PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — Social media has turned Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial into its latest obsession, with most users seemingly supporting the defense of a woman accused of murdering her three young children.
Lindsay Clancy appears in court on July 20, 2026. (Gregory Derr, The Patriot Ledger)
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder in the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. She does not deny strangling the children with exercise bands in the family’s Duxbury home, but claims that she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis and thus not responsible for her actions at the time.
While other mothers accused of killing their children, such as Susan Smith and Casey Anthony, have been vilified by the public, a wave of support on social media has not only rallied around Clancy, but has also targeted the team seeking Clancy’s conviction.
“The prosecutors in the Lindsay Clancy case are not only doing a terrible job, but they are disgusting human beings,” TikTok user douglasweinstein posted. A forensic scientist and former crime scene investigator, amy_santoro, told her TikTok audience, “The prosecutors in this case are going to lose the jury.”
Defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh, who served as a prosecutor in Florida in the 1990s, said he wasn’t expecting some of the response he’s seen to the case. “What does surprise me is how quickly some have gone from believing there may be a legitimate mental-health explanation to deciding Lindsay is innocent and the prosecution is the villain. Those are very different conclusions.”
Eiglarsh said he believes the prosecutors are doing “an effective job” presenting their case. “They’re well-prepared, knowledgeable, and clearly understand the evidence.”
New Jersey defense attorney David Bruno, who formerly worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and local prosecutor in New Jersey, said he believes the prosecution has made tactical errors in presenting its case, especially in deciding to call the medical examiner to the stand. The testimony left Clancy sobbing in court and led the prosecutors to impeach their own witness. “What resulted from that, is trying to clean something up from their own witness — which looks horrible, by the way,” Bruno said.
Shanan Buckingham wears a hair bow on July 30, 2026. (CJ Gunther/Boston Herald/Pool)
Much of the criticism aimed at the prosecution has focused on Assistant State Attorney Shanan Buckingham’s choice to wear hair bows each day of the trial. In her opening statement, Buckingham told the jury, “Cora had just turned five. She was sweet, silly smart. She loved sparkly dresses and wearing bows in her hair.” Each day, Buckingham has worn a bow in her hair — an apparent nod to Cora.
“I’m sorry but if a prosecutor in a triple homicide case is using a child victim’s liking of hair bows as a cheap gimmick and a tactic to manipulate the jury whilst torturing the defendant, then I’m going to start worrying about how strong you believe your case, argument and evidence to be,” user Livingmy_bethlife posted on TikTok. Other users have compiled video montages tracking each bow Buckingham has worn.
“That’s improper,” Bruno said of the bows. “If that is the reason [she’s wearing them] … the appellate court may have a problem with that. That’s trying to inject her emotions or her belief into that case.”
“The bows are a significant courtroom optics problem, even if they’re not technically improper,” Eiglarsh agreed. “The prosecutor’s job is to present the evidence, not visually reinforce it. And imagine if the defense lawyer wore a symbol representing Lindsay’s postpartum psychosis. The prosecution would almost certainly call that emotional manipulation. It may not be misconduct, but it’s unnecessary courtroom theatrics. In a case this emotional, let the evidence speak for itself.”
Jennifer Sprague appears in court on July 30, 2026. (CJ Gunther/Boston Herald/Pool)
In addressing how the prosecutors are presenting their case, Bruno said the state may have “got ahead of their skis” by beginning to address the defendant’s sanity before the defense presents its own case. “It’s probably because they anticipated that this was coming, but I was very surprised that they started to go in this direction,” Bruno said. “I guess they felt they needed to show goal-directed and treatment to prove their murder case, but what they did is they brought this issue front and center and let Reddington start laying the bricks of his defense.”
Eiglarsh said he doesn’t see the strategy as a misstep, saying the prosecution had to address mental illness. “If they had ignored the issue, they would have been doing the jury, and the integrity of the trial, a disservice.”
Both Bruno and Eiglarsh agree that the defining point of the case for the jury will likely come down to the experts presented in both the defense’s case-in-chief and the prosecution’s rebuttal. “Who’s going to be the most credible witness, as an expert,” Bruno said. “And who’s the most credible with the facts that they have?”
Testimony resumes on Monday.
