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>> Welcome to the MK True Crime Show. I'm Phil Holloway. I'm a criminal lawyer. I'm a former prosecutor and I'm an ex-cop. I had been in and around this justice system now for about 40 years.
“And I think I know a great true crime show when I see one.”
And guess what? We've got one for you today. I'm pleased to be joined today by my co-host and my friend Ashley Merchett. She's a criminal defense lawyer from the Atlanta Georgia area. Ashley, great to be with you today.
>> Good to see you, Phil. So the Lindsey Clancy Trail has had us all captivated and it is nearing its end with closing arguments and jury deliberations that are underway soon. When this episode will air, we'll actually probably have heard closing arguments or at least the beginning of closing arguments.
But let's take a look back at the Commonwealth's final rebuttal witness today on the show, including the cross-examination of forensic psychologist, Dr. Kirk Heilbrun. >> That's some good stuff, can't wait to get into it. Later on, we're going to get into a controversy, however, that has a risen about appropriate behavior in the Clancy courtroom.
This behavior that apparently has left an independent reporter without press credentials and possibly without a career. >> Yeah, that's kind of interesting. I feel a little bad for her, but we'll talk about that later. Later on the show, though, I'm super excited because my friend and criminal defense attorney
Doug Weinstein is going to join us, and we're going to discuss the Commonwealth's final rebuttal witness, Dr. Gregory Sathoff, and Lindsey's state of mind and more.
But first, Phil, let's talk a little bit about the testimony of Dr. Heilbrun and everything
else that really has been happening in this case in the Lindsey Clancy case. I want to start by sort of keeping our audience up to date. We've heard from a couple of witnesses that we're going to talk about their testimony. We've got some of their shots and some of the good action shots of them.
“But what we expect next is jury charges, and what is that?”
I know you and I have been talking about that sort of off-camera for a little while, what the jury charges were going to be in this case. But I want to talk to our audience a little bit about how jury charges work and how that comes about. And then we can tell them a little bit of what they can expect.
So jury charges are really when the judge actually instructs the jury on what the law says. And I like them a lot, I like to rely on them a lot in my cases, because the jury relies on them a lot. When the judge speaks, jury's tend to listen. And so they read these charges off, and you and I feel have been looking at the charges
on what's called criminal responsibility. And that's really what we've been hearing this entire trial is this criminal responsibility. You know, talking about this forensic psychologist, forensic psychiatrist, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But I just want to start off by, you know, Phil, can you tell our audience what really
happens when the judge charges the jury as they do in Massachusetts on this beyond a reasonable doubt, proof stand for criminal responsibility, because it's different than a lot of states. Yeah, it is. Massachusetts is a little different.
And, you know, this is always, by the way, this is a legal question.
And we're hearing medical witnesses, a lot of times come and give their expert opinion. But really what they're doing is they're giving a medical legal opinion. So it's being more so than pure, purely a medical opinion. So Massachusetts doesn't really call it the insanity defense. I know that here in elsewhere, a lot of people are referring to this as the insanity defense,
just for the ease of having something to call it. But the legal name is lack of criminal responsibility. This rule comes from Commonwealth, the 1967. That case adopted the American law institute's model penal code test.
“Actually, you remember the model penal codes from law school?”
Oh my God, you're saying to me, yeah, I literally, I just got like who's sponsoring you? I know. I know. Yeah, all the lawyers out there, you remember learning the model penal code.
And anyway, don't mean to trigger you, but anyway, the test under the model penal code is that a person is not criminally responsible if at the time of the crime or the would be crime, this person had a mental disease or defect. And as a result, he or she lacked substantial capacity, either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct or to conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the
law. Now, either prong of that is enough. So the Commonwealth must lose on both the cognitive piece and the control piece, if it wants a conviction once the case, once the issue is in the case. Someone might know, actually, that an act is illegal in some thin sense and still lack
a real grasp of its wrongfulness.
And wrongfulness could be moral wrongfulness or criminal wrongfulness, but the second prong of
this test covers people who understand that the act is wrong, but cannot control themselves
Because of a mental disease.
Does that sound like something we've heard in this case?
It sounds like what they've been fighting over this entire day. Yes, really what I think we're going to do in closing arguments, Phil. So in the mental disease or defect, like I said, this is a legal phrase. It's not a medical diagnosis. It does not include an abnormality that's shown only by repeated criminal or anti-social
conduct, but who has to prove what? So the distinctive, I think, massachusetts feature is that the defendant does not have to prove she was insane. Once any evidence comes in that raises this issue or raises a reasonable doubt about criminal responsibility, then the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
was mentally responsible, in other words, the burden of the shifts. It can do that by proving one of three things that she had no mental disease or defect. Well, I think they're going to lose if they try that, that she still had substantial capacity
to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of the conduct into available law.
And so if the jury has a reasonable doubt on that point, the verdict would be not guilty by a reasonable-- excuse me, not guilty by a reason of lack of criminal responsibility. That's where I-- yeah, and that's where I think this is how to fill you know, I really do.
“I think that-- and I think it's important.”
I want to follow up on your model penal code, our law school PTSD. Just for our viewers, when you go to law school, you learn the basic law, the model penal code. What is that? That is the law like a standard, it's sort of like a standard law that the American Bar Association puts out.
There's groups that get together and they say, oh, we're going to come up with what's a model criminal code. We're going to publish this. It can pick it up, they cannot, they can decide to change it, whatever they want. And so they take this model penal code, they use it as the basis to form their own state's
laws. And then every state has the ability to criminalize or decriminalize whatever they want. That's why you see some states marijuana's legal, some states, it's not, you know, you can do that. Every single state has the ability to do that.
They also have the ability to set certain levels of punishment, things like that. So what we see here, which I think is really interesting because a lot of people are asking me, what are you thinking is going to happen in the Lindsey committee trial? Well, in Massachusetts, I think she's going to be found not guilty by a reason of insanity. If she was in Texas, I think she'd be found guilty.
If she was here in Georgia, I think she'd be found guilty. And the reason is, and it goes back to this whole model penal code thing, every state gets to pick their standards, every state gets to pick. You can't get rid of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but this I think is really interesting. I think our viewers are really enjoying this.
“You can't say that you have to keep guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but what you can do”
in a case like this in the state legislature is you can shift the burden. So in Georgia, for example, in Texas and many, many states, the burden is on a criminal defendant to prove beyond what's called a preponderance of the evidence that they are insane at the time of the offense. So we've been arguing over this in Georgia for years that it's unfair, because why are
you making someone who's legally insane, prove something, you know, you're shifting the burden. Well, it's legal. They said it's legal and it's legal. So in Georgia, the defendant has to prove it beyond a preponderance of the evidence, which
is about roughly 75% but in Massachusetts, the state, what you were just reading, filled the state has the burden of disproving sanity. So essentially, they have to prove sanity or disproved insanity beyond a reasonable doubt, which is huge. That is huge.
And we'll talk about that in a minute as we go through some of the experts that have testified because when there's a conflict in the evidence to me, that is reasonable doubt.
“And I think that's what we're going to be hearing during the closing arguments.”
I want to get to this doctor, how I'll run the whole thing about where he asks Lindsey Clancy about whether suicide is a mortal sin.
I want to get to that in a second because that's really interesting.
But what you and I have just been talking about shows that this is truly a complicated legal question. This is not easy black and white stuff, which is honestly why it's a little frustrating when I go on social media and you see people who see this case and they see, okay, well, she is their mom.
She killed them. That's it in the story, she's killed three of a crime. Well, it honestly, it's just not black and white. And it's not black and white that she's insane either. The people who say, well, clearly, you know, she's, she was legally insane.
She was failed by her doctors and all this, therefore she's not guilty. It's not that easy either. This is a, it's a really, really complicated jury question that the, the jury's going to have to come up with when they reach their verdict. But let's talk about Dr. Halbrun.
He's testified that he asked Lindsey about suicide as a mortal sin and, and actually, we keep seeing this, um, rear it's head during this trial. Let's take a look. It's not one.
Strangling each trial.
She said, go to God, baby. Go to God.
“And that was part of her expectation that she and the children would be together in heaven”
with God. She was raised as a Catholic and this, as I understand, Catholic considerations, that's not necessarily what happens, but, but when I ask her about that, when I said, isn't suicide a mortal sin, yeah, I see Council over here. Wow, Phil, I was watching that live and I was like, whoa, and then immediately, we've
got shot too, where Kevin Reddington asks for a mistrial and, you know, we've been talking about this a lot lately. We didn't think he wanted a mistrial, but I think the prosecution just pushed him over the line, um, if we can take a listen, a shot too. This has been a obviously a long trial and a lot of work on the pad of everybody involved
from the court to the staff to the prosecutors, to myself and needles to say, the strain on Lindsey Clancy. I have to move for a mistrial, reluctantly. The reason is that this is intentional on this conduct on the pad of the prosecution. You know, that this whole idea of injecting Roman Catholic faith, the concept of model
sin, um, into this trial based on your ruling in the past, in conjunction with the fact that they'd brought it up again. Um, I believe it was intentional in this conduct, and I feel that the court should grant a motion from this trial.
You know, um, he did not ask for a mistrial the first time, and you know, I think the
reason for that would be, you know, he feels like he's winning, right?
“And a mistrial could mean that you got to do it all over again, but here's the thing, if”
the prosecutor pushes the defense to the point of basically having to ask for a mistrial. We call that go to go AD if they are go did into, it's a legal term folks. I'm not talking about Billy Goats. Okay. It's if you're go, if the prosecution goes the defense into, um, asking for one, based on
something that they've caused, and if it's granted, guess what? There is no retrial. No double jeopardy. Double jeopardy would prevent, um, a retrial under those circumstances. It's not like a, a mistrial based on a hung jury, which could actually happen in this
case, too. Right. But you know, the judge denied the motion for mistrial, actually, and he was obviously unhappy about it. He told the jury that her religion was absolutely an inappropriate area of testimony and
instructed them to disregard it completely. So, you know, the question is, okay, if the judge is so upset by it, why would he be why would he not grant the mistrial? Yeah.
You know, it's, it's always a tough call for judges.
It's, it's a tough call for lawyers, too, because you got to really think about all the different things that are going into a trial. You've got a lot of cost in trial. You've got a lot of time. You've got members of the community, which, you know, a judge is a representative of
a member of that community, members of the community. They're giving up significant parts of their life to sit on this jury. There's a lot of work that's involved to get there, getting all of these experts. I mean, just think about how much work it is to get all these folks to testify. To get all of them in the same room, to go through all of this, to coordinate all the news,
all the media, you know, all the different players. It's a lot, coordinate bailiffs, I mean, there's just a lot involved. And so the judge doesn't want to do that again. Nobody wants to do that again. So, mistrial is really the last thing that anybody wants.
But I think Kevin Rettington was signaling to the judge when he said intentional misconduct that what you were talking about, there's goating them into a mistrial, telling the judge, hey, if you grant a mistrial, not only can you grant a mistrial, but you can actually find that it's intentional now because they've done it twice. So, now you're protected on the record judge.
“If you do this, if you want to grant the mistrial and actually say that it's, you know,”
double jeopardy would now bar the prosecution, the retrial of this case again. I think that judges are hesitant to do that.
They always want a jury to make the decision, but I think the judge was really frustrated
because one thing judges don't want is to have to try a case twice. So, the last thing this judge wants is to have the jury convict. And then this being issue that comes up on appeal. And I think it could come up on appeal. So, I think the judge might be thinking that the state is losing here and thinks that it's
going to resolve itself a lot of times judges when they don't grant them as trial. It's because they think the defense is actually winning. And they think it's easier if they just get a not guilty verdict because then nobody has to let it get it again, nobody has to deal with it on appeal, nothing like that. And everybody's put in so much work.
They don't want to just, you know, start all over again. And, you know, I guess they would feel like maybe they wasted time money and all this stuff.
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Today to get started.
“Speaking of this particular doctor, this doctor diagnosed Lindsay with bipolar 2, right?”
He noted, now bipolar type 2 is a little bit different from my, as a lawyer, I deal with people with various degrees of mental health issues. So from my lay person slash lawyers knowledge of this, why I can tell you is that type 2 bipolar, the, the lows may not get us low, but particularly the highs when they go into Mamia, they don't get quite so high.
That's why I call it high poemania. So he said that the, she definitely had a, she had depressive episodes. She did not have any episodes that sounded like typical Mamia to him. So that's why he went with type 2. He says that he does not believe he being Dr. Halburn does not believe Lindsay suffered
a command hallucination on the day her children died, which by the way directly contradicts what the defense psychiatrist Dr. Resenix said.
But he, he basically says that, you know, she definitely has this complicated mental health
disorder, and she has these, you know, intrusive thoughts. And so my question is, what is the difference between an intrusive thought, something
“that's really that intrusive versus maybe an audit, audit Tory hallucination?”
I don't really understand the difference. Not much, right, not much at all, and I don't think the jury understands there to be much of a difference at all, because if you have a command hallucination, it's essentially telling you to do something, where you could be hallucinating that you saw something for example, and you could be scared of that, and you could take action, that you saw that,
let's say that you, you know, you saw a man, and they were shooting it to you. And so you shot back, well, no one commanded you to shoot back. You shot back because you hallucinated that someone was trying to kill you. That would be just a regular hallucination. But if it's a command hallucination, somebody is commanding your brain to tell you to shoot
that person. So you're not reacting to a hallucination, you're reacting to a command. So they're a little bit different, but I think what, you know, Mr. Rettington actually pressed the doctor on whether this psychiatrist, and I want to play this stuff, I think it's really fascinating.
It's a lot to talk about about this one. It's that five, where he pressed the doctor about whether the psychiatrist had adequately questioned Lindsay about the intrusive thoughts versus hearing voices. If we could play that five, and then I want to talk about some of the things that popped in my head when I heard this.
It's she indicated in that quote from your testimony, horrible intrusive thoughts. She had thoughts about hearing herself, these thoughts did anyone, anyone, say to her, are these thoughts, are these coming from outside your head, are they coming from inside your head, are they male voices, are they female voices, or anybody ask anything about thoughts what they were, according to the medical records, not according to your guess.
That's a standard question that psychiatrists ask at the beginning of each appointment. That's a standard mental status question. Did any one of those psychiatrists ask Lindsay, can I see that question according to the medical records? Anyone?
Ms. Clancy completed the answer to those questions. What kind of number of occasions, if I'm I? Question. No, we're good. What questions?
Finish that question, I'll let you have that question. Okay. Question such as, are you hearing voices, if so, describe those and so on, and the typical response that she gave, and as part of a question like that was, no. Actually, it's a very astute observation by our producer Michelle.
It sounds to me like what he's describing is that her completing a written intake questionnaire at the doctor's office, I can intake form, not really speaking directly to a physician about
Some serious symptoms that she might want to conceal or might be inclined to ...
That's exactly what this was.
“That's what I picked up on, completing the answer means you're doing an intake form.”
It's not like an intake form where you're filling out your address and things like that. They've got actual scales where you go and you fill out answers to questions, but it's self-responding, you're actually answering the things, the questions. That's what most of these psychological tests actually are. I think a lot of people find that shocking when they hear that and how it usually works
as a psychologist, administrators, the tests, but administrators means then the test, give them the directions, let them fill out the questionnaire, and then they do an interpretation of it, and then psychiatrists are the ones that actually tweak the actual diagnosis and the medical intervention if there is any if there's medication, anything like that. Yeah.
It's a form. All right. Actually, before we wrap up this particular segment and get to our guest, Doug Weinstein interestingly. Next segment, we've got to talk about the green dress controversy, right?
“So we have this, well, you tell us, what is the green?”
Oh my gosh. What is the green dress controversy? I actually feel really bad for her, and I feel bad for her because I'm one of those people that sometimes maybe responds a little bit inappropriately to situations. The green dress girl was a lady a journalist who was in the courtroom, and we've got a
thought of her. We'll play in a minute, but she was a lady who was in the courtroom, and she got picked out by the news media because she was smiling and winking in a camera during what is a very upsetting trial, obviously three young children or killed by their mother, it's an emotional case.
So she was probably reacting a little bit inappropriately, so we can play sought nine. So her dad was texting her, so I totally get this because you can oftentimes, you know, we're in trial, we're really heavy things are happening, but we still have lives on the outside. And so sometimes maybe I'll get a text from my kids that they got home from school or something
and I'll see it when I'm in trial, and I always try very hard as a lawyer to sit there
and look, you know, stoic and not show emotions, but it happens. I really feel bad for her. She has gone on later to explain why she smiled and smirked that she had just gotten a text from her dad and that this has apparently just really, I mean, it's really affected her. She lost a job she had writing for one of the magazines she was writing for.
“Let me, let me, let me, don't mean to interrupt you, but I think we can, I think I could talk”
over that video if we just show it again real quick because she was there for Vanity Fair and Vanity Fair issue to a statement in her name is Brittany Romano, right? We were interested in the prospect of a personal essay by Brittany Romano about her experience growing up with Lindsey Clancy. After clear conflicts with our editorial standards and processes, we informed Romano that
we were not moving forward with her essay and informed the court that she is no longer credentialed by Vanity Fair. So that's Vanity Fair. I know, I mean, I understand, but I don't feel like she was meeting anything wrong. She's actually gone on and thought 10 and explained why she did that if we could play that
before we move on. Like, smiled and went into the camera, did you know you did that and why? Well, no, I was laughing because I grew up with this thing. You did? Yeah, so she looks at me and I look at her and I'm like, but it wasn't that my dad has
a previously armed court TV and he said, "I look bad."
So I was like, "Giglake, you're amazing."
My dad runs, he's retired, he's your own post offices, but we'll run that. We'll not go further. Now he's on the board, I couldn't get out of college. That's a great role. He was like, come to me, my children were more problematic than ever, but he was like,
"You look so bad in the photo earlier," so I'm like, "I'm terrible." I don't know, but he's funny. He's so I'm like, "I'm friends with her, the stuff that I was like a really a friend of mine and she was like, "What the hair back at a cliff?" and then she was like, "Look for her and it's my job."
Well, you can check her out on Instagram where she has additional things to say about it. She says that she smiles when she's trying to push through anxiety or when she's uncomfortable and hey, look, I kind of feel bad for her that this whole thing got made about her when it's really not supposed to be about her, but the next segment though, it is going to be
about me actually and you and also about our friend Doug Weinstein, he's in a Lanza area lawyer, personal friend of mine, personal friend of yours too, actually. He's going to be here to discuss the final witnesses in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial that we're in.
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It's good to have you. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here and it's good to see you. I'm happy to see you. I haven't seen you in a while.
We spent quite some time together back when the YSL trial for those of you that were watching that was going on, but now we're here to talk about Lindsey Clancy, but before we get into the final witness in the Lindsey Clancy trial, I want to talk about how everyone has been watching this so closely, but I really want to know Doug, what your thoughts on the trial are so far.
You know, I don't know that my thoughts are very different from most attorneys that have been watching this trial, which is that the prosecution's doing a terrible job, and then
you contrast that with the amazing job from Kevin Reddington, and it's really spectacular.
It's hard to believe these prosecutors have been doing this for what 15 years. No, no, there's season prosecutors and they've tried a lot of cases. Well, you know, I don't know how much of this is Reddington and how much is them. It just feels like their inability to present a cogent compassionate humane case is stunning to me.
And that's not really Reddington.
“I think that's an interesting choice of words.”
And how would they prosecute or go about putting on a compassionate humane case, particularly when the accused person is accused of murdering three children? I mean, I think, and the reason I'm saying that is that you normally, I think, would expect prosecutors to kind of go for the swing for the fence on this, and I wouldn't expect
them to try to be humane and compassionate.
I'm curious to know how that might look. Well, I think if you would just, as a prosecutor, demonstrate some basic humanity with the witnesses that you're presenting, I didn't get any sense of that when they were examining Patrick at all. The examination that they conducted of the medical examiner, when they went into such
excruciating detail, which, you know, we've all done murder trials. We know that you're going to have testimony from the medical examiner, but it doesn't need to be nearly as graphic as they did it here. The, also, on to nose, a bit about wearing the hair bows. Oh, my God.
I don't think I started about the bows. Yeah, I mean, it felt like it was pandering. I'm not saying that you need to stand up there and say, oh, oh, poor Mrs. Clancy over here,
“but I think you have to have some appreciation in front of the jury that you understand”
what everybody is going through. The way that they, she crossed examined her mother, her mother-in-law, was just something that seemed to exhibit no understanding of the grief and the trauma that everyone involved in this has gone through it. Yeah, the grandparent, sure, victims as well.
I saw that a lot, especially with Patrick. I mean, when, when she questioned Patrick and made that poor man talk about the kids birthday parties. I mean, the fact that you had a door, the explorer of birthday party, I mean, and I don't remember what it was.
My kid had a door or a party, but, you know, the fact that they had a door or a birthday party for age four, like those were things that, that's not an element of the case. It's not relevant to the facts of issue, and that just seemed like piling on to me. And it was painful. It was clearly painful to Patrick.
It was painful to everybody in that courtroom.
“I think the jury is going to be angry about that because that is not compassionate.”
You know, the question is very, it's very simple here. It actually is very simple. It is whether or not she had control of her own brain at the time, essentially. So, you know, they didn't need to go into how old these kids were and what, they had at their birthday parties and, you know, how great the, the family life was and how tragic
this is. I'm pretty sure everybody understood that. It'll be interesting when we hear from the jurors how that came across to them.
I also think, and I'm curious about what you think Doug, I think Kevin runnin...
sort of met that, and maybe he's gone overboard a little bit because of that, which
I'm all there for.
“I've enjoyed every minute of it, but it's, you know, to me, if the state doesn't go”
very deep into something, I don't necessarily go that deep into it either. I feel like he's sort of matched them, and that may be why he's gone a little bit overboard. I've heard some people talking about how he went, you know, maybe he's gone a little overboard. Maybe he has a little bit, but I still love it.
I'm curious when you think about that, if it's sort of, you know, matching, uh, when you're saying going overboard, what's specifically are people saying where he went overboard and then I could respond to that? Yeah, you know, it's not so much just anything like one instance, but he has gone over certain reports multiple times.
And I know he's trying to really build a record and trying to just establish that, but, you know, beating up the experts, which lets me honest, the experts have been really easy to beat up on, you know, particularly the ones this week, which we're going to talk about in a minute, but you know, maybe beating them up a little bit too much.
“You know, I think that, I think he's leveraging the fact that the state has looked so”
in unsympathetic in those circumstances. I think it's almost part of the theme. He's done a wonderful job of humanizing, I think, his client throughout the testimony. He's done wonders with using the state's own experts in order to present his case, which, of course, is what, what we're all trying to do when the state is presenting their witnesses, but I don't, I don't know that he's gone overboard.
I think that he's got certain points that he really wants to hammer home to the jurors. And that is, that is what he's been doing? Doug, I want to get into some of the actual expert testimony with you, because I know that you've been watching this very closely. We have Dr. Gregory Sathoff, who is FBI Behavioral
Analysis Unit, forensic psychiatrist. He was the third and final rebuttal witness for
the Commonwealth. His testimony began Tuesday afternoon. He says he's previously treated between five and seven female patients who were incarcerated for killing their children. He's the senior psychiatrist for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico. He says he's not being paid for his testimony. That's come up quite a bit, but a be that as it may. He has interviewed Lindsey Clancy personally via Zoom twice
for a total of around 11 hours. He says, reviewed medical and court records. He's also interviewed Patrick Clancy by Zoom. He affirmed Dr. Heilbrun's testimony that Lindsey's description of a command hallucination was highly atypical. I want to play slot 11 Doug, which is his comments on that and then I want to talk to you about it on the other side. It's not alone. It wouldn't necessarily just keep playing over and over again as if it were
on a tape, which Ms. Clancy told me that it was a voice. It's the same thing in the same tone, repeated over and over until she had strangled count. And is it typical based on your training experience for someone to hear command hallucinations and them for them to stop abruptly? I know committing the act is not my curative of the voice. I've not ever seen that.
Doug, what do you think? Is that an effective testimony that would favor the Commonwealth
“there that might help move the needle for the jury on this?”
You know, it seems to me that almost any discussion given the Massachusetts standards for NGRI for not go by recent insanity, any testimony that really gets into the voices in her head where she is being commanded is almost more helpful. I think to the defense thing to the Commonwealth. I mean, it has to be addressed, right? It has to be addressed, but this idea that there's this external voice, there seem to be some contradictory testimony as to
whether it was external or internal, but this voice that's commanding you would seem to seem to favor the defendant, would seem to favor Lindsay to me. All together, you know,
I thought the mode and you may be about to get to this, but I thought the most important
testimony today was the very last question that Reddington asked during his cross of satoff where he read the Commonwealth's opening statement and asked satoff at satoff agreed with
It.
I think that was very powerful as well. I mean, that was definitely one of the most powerful.
I actually don't think this witness was that detrimental to the defense. I mean, you know, he, I think Kevin Reddington turned him on a lot of things and I almost feel like he felt bad at certain points. I loved the fact, I think one of the really strong things that they had him do was support the defense's expert when Kevin Reddington asked him, you know, about the defense's expert and isn't he a really well-known source, you know, is he
one of your trusted colleagues that bolstered their expert. I think that was really powerful testimony. I think that's going to help. We actually do have what you were talking about
“if you want to take a listen at satin 19, that's where he's talking about the prosecutions”
opening argument and I think it's great. Well, she made a calculated decision. She was a woman who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted. It was getting hotter and hotter for her to control. And when she saw the opportunity to escape, she made the selfish choice to take it and to take Corra, Dawson, and Calen
first before attempting to take her own life. Continuing on, sir, she chose to manipulate
her providers. Seek out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious and when she didn't get what she expected. She chose the alternate route. She would seek a different doctor. She would change medications after days. She disengaged from treatment that she didn't like the plan and after only four months in treatment. She made a choice. A deliberate and intentional decision that she did not want to try anymore, and because
no one could take care of her kids the way she wanted them to. She had to take them with
“her too. Would you agree that the evidence in your opinion supports that contention, sir?”
I think that statement that you were at really minimizes what she was going through. That was a win for Reddington. That was one of those great cross-examination. I just could have backed fire. What if the answer wasn't what he was expecting? I know. Did you know the answer to the question? That is exactly what I was thinking.
I'm like, that is a daring question. I mean, we always say only ask leading questions
on cross-examination. You know the answer to, I mean. Anyway, I want to go back though just a little bit too. I want to disagree a little bit with both of you guys, even though I love you both, and we're all colleagues here in the Atlanta area with all practices. I know we live for disagreements. I see this a little bit differently. I think that SatHalf actually kind of did help the prosecutors case, because
I think what he's kind of getting at and what they're getting at with him is that maybe she's malingering. Maybe there was no voice. Maybe it didn't exactly exist because they're saying that she was Lindsey was inconsistent in reporting when this voice began. For example, she told SatHalf and others that the voice began when she was at the refrigerator, getting ready to make dinner for the kids, immediately after she got off the phone with Patrick.
However, she told Spanelli, Dr. Spanelli, that the voice began as soon as Patrick left the house. In fact, let's talk, let's play slot 12, which is SatHalf on alleged inconsistent reporting by Lindsey on the voice. There are also other accounts that she made to individuals that were quite a bit different to Dr. Spanelli, for example. She said that the voice happened at 5.10 or 5.15 p.m.,
as soon as Patrick Clancy left on his errands. When I asked her about the voice that she heard, again, she said that it started early right after the telephone call at 5.34 with whether husband. So, Phil, can I respond to that? Please.
I'm here, so what you're saying is that a woman that is undergoing a psychotic break has difficulty remembering the exact timing of when non-existent voices begin speaking to her when she's interviewed by different experts, months and months and months after the incident.
“I mean, if it was consistent, you should be the one across examining the doctor because”
that's a great point. Right, I think your point is very well taken. The doctor's job
There as a state's witness is to try to maybe get the jury to believe that sh...
all this up and then a lawyer like Doug can come along and kind of make the point that
you just made, Doug. Well, look, I think if Ashley was prosecuting this case, which I don't believe she ever would, but if Ashley's prosecuting this case, and this defendant had given perfectly consistent statements over and over and over again, the doctor's health care workers other people, then the prosecutor, Ashley, maybe, is going to say, well, this is rehearsing.
“He's practically totally over again, and that's the only way it could be so consistent.”
Right, I would, I would hit that, you know, on your point, you feel about this malingering and the question with this, with this doctor, I loved. And I don't think we have a side of this. I heard it. I was actually letting my dogs out at lunch and I heard this and I remember because I had my phone outside and I was letting the dogs out and I was like, yes, he asked, um, writing to and asked this doctor if he would agree that the defenses expert
was one of the world renowned experts on malingering. And I was like, yes, so I think that is something we're going to hear again and, and closing arguments about this malingering, you know, whether or not, and again, to our viewers malingering is lying. I don't know why we can't just call it lying, but we call it malingering because we think that sounds fancier. Um, if we don't want to call people liars, so we call them malingers. So, you know, tell your kids next time you
don't want to say they're lying, you're malingering. Use that one on them. There you go. Well,
“that's why my favorite words that I learned once had to came a criminal defense attorney that”
I had never used in my prior decades of life. So, right, when would you ever use the word malingering?
I mean, ever, I wanted to mention that, you know, Phil and I were talking about that before the show. I think a lot of people don't realize how much, um, the law and medicine sort of intersects, but this trial has been one of those really prime opportunities for everyone to see, you know, that these doctors have to know the legal standards and lawyers have to know these medical standards. So it's interesting to know how they sort of intersect. Yeah. And you see these experts too. You see
these experts who have testified these doctors who have testified repeatedly in the court, they know the pitfalls. So for example, I was at, was it, was that high-alburn? It's an high-alburn. High-alburn. High-alburn. High-alburn. I think he's the one when he started talking about the Massachusetts standards for NGRI. He actually said, look, the judge is going to explain you what it is. I'm not teaching you the law, but from what my understanding is, I believe he's the one
that did that. It could have been mac, but I don't think Mac was good enough to have done that.
“No, I didn't. It was Kirk. And I like to call him Kirk, because that's how Rhettington asked Mac.”
To call him Kirk. Yeah. But yeah, they do. I mean, I took a class in law school law on psychiatry and it actually had students from the fabulous University of Florida. The medical school actually sends their doctors that are going to become psychiatrists over to the law school and they take a class with the future lawyers on law and psychiatry. So I mean, this is definitely a discipline. Yeah. And by the way, I think Kirk, since we've stumbled on the Kirk for a moment,
or maybe I dragged this there, I'm not sure. Kirk should have been your last person. Easy market. Yeah. No, I think Kirk was a far, far, far better witness than sat off. And I think they should have closed with him. And I don't know how Kirk would have answered Rhettington's question. That's a good point. I don't know if he would have instantly. I don't think the state really knows where to stop in this one. I think that's part of their prosecution. They don't know
where to stop. We see that program. The cross examinations, there was a couple of other points. You know, Rhettington emphasized that, you know, sat off interviewed Lindsay twice via Zoom more than three years after the killings and two interviews occurred in May in June of 2026, Rhettington argued that sat off was relying on Lindsay's retrospective statements and records to reconstruct her mental status at the time. I want to take a listen to slot 17, which is
sat off saying he never heard Lindsay speak on the 911 call. But instead rely on Patrick's report
that Lindsay had said she attempted suicide. Seeing the medical records, you know what the injuries were. You know the damage to a throat, you know the damage to a thyroid, right? Yes. And is it your testimony to a reasonable degree of Dr. certainty that a person with those injuries with the description drugs that were crushed up as she consumed with a broken neck would be able to have a conversation. Based on the witness testimony from her husband. Yes. Okay. So let's put
the witness testimony from Patrick aside for a minute. And you listened to the 911 call. Are you telling the jury that she had a conversation that you could discern what she was saying?
Not on the 911 call.
Yes for whatever.
Yeah. So he's taken, he's doing a good job and he's basically leading the
“witness around by the nose, so to speak on cross examinations, which is what a good lawyer would do, right?”
Yes absolutely. Yeah. And he also kept, and there was a, I think it was today. There was a whole string of questions where sat off, a lot of what sat off was testifying to was due to information that he solely gleaned from Patrick. The drugs crushed up, the powder, sat off was making a lot of assumptions about what that was, what that powder was. I mean, there was a lot of things that he had only learned from Patrick, which I thought it was great cross exam. I don't
like that it feeds into the, excuse me, but the Patrick did it crazy that are out there. Right.
And if you're, you're one, forgive me. But um, no, I don't like that. I don't think that's, I don't think that's writing tends to fence that Patrick did it. But um, he did a great job just showing that sat off was basing a lot of his analysis on essentially hearsay. Actually, before you take a sound, I just want to point out that Reddington got sat off to concede that a person in psychosis can misremember events or even have false memories. Now, if you close this case,
“right from the defense perspective on that pit of testimony, and I think you can use that right”
in your closing arguments that we're about to see, um, you know, or that that's the show is dropping
this, you know, these closings are today. If you close this trial out with the, the state's own witness conceding that, you know, psychosis can cause people to misremember or have false memories, it kind of, you know, lays the blanket over every time they want to point out something that Lindsey may have said that was inconsistent with some other statement. Um, and I think it's a really, really strong point to make there right at the end of the case, right before closing arguments.
Yeah, no, I definitely do as well. Well, Doug, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell our audience where they can find you, or they can follow you? Sure. Um, you can follow me on Twitter,
“just actually, you're going to have to like search for my name because I've been in St. Handel.”
I'm on TikTok as Douglas Weinstein, just all one word. If you can spell it, then you can definitely follow me. Um, and not so anyway, you can see me there Facebook everywhere. So I'm all over social media, um, stating time. I tend to, I tend to, I tend to want to ask. So people can find you there, I tend to, the, the, the socials for the program here will tag you as well, Doug. So we'll make it easy for folks to find you. Yeah. Awesome. I'm all over the place. Thank you guys for having
me on and, and Phil, it's been too long. I really enjoyed all the conversations we had right around the time of why I sell it. I'm glad I'm glad that we can have another one. All right. Yep. We'll have you back anytime, buddy. Thanks so much. Thank you. Right, everyone. Yeah, it's a stay tuned. We've got our closing arguments up there. Like me, you might already own a firearm, but we need to start sometimes with less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the
trigger. This is where Burna comes in. That's BYRNA. Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammunition and are designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes. And Burna is excited to introduce the all new compact launcher. It's sleek, slim, and it hits like a sledgehammer. The same size as a smartphone, allowing everyone to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence. Their pistols are American made and hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana,
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just want to remind everyone we're available everywhere you get your podcast. So check us out there. If all you can do is listen on the way to work. We'll take it but we also want you to watch us on video.
Check us out on YouTube because a lot of our content, a lot of the elements i...
has a video as well as an audio component to it. So please check us out both on podcast and on
YouTube. Now with that being said, it's time for our closing arguments. Actually, I know you've got something great planned for us. So I want to talk about what it's like to wait for a verdict as a criminal defense lawyer because likely most people are listening to this while we're waiting on a verdict in the Lindsey Clancy trial. I equated to a surgeon who's been spending years trying to perfect that one operation and then performing it. You spent weeks preparing. You've lived the case.
You've dissected all of the facts, every single witness, every single piece of evidence. You know this case backward and forward and you feel so prepared to present it to a jury. Then you walk out of that operating room or courtroom, whatever it might be, and you wait, which is horrible. It is a miserable experience to have to wait for a verdict. Behind the doors, behind the operating room doors or the court indoors, is the answer to one question.
Will my client or my patient? Will they live? Will they live on the outside? Will they have freedom? And I compare this job to being a doctor because most people have actually been to a doctor. Most people know what that feels like. They know what it feels like to sit in a waiting room.
They know what it feels like to wait for the results of a test. But most people have never actually
been to a lawyer. They know someone who's had surgery, but they don't know anybody who's gone to trial. It's very rare that you admit someone who's actually experienced a jury trial.
“And honestly, this job is most like being an oncologist out of all doctors. You know a doctor”
treating cancer and why? Well, because with cancer, the questions that you get are always the same. How much? How aggressive is it? How much time do I have? Those are the types of things that an oncologist has to answer when they're facing their client. For a criminal defense lawyer, when a client walks through your door, let's say they have an inoperable tumor, stage five. Just like when someone is charged with a crime has all of this evidence sitting against them,
presenting to you what appears to be an inoperable tumor. It appears to be a death sentence. And what do they say to you? Just like they say to the doctor, do whatever you can to save me. I need you to save me. You think, okay, well, let me see what I can do. You pull every rabbit out of every hat that you have. You mentally prepare for trial. And you even convince yourself as you look at the evidence and think, how could we possibly lose this case? That's the coolest
“part of the job because to really be good at it, you have to believe. Even if the case is terrible,”
even if the facts are against you, when you stand in front of 12 people and believe what you're arguing, that's a good lawyer. You look at the chicken scratch that you've made out of chicken shit. And you convince yourself, no, this is something. My client is innocent. My client did not do this. And then you go and you try to convince 12 other people of it. And when it works, you're a genius. You're a mastermind. You're on top of the world. You play every decision,
over and over in your head, every question, every objection because you want to memorize how you succeeded. You want to learn how to do it over and over again. What worked? What didn't work? But when it doesn't work and your client gets convicted, you replay it just the same. Every single decision, every single question. Every moment that you could have gone left, but instead you chose
to go right. And here's what most lawyers know that nobody else does. We don't make the facts.
We don't get to pick what case walks through our door. We don't get to pick what comes out in discovery. Sometimes you get the stage five inoperable tumor. Sometimes you get the client with so little evidence against them that you think, oh my gosh, how could 12 people ever convict this person? However, well, you don't get to choose the patient. Just like you don't get to choose your client. You don't get to choose the disease. And you get the case that you get and you're stuck with it.
And your job is to fight like hell with what you have. So then after all the sleepless nights,
“all of the work you're doing on the case, all of the arguments, you have to walk out of that”
for them and do the hardest thing ever. After you've stood up for your client, you've fought for them. You have to hand their life over to 12 strangers and wait. And it is absolutely agony. It is brutal. Thank you for joining me. Hopefully we'll have a verdict by the time you're listening to this, so you don't have to wait as long as we did. And of course, Ashley is right about what she says, although I would say whether you're a defense lawyer or any lawyer trying any kind of case,
the verdict is the hardest, waiting on the verdict is just the hardest thing. I think more so,
Though, for defense lawyers, thank you very much, Ashley.
on this program, the MK True Crime Show, as well as on this platform MK True Crime, with our
“sister shows. We've all been talking about this Lindsey Clancy case quite a bit. And of course,”
today's show is devoted to this trial. And so I wanted to take a minute to talk about more broadly
the insanity defense. And how it came into existence and why we even have it in the first place,
because this is what is at the heart of the trial. This is at the heart of what the jury is going to have to decide. The insanity defense came into existence because at English common law, way, way back, common law held that criminal punishment requires moral blame. Blame requires a guilty mind, as well as a guilty act. A person to disordered to understand what he or she is doing, or to not know that it is wrong, cannot form that kind of guilty mind that
“the law requires. And therefore, as a matter of law, this person simply cannot just be punished.”
13th century jurist Henry DeBrackton put it like this, a madman can no more commit a felony
than a brute animal because he lacks the will to harm. Later writers compared the insane it to children, young children who cannot tell good from evil. Sir Edward Cook declared that a madman is punished by his madness alone. And by the way, it has long been accepted in the law that punishment of the insane serves no deterrent purpose whatsoever. Very early courts dealt with insanity by usually convicting the accused, but then by seeking a royal pardon. The wild beast
test, as it was known in 1724, demanded total deprivation of understanding. The classic statement
“came in Rex V Arnold 1724. Edward Arnold shot and wounded Lord onsloat. Just as Tracy told the”
jury that to be excused, the accused must be a man that is totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and does not know what he is doing no more than an infant, a brute, or a wild beast. The 1843 Macnauton rules required a defect of reason from disease of the mind so that the accused did not know the nature of the act nor that it was wrong. In modern American practice, most states still use some version of that cognitive test. Some add this irresistible impulse or
substantial capacity standard. Federal law, after the John Hinckley case, after Hinckley shot President Reagan, federal law requires the defendant to prove by clear and convincing evidence that severe mental disease made him unable to appreciate the nature or wrongfulness of the act. Four states have abolished the traditional affirmative defense now and allow mental illness only to negate intent. A successful plea of not guilty by a reason of insanity usually means
long psychiatric commitment, not freedom. And that, by the way, is what would happen to Lindsay Clancy in the event that she is found not guilty. Critics call the insanity defense a loophole for the dangerous and the well-funded. They argue that expert battles like the ones we're seeing in the Clancy trial are unreliable and that jury cannot tell genuine illness from faking or malingering.
They say terrible acts should bring criminal responsibility and that public safety must come first.
Now, it's finally worth noting that the insanity defense is actually very rarely raised and rarely succeeds yet. It remains deeply controversial and we'll have to leave it right there and we'll see what happens on the jury verdict here on the Clancy case. Keep it right here on this platform M.K. True Crime. Before we let you go, one more reminder, please subscribe to the M.K. True Crime Show on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, subscribe to us all over where you get your podcast.
Thank you, Ashley Merchant, my co-host today and thanks to our guest Doug Weinstein and thank you, our audience for being with us and we hope you have a great rest of your week. [BLANK_AUDIO]
