covering the close of the cross rather than that minute. Mack said psychiatrists cannot speak of postpartum psychosis as an illness because it has not been approved by the American Psychiatric Association; the Ledger headlines the entry on the association having no definition for it. Asked whether he was saying he did not believe in or accept postpartum psychosis, he said he had not said that at all, and, asked whether it is a legitimate disease or defect, said psychosis at any time is a legitimate illness needing treatment. He said he did not see any evidence of psychotic features in Clancy's medical records. Asked whether a patient not feeling like herself can be a symptom of postpartum psychosis, he said it can be if the person has psychosis, and agreed that Clancy had complained of not feeling like herself. He affirmed that she had intrusive thoughts about harming the children and suicidal thoughts, and said he was not sure whether she had poor insight. Reddington then put to him that she exhibited nine of the ten symptoms of psychosis; the Ledger reports no answer to that. On blood work, Mack said tests are needed in some situations and that in others a psychiatrist may be comfortable without one, and affirmed both that Clancy's doctors and mental health providers ordered no blood test and that no test was administered to measure how the enzymes in her blood were metabolizing her prescription medications. Patriot Ledger, which alone reports the enzyme testing and the nine-of-ten assertion. The Boston Globe reported the no-evidence-of-psychosis answer at 10:37 and the blood work at 10:40 and 10:43.
• 11:08The witness finished and the court broke. Mack stepped down and Judge William Sullivan called the morning recess. Boston 25 reports the same at 11:07, putting the end of his testimony and the break together. He had been on the stand since Friday afternoon. No ruling on the Commonwealth's motion to put the videotape of his interviews with Clancy in evidence has been reported by any outlet, and none of the two further rebuttal witnesses Boston 25 said were scheduled for the day had been called when the court broke.
• 11:20NBC News's account of the close of Mack's testimony, posted at 11:20 and covering the end of the Commonwealth's redirect examination rather than anything said in that minute; the time here is NBC News's posting time, and Mack had stepped down by about 11:08. NBC News reports the prosecution spending its final minutes with Mack seeking to reaffirm that Clancy had been diagnosed with postpartum depression and not postpartum psychosis. Mack told the court he had had a difficult time seeing Clancy himself while she was hospitalized. Reddington interjected to ask whether Mack was suggesting that his office had had any control over whether Mack could see her. Mack answered that he did not know whether Reddington's office had been involved, and that he imagined it was aware but did not know; Reddington answered that he did not know, and thanked him. The judge then dismissed the witness and the court broke until the next witness was called. NBC News alone.
• 11:51The jury came back from the morning recess, returning to the courtroom shortly after 11:50. Boston Globe alone.
• 11:54The Commonwealth called its second rebuttal witness. Prosecutors called Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, the second psychologist to have examined Clancy on the Commonwealth's behalf. The Globe puts him at Drexel University, in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and, citing his biography, says he directs a forensic assessment clinic there. Boston 25 reports the same call in the same minute and adds that he interviewed Clancy at Tewksbury State Hospital in April alongside Mack; it spells the name Heilburn, where the Globe and the Patriot Ledger give Heilbrun. He is the colleague already named in this morning's evidence as the one who carried out the psychological testing at Tewksbury and who, on Mack's account, diagnosed Clancy with bipolar II.
• 11:58Direct examination on the two clinics he runs — NBC News's account of the second rebuttal witness being called, posted at 11:58. NBC News reports the Commonwealth calling Dr. Kirk Heilbrun and describes him as a forensic psychologist with two clinics of his own at Drexel. He described the work of one of them as conducting psychological evaluations for courts and attorneys. NBC News names the other as the Reentry Project, which it says provides evaluation and treatment to people involved in the federal prison system. NBC News alone for the second clinic; the Boston Globe, citing his biography, has said he directs a forensic assessment clinic at Drexel.
• 12:01Direct examination on his qualifications. Heilbrun set out his professional background and training and said he has published some 240 writings on mentally disordered adult offenders and related subjects. He said he does not regard a person he is evaluating as a patient, because a forensic evaluator's role is different from a treating therapist's. Boston Globe alone.
• 12:04Direct examination on his record as a witness. Heilbrun said he does not take on a forensic evaluation of a patient of his own, given the conflict it would create, and that he has testified about 330 times in cases dealing with mental health issues in adults and juveniles, for prosecutors and for the defense. He said his testimony has been primarily for the defense, and that he works for prosecutors about 25 percent of the time. Boston Globe alone.
• 12:05Direct examination on working for both sides. Boston 25 describes Heilbrun as having extensive courtroom experience for the defense and for the prosecution, and records the prosecutor asking whether, when he is working for the prosecution and concludes that a person is not criminally responsible, he tells the prosecutor so. He answered that he does, and that it is something an evaluator has to be able to do. Boston 25 alone, and it does not name which prosecutor is taking the direct.
• 12:07Direct examination on keeping an independent perspective. The Globe names the examiner for the first time: Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, who also took Dr. Avram Mack's direct. Heilbrun said he has testified in various cases for both the defense and the prosecution and that he maintains an independent perspective, and told the jury that in some ways not specializing gives him an advantage, because it lets him keep an open mind when he evaluates a defendant. This entry is a second Globe reporter's account of the witness taking the stand and covers ground from the start of the direct as well as this minute. Boston Globe alone.
• 12:08Direct examination on the two biases a forensic evaluator has to guard against. Heilbrun described retention bias as what happens when an evaluator favors the side that hired the expert, and said he works to guard against it in his own practice. He described confirmation bias as an evaluator ignoring information that contradicts his hypothesis of what happened. Boston Globe alone. The Patriot Ledger reported Reddington putting confirmatory bias to Mack on cross earlier in the morning.
• 12:13Direct examination on the evaluation itself. Heilbrun said he evaluated Clancy by interviewing her and reviewing the records, that he met her on multiple occasions in April for about ten hours in all, and that he has been reviewing documents in the case since January 2025. The Globe lists what he reviewed: medical records, police reports, surveillance footage, cell phone records, Apple Watch data, the grand jury proceedings and the defense expert reports. He said he also interviewed Clancy's former husband and her former mother-in-law, and that Clancy's sister chose not to take part in an interview. Boston Globe alone.
• 12:14Direct examination on what he did in this case. Boston 25's Bob Ward reports Heilbrun saying he met with Clancy over three days at Tewksbury State Hospital in April, the first day and the third day with Dr. Avram Mack, that those sessions were videotaped, and that he has spent 180 hours on the case. Boston 25 alone. The three-day figure and the 180 hours have not been reported anywhere else, and the videotaping is the same material the Commonwealth offered into evidence at 10:52 without a reported ruling.
• 12:15Direct examination on working alongside the Commonwealth's other expert. Heilbrun said that he and Mack each came up with their own report and their own analysis, that they wrote separate reports, and that they did not agree with each other on the diagnosis even though they interviewed Clancy at the same time. Boston 25 alone. It is the first time the disagreement has been described by Heilbrun; it had reached the record only through Mack's evidence on cross that the colleague who tested Clancy diagnosed bipolar II and that he did not adopt it. No outlet yet reports Heilbrun stating his own diagnosis.
• 12:17Direct examination on what the two examiners asked her about, and on her mental health history before September 2022. Heilbrun said he and Dr. Avram Mack asked Clancy about her thinking, her feeling and her behavior in the period leading up to the killings on January 24, 2023, and said the two of them wrote separate reports and did not agree on the diagnosis — the Globe's own account of the disagreement Boston 25 reported at 12:15. He said he concluded that before September 2022 she had a fairly limited mental health history, with some anxiety related to achievement: a straight-A student who had been anxious in nursing school, over her three pregnancies and about returning to work after each birth. She did not like to leave her children, he said, and that was an important consideration for her. Boston Globe.
• 12:18Direct examination on her history before the births. Boston 25's Bob Ward reports Heilbrun describing Clancy as a highly achieving person, a straight-A student, hard-working and self-disciplined, saying her anxiety fueled her, and saying she did not like to leave any of her children with anyone, at school or with a babysitter, before September 2022. In a second post timed to the same minute he adds Heilbrun saying her anxiety did not interfere with her life before September 2022. Boston 25 alone, and both posts are recorded here as one entry because the outlet gives them the same time.
• 12:22Direct examination on her childhood and on the autumn of 2022. Heilbrun described Clancy as hardworking and high-achieving growing up, said her anxiety did not impede her ability to function before September 2022, and said she reported no abuse or trauma of any kind as a child. Beginning in September 2022, he said, the prospect of leaving her third child, Callan, and returning to the labor and delivery floor left her badly anxious and at times low, and Callan was not taking his bottle, which made her particularly anxious about returning to the night shift. He said she was later prescribed Zoloft and started taking it in October 2022, and that things started getting very difficult at that point. Boston Globe.
• 12:24Direct examination on her history before September 2022 — NBC News's account, posted at 12:24 and covering the passage the Boston Globe filed at 12:17 and 12:22. NBC News reports Heilbrun saying Clancy's self-reported experience of mental illness was limited before September 2022, amounting to some anxiety while she was in nursing school and again through each of her pregnancies, and that her childhood was absent major trauma such as abuse. It quotes him saying that after each child she would have some time off, return after several months, and have some anxiety because she did not like to leave her children. That corroborates the Globe. NBC News also describes him speaking to Clancy in two interviews before trial, where Boston 25 has him meeting her over three days at Tewksbury State Hospital in April — the first and the third with Dr. Avram Mack — and the Patriot Ledger has three days and about 10.5 hours in all. The accounts are recorded as they stand; no outlet reconciles them, and none reports him being asked the number in terms.
• 12:25Direct examination on the autumn of 2022 and on what her husband saw. Heilbrun said Clancy's former husband, Patrick Clancy, told him that her anxiety got worse while she was taking Zoloft, with trouble sleeping and increased stress. He said that in November 2022 she texted her mother-in-law, herself a labor and delivery nurse, from the emergency room, and that she was having a great deal of difficulty with the thought of leaving the baby. Her own view, he said, was that the medications were giving her some of these adverse reactions. Boston Globe alone. It is the Commonwealth's own expert putting into the record that Clancy attributed her symptoms to her medication, which is the ground the defense argues under Commonwealth v. Berry; no outlet reports him saying whether he agrees with her about the cause.
• 12:28The Patriot Ledger's account of Heilbrun's direct examination, posted at 12:28 and covering the whole of it from the call rather than anything happening at that minute; the time here is the Ledger's posting time. It has Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague calling him after the recess and describes him as a clinical and forensic psychologist, a professor at Drexel University who carries out forensic psychological evaluations for judges and attorneys. It puts his output at more than 240 articles, book chapters and books, including publications on risk assessment and forensic mental health assessment, where the Globe gives some 240 writings on mentally disordered adult offenders and related subjects. Asked whether he would call the subject of an evaluation his patient, he said no, because forensic evaluators aim at accuracy while therapists aim to help their patients; asked whether he would evaluate a patient of his own, he said no, because of the conflict of interest. Asked whether he had ever found a defendant not criminally responsible when a prosecutor retained him, he said yes, and that a conclusion will sometimes favor whoever asked for the evaluation and sometimes will not. On retention bias he said it is the pull toward favoring the side that asked for the evaluation, that he is aware of it and that he tries to guard against it as much as possible. He said he reviewed Clancy's record, interviewed her about what happened on January 24, 2023 and interviewed other people, and met her over three days in April 2026. The Ledger gives both time figures together: about 180 hours on the case, of which about 10.5 hours were interviews with Clancy. Patriot Ledger. It adds, as its own context from an earlier day of the trial rather than as anything said this morning, that Sprague had previously pointed out that Dr. Paul Zeizel, who evaluated Clancy for the defense, referred to her as his patient in a request for a transportation accommodation.
• 12:29Direct examination on what she reported in December 2022. Boston 25's Bob Ward reports Heilbrun saying that in December Clancy described intrusive thoughts that would pop into her head — that her brain was damaged, that she could kill herself — and that these were not auditory hallucinations, because she said they were her own thoughts. Boston 25. The Boston Globe reports the same answers a minute later at 12:30, in a fuller account, and renders the second thought as a statement that she needed to kill herself.
• 12:30Direct examination on the intrusive thoughts, in the Boston Globe's fuller account of the answers Boston 25 filed at 12:29. Heilbrun said Clancy reported feeling disconnected from her body, among other things, while she was taking her medication. He said that in December 2022 she was beset by intrusive thoughts she herself called horrible, about hurting herself and, occasionally, about hurting her children — thoughts to the effect that her brain was damaged and that she needed to kill herself — and that she did not describe them as auditory hallucinations coming from a voice that was not there, saying instead that they were like her own thoughts. He said she also described feeling numb and zombie-like that month, and reported weight loss and feelings of hopelessness. Boston Globe.
• 12:31Direct examination on why that distinction matters. Heilbrun said it is an important distinction: if the voice had been outside her head, it would likely be a psychotic symptom. Boston 25 alone. Dr. Avram Mack told the jury this morning that hearing voices would be psychosis; Heilbrun located the line at whether the voice comes from outside the person's head, and applied it to what Clancy reported in December 2022.
• 12:33Direct examination on the fall of 2022, and NBC News's dates for the intrusive thoughts. NBC News, posting at 12:33, reports Heilbrun recounting Clancy's difficulty sleeping, racing thoughts and loss of appetite through the fall of 2022 as she continued to seek treatment from a number of doctors and medical centers, and saying that by late fall she was, in her own phrase, near the end of her rope. It reports her describing panic symptoms, concern that she was addicted to or dependent on benzodiazepines, and feeling disoriented, forgetful and disconnected from her body — the first account of the benzodiazepine concern in his evidence. NBC News dates the horrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself to late November, continuing into December, and reports that in January she began to have thoughts about harming her children. The Boston Globe places the intrusive thoughts, about herself and at times her children, in December 2022; the Patriot Ledger dates their onset to early December and has them running through December and January, occasionally about the children. The three datings are logged as a discrepancy in data/evidence.json and are not reconciled here. NBC News also has Zoloft prompting immediate difficulty, where the Globe and the Ledger describe the difficulty building over the weeks that followed; CBS Boston, in an account published later in the day, quotes him saying she immediately began to have some difficulty, which puts a second outlet behind NBC News's rendering.
• 12:34Direct examination on the program that turned her away and the hospital she admitted herself to. Heilbrun said that in late December 2022 staff at Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island told Clancy she did not qualify for their postpartum program, what she presented with looking to them like general anxiety, and offered her other programs she could enroll in. On January 1, 2023, he said, she took herself in to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility, and it was suicidal thinking that brought her there. Boston Globe alone.
• 12:37Direct examination on how she was when McLean discharged her. Boston 25's Bob Ward reports Heilbrun saying that at the time of her discharge from McLean Hospital Clancy was cooperative and pleasant, with no psychosis and no suicidal or homicidal thinking, and that a week later the suicidal thinking came back. Boston 25, with the Boston Globe reporting the same description of her discharge a minute later at 12:38 and putting the stay at five days. No outlet reports the date she was discharged; the Globe's entry at 12:34 gives January 1, 2023 as the day she admitted herself.
• 12:37Direct examination on the difference between an intrusive thought and a voice — the Boston Globe's entry in the same minute as Boston 25's, and a different answer. The Globe's Lea Skene reports Heilbrun separating two things: the intrusive thoughts she described in the weeks before January 24, and the voice the defense says she heard when she strangled her children. She was having thoughts, he said, to the effect that her brain was damaged and that she needed to kill herself; she said they were not auditory hallucinations but her own thoughts, intrusive and unwelcome, and he told the jury the difference is important. He also said that during her hospitalization at McLean she denied delusions, suicidal thoughts and other symptoms. Boston Globe. It is the first time a Commonwealth expert has been reported putting the distinction directly against the defense's account of the killings themselves. The Globe adds, in its own voice rather than as testimony, that the prosecution has sought throughout the trial to downplay the seriousness of Clancy's symptoms in the months before January 24.
• 12:38Direct examination on the five days at McLean. Heilbrun said Clancy reported insomnia as her primary complaint there, and told staff that her children and her mother were the reason she would not kill herself. He put the stay at five days, described her mood there as numb while she denied suicidal or homicidal thoughts, and said that at discharge she was described as cooperative and pleasant, with no psychosis and no suicidal or homicidal thoughts. He said she had great difficulty with insomnia, and that in late 2022 she had complained of the medication making sleep a real difficulty and leaving her emotionally numb. Boston Globe. It corroborates the discharge description Boston 25 filed a minute earlier and adds the length of the stay; no outlet gives the date she was discharged.
• 12:43Direct examination on what her providers diagnosed. Heilbrun said Clancy had put it to her providers that the medications were making her worse. Between the fall of 2022 and January 2023, he said, she had multiple different providers and multiple diagnoses, which he listed as generalized anxiety, sleep deprivation, postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. He also said she discontinued her exercise routine in October 2022 and later resumed exercising. Boston Globe alone. Dr. Avram Mack told the jury at about 10:37 this morning that he found no evidence of psychosis in Clancy's record; the Commonwealth's second expert has now named postpartum psychosis among the diagnoses in it. No outlet reports Heilbrun being asked whether he adopts any of the diagnoses he listed, or who made them.
• 12:46The Patriot Ledger's second account of Heilbrun's direct examination, posted at 12:46 and covering the stretch from September 2022 through January rather than anything said in that minute; the time here is the Ledger's posting time. It has him saying Clancy stopped breastfeeding Callan and feared he would not take the bottle while she was away on a night shift, and that from September 2022 she was anxious about leaving him and returning to work. After she started Zoloft, he said, she had significant insomnia and stress, and she had hoped to go back to work but it was not going to work out because her symptoms were so difficult. In mid-November she went to the emergency room at South Shore Hospital reporting racing thoughts, insomnia and other symptoms, which persisted through late November. He said she had concerns all along, starting in mid-October, about the impact of the medications, and that it was her own thought that they were causing the adverse reactions — she had wanted the medication to improve her anxiety and instead it got worse. In early December she reported horrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself, which continued through December and January and were occasionally about harming the children; she said her brain was damaged and that she needed to kill herself. Those were her own thoughts, he said, intrusive and unwelcome, and not auditory hallucinations. If she had actually heard voices coming from outside her, he said, that would be a psychotic symptom, with different implications for what is wrong with a person. Patriot Ledger.
• 12:49Direct examination on the diagnosis he reached. Heilbrun said he diagnosed Clancy with bipolar 2 disorder. Someone with it, he said, swings in mood, with stretches of depression and stretches of mania. Reaching that diagnosis took him some time, he said, because nothing in her history before the killings looked to him like a manic episode; it was that absence of any manic incident that settled him on bipolar 2, the milder of the two forms. References to Clancy and her then-husband clearing out their garage, he said, fell well short of mania. Boston Globe, with Boston 25's Bob Ward filing the same diagnosis a minute later at 12:50 and describing bipolar 2 as less severe than bipolar. It is the first diagnosis Heilbrun has given from the stand, and it is not the diagnosis the Commonwealth's first rebuttal expert gave.
• 12:52Direct examination on when the illness typically begins. Heilbrun said the onset of bipolar 2 disorder usually comes in a person's twenties or thirties; the Globe notes that Clancy is now 36. He also said the question he had set himself was whether Clancy bore criminal responsibility for the killings. Boston Globe. The Patriot Ledger, in an account posted at 12:54, has the same answer given in response to a question from Sprague about whether there is any way to tell if Clancy always had bipolar 2 or whether it is new, with Heilbrun saying the disorder typically emerges in adulthood.
• 12:54Direct examination on how he arrived at the diagnosis, in the Boston Globe's fuller account. Lea Skene reports Heilbrun saying he had turned the bipolar question over at length before satisfying himself that it fit Clancy, and settled on bipolar II, which he put to the jury as the milder way of carrying the illness. The reason it was not immediately clear, he said under direct examination by Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, was that he struggled to find a manic episode in her history. What settled it for him, he said, was learning that Clancy is on bipolar medication now at Tewksbury Hospital, where she is being held and receiving psychiatric treatment, and that withdrawing a mood stabilizer had produced a response in her straight away, which pointed the same way. Boston Globe.
• 12:54The Patriot Ledger's account of the same stretch of the direct, posted at 12:54. It has Heilbrun diagnosing bipolar 2 disorder and describing it as a less serious mode of bipolar 1 disorder, and setting out what bipolar 1 requires: periods of depressed mood together with a manic episode — jumpiness, a decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, thinking very fast, and excessive appetites for different kinds of things. He said he was having a hard time finding evidence of a manic episode, that Clancy has been at Tewksbury Hospital, that the diagnosis of record there is bipolar disorder, and that the hospital is very careful about what it prescribes and how. The Ledger writes that he did not diagnose bipolar 1 because he did not see a clear example of manic behavior until January 24, 2023. Patriot Ledger. The Globe's account of the same reasoning has him saying he did not see a manic episode in her history before the killings and does not report anything about that day; no outlet reports him being asked whether he regards her conduct on January 24 as a manic episode.
• 12:57Direct examination on the psychological testing. Heilbrun said he performed psychological testing on Clancy that looked at factors including her response style when answering questions, and that he was also checking for hallucinations, delusions and a lack of focus. Boston Globe.
• 12:57The lunch recess. Judge William Sullivan sent the jurors out for lunch just before 1 p.m., with testimony to resume at 2 p.m. and Heilbrun still on direct examination. Boston Globe. Boston 25's Bob Ward filed the recess in the same minute, reporting the break for lunch, a return at about 2 p.m., and Heilbrun still on the stand. NBC News's national live blog files the break in the following minute, reporting the judge pausing Heilbrun's testimony, dismissing the jury and asking the jurors to return at 2 p.m. boston.com's livestream page, which had carried nothing from the sitting all morning, was updated at 1:26 p.m. to record the court in recess for lunch until about 2 p.m. with Heilbrun the witness on the stand.
• 12:57Direct examination on why he called the diagnosis a difficult one — NBC News's fuller account of the answers the Boston Globe filed at 12:49 and 12:54, posted at 12:57 in the same minute as the Globe's entry on the lunch recess. NBC News reports Heilbrun describing bipolar II as a classification of the disorder that is not associated with mania, and calling it a difficult diagnosis because Clancy had depressive episodes but did not describe anything that seemed to him like mania. The periods in which she was higher in energy looked to him like her simply feeling good: he said she felt really close to her husband and her children, and that it looked less like a manic episode than like her feeling good and getting back into exercise. NBC News writes, without attributing the words to the witness, that bipolar II may involve hypomania — racing thoughts and high moods — as distinct from a manic episode; the sentence that follows in its account, describing mania as a more severe symptom that can cause a break from reality or psychosis, is sourced by NBC News to the Mayo Clinic and is not testimony.
• 13:07AN EIGHTH OUTLET JOINS THE RECORD, AND IT IS A NATIONAL ONE. Fox News Digital has been running a day-19 live blog, covered by Adam Sabes, which this compilation reaches for the first time. It carries four posts, timed by the page itself at 9:14, 9:51, 11:00 and 1:07 p.m.; the last of them is the first account of Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's direct examination from this outlet and it adds two details no other outlet has. The 9:14 post is an interview with a columnist about the crowds outside the courthouse and is not an account of the sitting; a line in it describing the prosecution as having wrapped up its case on Monday morning before the defense began is inconsistent with every other account of this trial and is not recorded here. Fox News Digital.
• 13:08A NINTH OUTLET, FILING FROM CONNECTICUT, WHERE CLANCY IS FROM. Hearst Connecticut's News-Times has been running a day-19 live file, by Peter Yankowski, Lisa Backus and Austin Mirmina, updated at 1:08 p.m. and carrying Patriot Ledger photographs from inside the courtroom. Its posts are untimed. It is the fullest account of Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's direct examination outside the Boston Globe, the Patriot Ledger and Boston 25, and it carries material on the redirect examination of Dr. Avram Mack that no other outlet has. Hearst Connecticut, News-Times.
• 13:28The Patriot Ledger's account of the last stretch of Heilbrun's direct before the break, posted at 1:28 p.m. and covering testimony given before the recess rather than anything happening at that minute; the time here is the Ledger's posting time. Asked by Sprague what psychological testing he administered to Clancy, Heilbrun said he screened her response style for exaggeration, minimization or fabrication of symptoms, and named that instrument as the MMPI. A second test, he said, measured tangential speech and cognitive disorganization. The Ledger then reports him reviewing Clancy's symptoms around January 24, 2023, including depression and suicidal thinking, and says Judge Sullivan called the recess at that point, with testimony to resume at 2 p.m. Patriot Ledger, which labels the break the afternoon recess where the Boston Globe, Boston 25 and NBC News all call it lunch. It is the first account to name the instruments behind the testing the Globe described at 12:57, and the first to report his direct reaching January 24 itself. The Ledger does not report him giving any conclusion about that day, and no outlet reports him being asked for one.
• 13:29CBS Boston, whose day-19 page carried no account of Heilbrun's evidence when this day was last compiled, now carries one. Its narrative attaches no times to anything; the time here is the page's own update stamp of 1:29 p.m. It has him saying he has testified in roughly 330 cases about competency to stand trial, where the Boston Globe at 12:04 has him putting the same figure on cases dealing with mental health issues in adults and juveniles — one number, two characterizations of what the cases were about, and no outlet reports the question that produced it. CBS Boston quotes him on her history before September 2022 in terms close to the Globe's: a fairly limited mental health history, some anxiety related to achievement, a very strong student who got straight As, and anxiety connected to her three pregnancies. It dates the Zoloft to mid-October and has her getting more anxious when she started it, and quotes him saying she immediately began to have some difficulty, with symptoms of depression, really difficult insomnia and a great deal of stress. On the intrusive thoughts it has him putting the terrible thoughts about harming herself in late November and early December, with thoughts occasionally about harming her children later, and reports him saying she did not describe hearing voices — the thoughts were not auditory hallucinations but her own. CBS Boston. Its dating is a fourth version of the same passage and is added to the discrepancy logged in data/evidence.json.
• 13:58THE ONLY POST FROM ANY OUTLET SINCE THE RECESS BEGAN, AND IT IS ABOUT THE ROOM RATHER THAN THE EVIDENCE. NBC News's national live blog posted a description of the courtroom during the morning: mostly full, with media, spectators and Clancy's parents, who sat a few rows behind her; the jury appearing to listen intently to the testimony, some jurors with notebooks and appearing to take notes; and Clancy not appearing to react to any of the day's testimony. NBC News alone. It is the outlet's own observation of the room and not anything said in it. It corroborates the crowd the Boston Globe and the Patriot Ledger described at about 9:13, and it carries nothing from the afternoon session.
• 14:14COURT CAME BACK IN FROM THE LUNCH RECESS AND THE DIRECT EXAMINATION PICKED UP WHERE IT HAD STOPPED. NBC News posted at 2:14 p.m. that the court had returned from a break of about an hour to resume the testimony of Dr. Kirk Heilbrun; the Boston Globe posted at 2:15 p.m. that the jurors were back to continue hearing testimony; and Boston 25's Bob Ward, at 2:20 p.m., that the session had resumed with Heilbrun on the stand and still on direct examination. No outlet reports anything having happened in the courtroom between the jury leaving just before 1 p.m. and its return. Boston Globe, Boston 25 and NBC News.
• 14:24boston.com'S PAGE STOPS BEING A LIVESTREAM AND BECOMES AN ACCOUNT. Through the morning and the lunch recess boston.com carried a video player, a note of who was on the stand and background on the case, and nothing from the sitting. Updated at 2:24 p.m. it now carries two long narrative updates by Abby Patkin, stamped noon and 1:30 p.m., which together are the fullest single account of Monday morning outside the live blogs — the first on the cross-examination and redirect of Dr. Avram Mack, the second on Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's direct examination. Both are untimed narratives; the stamps are the outlet's own and are not courtroom times, and the substance is folded into the witness detail rather than given a clock here. boston.com.
• 14:26THE PATRIOT LEDGER POSTS A VIDEO AND NO TEXT, AND IT POINTS AT THE QUESTION THE DAY TURNS ON. Its 2:26 p.m. entry carries a video clip captioned as Dr. Kirk Heilbrun explaining the legal standards for criminal responsibility, with no written account of the testimony alongside it. It is the first indication from any outlet that his direct examination has reached the legal test itself, but what he said about it is not reported in text anywhere, so nothing of the substance is recorded here. The Ledger's headline on the entry calls him a defense witness; he was called by the Commonwealth in rebuttal, which the Ledger's own earlier posts and every other outlet record, and the headline is noted rather than treated as a change. Patriot Ledger.
• 14:58A SIDEBAR AFTER THE GO-TO-GOD TESTIMONY, WITH ONE OUTLET REPORTING WHAT PROMPTED IT AND ONE NOT. The Boston Globe’s 2:58 p.m. post ends by reporting that the lawyers were later called to a sidebar, and reports nothing of what it concerned, how long it lasted, or anything from the bench. Boston 25’s Bob Ward, at 2:54 p.m., reports an objection and a sidebar immediately after Heilbrun said he had asked Clancy, a devout Catholic, whether that was a mortal sin. The two fall in the same stretch of testimony, but no outlet says they are the same sidebar and the site does not treat them as one; both are recorded, and the 14:58 stamp is the posting time of the Globe entry rather than a time given for the sidebar itself. Boston Globe and Boston 25. CBS Boston, in an account updated at 3:53 p.m., describes a single sidebar: it quotes the passage of testimony and reports that Judge Sullivan called the attorneys to sidebar after a defense objection, without giving a time for it. NBC News, at 3:51 p.m., likewise reports the judge pausing the testimony at the point where Heilbrun said he had asked Clancy about mortal sin. Neither outlet says whether this is the sidebar the Boston Globe reported or the one Boston 25 timed at 2:54 p.m., and they are still recorded separately here.
• 14:58HOW THE ROOM TOOK THE PASSAGE THAT LED TO THE MOTION. NBC News, in a post filed at about 4:20 p.m. describing the scene in the courtroom, adds that when Heilbrun turned to mortal sin and Clancy’s Catholicism, Reddington was seen to throw down his pen on the table, and that Clancy and her parents did not appear to react to the testimony. NBC News alone on both, and it is the first account of how anyone in the room received the passage that led to the mistrial motion.
• 14:58THE WORDS THE WITNESS WAS SPEAKING WHEN THE OBJECTION CAME. WHDH’s 7News, in a story filed at about 5:27 p.m. by Jonathan Hall, is the first outlet to quote them. On its account Heilbrun began “When I said suicide isn’t a mortal sin,” and was interrupted by Reddington’s objection, and Judge William Sullivan then asked to speak with the prosecution. No other outlet gives the fragment, and WHDH’s form of it differs from the accounts already recorded here: it has the witness reporting what he had said to Clancy rather than the question the other outlets have him asking her. WHDH gives no time for it. That difference is part of the conflict logged in the evidence file over what he actually said, and is not resolved here.
• 15:04THE JUDGE SENT THE JURY OUT FOR A BRIEF RECESS, AND NO REASON WAS GIVEN. The Boston Globe reports at 3:04 p.m. that following a sidebar Judge William Sullivan sent the jurors out of the courtroom, and said they would be brought back in after a brief recess. The Globe reports that no reason was given for the break, and no other outlet has reported it. It interrupts Dr. Kirk Heilbrun’s direct examination, which had not finished. Boston Globe alone. Whether the sidebar it followed is the one the Globe itself reported at 2:58 p.m. or the one Boston 25 timed at 2:54 p.m. is not stated by any outlet. CBS Boston, updating at 3:53 p.m., is the first outlet to give the sequence in one account: the objection and the sidebar came on the passage of testimony about Clancy’s Catholic upbringing, Sullivan then sent the jurors out of the room, there was a brief recess, and when the judge and the attorneys returned the defense moved for a mistrial. That is CBS Boston’s ordering of events rather than a set of times, and no outlet gives a courtroom clock for it.
• 15:20THE DEFENSE MOVED FOR A MISTRIAL. Boston 25’s Bob Ward posted at 3:20 p.m. that Kevin Reddington was calling for a mistrial. It is the first mistrial motion this compilation has recorded in the trial. It came while the jury was out of the courtroom on the recess the Boston Globe reported at 3:04 p.m., and with Dr. Kirk Heilbrun’s direct examination unfinished. Boston 25 first; the Boston Globe, the Patriot Ledger, NBC Boston and NBC News all followed.
• 15:23WHAT THE MOTION WAS ABOUT: THE WITNESS BROUGHT UP THE DEFENDANT’S RELIGION. Boston 25 reports at 3:23 p.m. that the issue was the mention in court that the Catholic Church considers murder a mortal sin, that there had been a warning last week following the questioning of Susan Clancy, that the Commonwealth’s witness had just brought it up, and that the defense position was that it was intentional. The reference is to the exchange Boston 25 timed at 2:54 p.m., in which Heilbrun said he had asked Clancy, a devout Catholic, whether that was a mortal sin, and an objection and a sidebar followed. Boston 25 alone on the earlier warning; no other outlet reports it, and none gives what was said at that warning or in what terms.
• 15:24THE DEFENSE ARGUED THE MOTION, AND THE GROUND IT GAVE WAS INTENTIONAL MISCONDUCT. The Boston Globe reports at 3:24 p.m. that Judge William Sullivan came back to the bench and took argument on the defense motion. Reddington pointed to the moment before the jury left the courtroom when Heilbrun said he had put a question to Clancy, raised a Catholic, about what her church teaches against suicide, and said “I believe it was intentional misconduct” by prosecutors. Boston 25 reports the defense position in the same terms, and its written article, updated at 3:38 p.m., adds nothing beyond confirming that the motion was made over intentional misconduct and the injection of religion into witness testimony. The Patriot Ledger, in an account posted at 3:39 p.m., gives the argument at greater length. It quotes Reddington saying “I have to move for a mistrial” and giving as his reason “this is intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution”, and reports that he told the court “I felt the court’s instructions were sufficient” on the earlier occasion while this one was “just over the top. It’s the same thing again — talking about religion. Talking about heaven.” CBS Boston, at 3:41 p.m., carries the same quotation with a longer tail — “talking about killing people and the impact it would have on Lindsay as well as her children” — and says this is the second time religion has been raised in the trial and that a previous question to a witness was struck from the record. boston.com’s recap, updated at about 5:21 p.m., gives the opening of it: “This has been, obviously, a long trial and a lot of work on the part of everybody involved, from the court to the staff to the prosecutors to myself and needless to say, the strain on Lindsay Clancy”, before “I have to move for a mistrial, reluctantly” and the ground of “intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution”; it carries “This is just over the top” with the same tail CBS Boston reported. CNN’s account of the argument is shorter than the others and agrees with them: it reports the parties going immediately to sidebar, Reddington then moving for a mistrial and citing intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution in injecting Roman Catholic faith into the trial. Hearst Connecticut’s day-19 recap, updated at about 4:52 p.m., gives the complaint in its own summary: that to bring Roman Catholic faith and mortal sin into the trial again, a week after the first time, went over the top. ABC News, in a post filed at about 5:02 p.m., is the first outlet to report Kevin Reddington’s own explanation of why the earlier incident did not draw a motion — he told the court that not moving for a mistrial on August 18 had been a “tactical decision” — and renders the rest of the complaint as religion again, heaven again, the killing of people and the effect it would have on Clancy as well as on her children, which matches the quotation CBS Boston and the Patriot Ledger carry. Los Angeles Magazine, filing in the evening, has him making the same point back: that while the court’s instructions had been sufficient on the earlier occasion, a second reference to Catholicism, heaven and sin crossed a line, which matches the accounts already recorded. WHDH’s 7News describes the complaint about the religious testimony as one of willful misconduct rather than intentional; it does not put the word in quotation marks, and every other account carries intentional.
• 15:24THE COMMONWEALTH’S ANSWER: NO QUESTION ABOUT RELIGION WAS PUT, AND NO HARM WAS MEANT. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague answered that the question she asked had nothing to do with religion, and said Clancy had told Heilbrun she “had knowledge” of Catholicism treating suicide as a sin, and that the question went to whether Clancy knew the killings to be morally wrong. NBC News adds that prosecutors said the witness had not intended to be inflammatory and asked instead that the jury be instructed to disregard what he had said about her religion. Boston Globe and NBC News. On the Commonwealth’s side the Patriot Ledger quotes Sprague saying she did not ask about mortal sin and that the witness raised it as part of his account of his discussions with Clancy: “I didn’t ask a question about religion or a question that would invoke that kind of a response. There was no intentional misconduct on the part of the Commonwealth.” Hearst Connecticut quotes her saying “I don’t think the witness meant to do any harm.” ABC News gives the answer in fuller quotation than either of them: “There was no intentional conduct by the Commonwealth,” Sprague told the judge. “That was not where I intended to go with this questioning, and I don’t think that the witness intended to do any harm either, he was just explaining his rationale.” boston.com is fuller still, quoting her saying the question she had asked did not solicit any testimony about religion, Catholicism or mortal sin: “The witness was explaining his reasoning … I don’t think he was intentionally trying to inflame the jury or cause an issue in this case. I know I certainly wasn’t, because I didn’t ask a question about her religion or a question that would invoke that kind of response.” That is the same answer the Patriot Ledger, Hearst Connecticut and ABC News reported in shorter forms, and CNN carries it shorter again: that the remark was unintentional, that the prosecutors had not asked Heilbrun about religion, and that there was therefore no intentional misconduct on their part. Los Angeles Magazine gives the answer with one element no other account carries: on its rendering Sprague told the court she had not asked Heilbrun a question about religion, that Catholicism and mortal sin did not appear on the slide he was presenting from, and that she had not intended the questioning to go in that direction.
• 15:24THE GALLERY HAD TO BE QUIETED WHILE THE MOTION WAS ARGUED. NBC News, in a post filed at about 4:20 p.m. describing the scene in the courtroom, reports that as the mistrial argument went on the spectators in the gallery began whispering, and that a court officer told them court was still in session and they were to stay quiet. NBC News alone.
• 15:24THE EARLIER OCCASION THE DEFENSE POINTED BACK TO, AND AN OPEN CONFLICT OVER WHICH PROSECUTOR RAISED IT. The Patriot Ledger is the first outlet today to put the earlier incident on the record, reporting that earlier in the trial Sprague had mentioned mortal sin while questioning Patrick Clancy’s mother, Sue Clancy, and that Reddington objected then but did not move for a mistrial. It dates the incident only as earlier in the trial; Boston 25 put the bench’s warning on the subject last week, and neither is preferred here. NBC News, in a post at 3:51 p.m., puts the earlier occasion in the same terms and dates it: Reddington had objected to the injection of Catholic teaching about mortal sin when the prosecution cross-examined Clancy’s former mother-in-law last week, and Judge Sullivan instructed the jurors to strike it from the record then. That is the exchange this compilation records on August 18, the fifteenth sitting day, where the question put to Susan Clancy — an active Catholic — was whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin, and where Sullivan called an immediate sidebar, struck the question and told the jury not to consider it for any reason or any purpose. NBC Boston, in an article published on August 19, gives that exchange in the fullest form yet: the prosecutor established that Susan Clancy is an active member of the Catholic church and then asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin; she did not answer, Reddington objected at once, and the judge called counsel to sidebar before striking the question. That article does not name the prosecutor who asked it. The Patriot Ledger’s account today names Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague; the August 18 reporting has Shanan Buckingham conducting that cross-examination. Hearst Connecticut’s recap, updated at about 4:52 p.m., is the first outlet to set out the August 18 exchange word for word and name the prosecutor who conducted it. On its account Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asked Susan Clancy whether she was an active member in the Catholic Church, Susan Clancy answered yes, and the prosecutor then asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin, at which point Judge Sullivan shut the questioning down and directed the jury to strike what had been said. That agrees with the August 18 reporting compiled here and disagrees with the Patriot Ledger’s account today, which named Sprague. Hearst also frames the day as the second time in two weeks that prosecutors were admonished and the jury told to strike comments about Clancy’s Catholic faith. Two further filings on the evening of August 24 bear on which prosecutor put the August 18 question, and both name the same one. Boston 25, in a standalone article filed at about 5:42 p.m. by Bob Ward and separate from the live blog it ran all day, reports that the earlier occasion came as a prosecutor cross-examined Patrick Clancy’s mother the previous week, and names Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham as the questioner, quoting her asking whether she was an active member in the Catholic church and whether she was aware that murder is a mortal sin. WHDH’s 7News, filing at about 5:27 p.m., sets the same exchange out word for word and also names Buckingham: she asked the victims’ grandmother whether she was an active member in the Catholic church, the witness answered yes, and Buckingham then asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin, at which Judge Sullivan cut in and asked to speak with Buckingham. WHDH also reports the judge as critical of the prosecution over that earlier exchange. Three outlets filing this evening — Hearst Connecticut, Boston 25 and WHDH — now name Buckingham, against the Patriot Ledger’s account of the argument, which named Jennifer Sprague and gave no quotation. ABC News’s account of the August 18 question attributes it to prosecutors without naming one; boston.com, which like the Patriot Ledger points the complaint back at the questioning of Sue Clancy and describes her as the defendant’s former mother-in-law, does not name the prosecutor either; and Los Angeles Magazine does not name one. None of the three bears on the conflict, which remains logged in the evidence file and is not resolved here. The Associated Press, in the wire story it rewrote at about 4:54 p.m., now carries the motion and the refusal as well; the version it filed at about 2:36 p.m. did not mention them.
• 15:32WHAT THE COURT SAID COMES NEXT. The Boston Globe reports at 3:32 p.m. that after instructing the jurors and sending them home Judge William Sullivan said he believes the prosecutors have one more witness to call after Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, that testimony will resume Tuesday, and that closing arguments in the case are expected on Wednesday. CBS Boston, at 3:41 p.m., gives the plan for Tuesday in the same terms — finish with Heilbrun, get through one more witness, and then take up where the trial goes next — and Hearst Connecticut, updating at 3:42 p.m., reports that Heilbrun’s testimony will be completed and the prosecution was then expected to put another rebuttal witness on the stand. Three outlets agree that one rebuttal witness remains after Heilbrun, which is consistent with the three the Commonwealth has been reported to have planned. The Wednesday date for closings is the Boston Globe alone and is attributed to the judge; Hearst Connecticut’s day-19 page still carries an unattributed line saying closings are expected Tuesday. That conflict is logged in the evidence file and is not resolved here. boston.com is a fourth outlet on the remaining witness, reporting that Sullivan indicated the prosecutors are expected to call one final rebuttal witness after Heilbrun, whose testimony is set to resume Tuesday. It gives no day for closing arguments, so it does not bear on that open conflict either. CNN is a second outlet to attribute the Wednesday date to the bench, and the first to record a qualification on it. It reports the judge saying the prosecution's final witnesses are likely to finish Tuesday and that closing arguments are expected to take place on Wednesday, and adds that he cautioned the timeline is subject to change. The Boston Globe had the same two days from the judge without the caution. Hearst Connecticut's unattributed Tuesday line still stands against them, so the conflict in the evidence file is not resolved by this. WHDH’s 7News, filing at about 5:27 p.m., reports that Reddington will cross-examine Heilbrun on Tuesday, in what it expects to be the last day of testimony, and that closing arguments are expected on Wednesday. It is a third outlet giving Wednesday, but unlike the Boston Globe and CNN it does not attribute the day to the judge, and it is the first to describe Tuesday as the expected last day of testimony. Both are the outlet’s expectations as filed and neither is reported as anything said from the bench.
• 15:32A SIDEBAR AFTER THE JURY HAD GONE. The Boston Globe reports that Judge Sullivan sent the jury home before calling the lawyers back to a sidebar, and reports nothing of what that sidebar concerned. Boston Globe alone.
• 16:34DEFENSE COUNSEL SPOKE TO REPORTERS AFTER THE ADJOURNMENT. This is not a courtroom event and nothing here was said in front of the jury. NBC News, in a post filed at about 4:34 p.m., reports Kevin Reddington speaking to reporters after the jurors had been sent home and his motion for a mistrial refused. He said he believes the jury will follow Judge Sullivan’s instruction to disregard the testimony about Lindsay Clancy’s Catholic faith as the case moves toward deliberations. On the trial as a whole he told reporters “It’s a trial, you never know — up and down, you’re happy, you’re not — who knows?”, and “it’s been a good trial. The evidence has come out and I feel pretty good about it.” Asked whether the struck testimony could give a ground for appeal he said he would rather not say, and NBC News notes that an appeal would require a conviction first, which Reddington said he would prefer did not happen. Of his client he said she “doesn’t have a mindset” at the moment and that she just listens and sits there. NBC News alone until after six o’clock, when Fox News Digital filed an account of its own. In a post by Adam Sabes carried as the page’s latest update at about 6:07 p.m., it reports Reddington saying he expected Judge Sullivan to deny his mistrial motion, and quotes him saying he has no doubt the jury will be able to overlook it — the outlet renders that sentence with an ellipsis inside it. That he expected the refusal is in no earlier account. Fox News Digital describes what prompted the motion as prosecutors again raising Clancy’s Catholic faith and sin; the courtroom accounts on this page have the witness bringing the doctrine up himself during the Commonwealth’s direct examination. It does not say where or when counsel spoke, and it does not say whether these are the remarks NBC News reported at about 4:34 p.m.