DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — While Lindsay Clancy‘s criminal trial remains in legal limbo after her mistrial last month, her civil case is advancing after one of the defendants filed a response to the malpractice allegations.
Lindsay Clancy appears in court. (Gregory Derr, The Patriot Ledger/POOL)
Clancy, 36, stood trial on charges that she murdered her three young children; at her trial, her defense attorney conceded that she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, but argued that she was not criminally responsible because she was suffering from hallucinations brought on by postpartum psychosis. The jury deadlocked 11-1, with the majority reporting that they wanted to find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.
Before her criminal trial began, Clancy filed a lawsuit accusing the doctors who treated her before she killed her children of malpractice. Her lawsuit, which names several practitioners individually alongside the hospitals where they worked, alleged that she was overmedicated and her treatment was poorly managed.
According to Clancy’s lawsuit and testimony at her trial, she admitted herself to a partial hospitalization program at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I., one month before killing her children. While Clancy had wanted to attend a program designed for women suffering from postpartum depression, she was discharged after one day because the attending psychiatrist determined “that Lindsay had ‘no postpartum depression'” and the clinical team at the hospital felt her symptoms were “more pharmacologically induced than purely depressive.” The doctors who discharged her failed to identify a more appropriate facility for her to receive treatment, the lawsuit alleged.
A new response from an attorney for Women & Infants Hospital said “the contents of [Clancy’s medical records] speak for themselves” and offered a blanket denial of the allegations.
A separate lawsuit, filed by Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, claiming wrongful death on behalf of his three children, did not name Women & Infants Hospital as a defendant.
Lindsay Clancy is scheduled to return to court in her criminal case in November, when both sides will argue additional motions following the mistrial — including those involving the holdout juror in the case. Judge William Sullivan previously denied a renewed motion to dismiss the charges filed by Clancy’s defense team.
