Lindsay Clancy would testify in wrongful death case, Patrick Clancy's attorney says

BOSTON — Lindsay Clancy could testify in a wrongful death suit against her healthcare providers, according to her ex-husband’s attorney.

“You know who hasn’t testified yet? Lindsay Clancy,” Howard Cooper, the lawyer representing Patrick Clancy in a suit against his ex-wife’s mental healthcare providers, said at a hearing in Norfolk Superior Court Wednesday. “We believe that Lindsay Clancy, once her 5th Amendment issues are resolved, one way or another, will testify.”

Cooper said that she would speak to the homicidal tendencies she communicated to the people who treated her in the months before she killed her children.

Outside the courthouse, when asked by reporters if Clancy was ready to get on the stand in the civil case, Cooper said that was a question for her counsel.

“I can’t answer for Lindsay Clancy, but I can tell you that we have good faith to believe that’s what she would say,” Cooper added.

The Herald has reached out to her defense attorney for comment.

Clancy is accused of murdering her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months, in January of 2023 before trying to kill herself in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed.

Her criminal trial at Plymouth Superior Court ended in a mistrial in early September.

Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled the children and couldn’t be held criminally responsible.

Both Patrick and Lindsay Clancy have filed separate, wrongful death suits against the mental healthcare providers that treated the Duxbury mom in the lead-up to the children’s deaths and their practices.

At her trial, both Dr. Jennifer Tufts and Nurse Practitioner Rebecca Jollotta testified under oath that Lindsay Clancy had never told them she had thoughts of harming her kids, something Patrick Clancy and his ex-mother-in-law Paula Musgrove said the defendant had told them less than two months before the children were killed.

In Patrick Clancy’s lawsuit, he claims that Tufts and Jollotta failed to meet standards of mental healthcare.

During the civil case hearing Wednesday, Cooper said there was “extreme negligence committed here.”

“The complete mismanagement of Lindsay Clancy’s mental healthcare became the substantial cause of the murder of her three children,” he said.

Cooper mentioned the dozen or so medications Clancy was prescribed in the lead-up to the children’s deaths, as well as her reports of racing, intrusive thoughts of suicide and also something bad happening to her children.

“There is of course an imminent threat of harm,” Cooper argued. “Even if it’s just suicidal ideation, who is going to take care of the kids if she harms herself?”

Lawyers who represent Jollotta and Tufts, as well as their respective practices, South Shore Health and Aster Mental Health, said that their clients are immune from this type of suit because they are mental health professionals. They asked the judge to dismiss the case.

The only way they could be liable, Jollotta and South Shore’s attorney Timothy Sweetland said, citing Mass General Law, was if Clancy had made explicit threats to harm or kill her children or had a history of violence, and the latter has already been proven to be untrue.

“There’s no clear evidence that she told her providers,” Tufts’ and Aster’s lawyer Mary Alys Azzarito told the court.

Both attorneys acknowledged that the deaths of the children were horrible but said that doesn’t make their clients responsible.

“There is no foreseeability here,” Azzarito said. “It is undeniably tragic.”

Judge Michael Doolin said that he would take the issue under advisement.

Talking to reporters, Cooper said, “This is the opportunity for the children to have a day on the civil side to try to hold accountable people who legally we contend were responsible for their deaths.”

Having raised the issue of Lindsay Clancy’s 5th Amendment right to recuse herself from testimony that might incriminate her, Cooper said that he believes that Patrick Clancy’s civil suit likely won’t go to trial for 18 months for a year, long after the criminal case is resolved.

Lindsay Clancy back in court next week

Lindsay Clancy is expected to be back in Plymouth Superior Court Monday to hear motions from both the defense and prosecution.

Reddington is seeking to dismiss Clancy’s case on double jeopardy grounds, arguing that a mistrial shouldn’t have been declared in part because Judge William Sullivan did not make an individual inquiry of the single, hold-out juror, who the other panelist said wasn’t following the law.

The prosecution filed a memo in opposition to the dismissal motion this week.

“There is no question that the Court properly exercised its discretion in deciding, after it had afforded counsel a full opportunity to be heard and carefully explored the viable alternatives, that the jury was indeed at an impasse and that a mistrial was manifestly necessary,” Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprauge wrote.

Judge Sullivan is also expected to hear arguments on the prosecution’s request to restrain Reddington’s speech to the media, citing the potential impact on future jurors.

Reddington is opposing the motion.

“The harm the government fears is purely speculative,” he wrote. “There is no venire, no jury, and no trial date.”

Plymouth DA Timothy Cruz said that he would wait until the motions pending were decided to announce what charges, if any, Clancy could face at a second trial.

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