Story perspectives

Nurse Lindsay Clancy Trial Hinges on Postpartum Psychosis Defense

8/25/2026

Summary

Story summary

Former labor-and-delivery nurse Lindsay Clancy is on trial for killing her three children.
Prosecutors allege Lindsay Clancy planned the murders and sent her husband to fetch medicine and dinner.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argues Lindsay Clancy suffered postpartum psychosis and should not be criminally responsible.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified Lindsay Clancy was clearly psychotic, hearing a male voice ordering the killings.

History

Historical Context

Florida’s 2002 appellate reversal of Andrea Yates’s conviction invoked the DSM-IV’s 10 % postpartum-psychosis rate, reflecting a shift since the 1984 Insanity Defense Reform Act that tightened mental-state defenses. Justice Charles T. Wells’s opinion and similar arguments in the Lindsay Clancy case pressure courts to further refine how severe psychosis influences homicide prosecutions.

1 of 2

Story summary

Former labor-and-delivery nurse Lindsay Clancy is on trial for killing her three children.
Prosecutors allege Lindsay Clancy planned the murders and sent her husband to fetch medicine and dinner.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argues Lindsay Clancy suffered postpartum psychosis and should not be criminally responsible.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified Lindsay Clancy was clearly psychotic, hearing a male voice ordering the killings.

1 / 2