Lindsay Clancy’s five-week murder trial in Massachusetts is nearing closing arguments, with the central issue being whether severe mental illness meant she was not legally responsible for killing her three young children in January 2023. She does not dispute causing their deaths, but her defence argues that postpartum psychosis, hallucinations and delusions left her legally insane; prosecutors say the killings were deliberate and planned.

Clancy, 36, faces three first-degree murder charges over the deaths of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, and could receive life without parole if convicted. Prosecutors allege she strangled the children with fitness bands after arranging for her husband to leave the house, while relatives and experts described her deteriorating mental health, multiple medications and recent psychiatric treatment; her former husband testified that she had become depressed and suicidal.