Dr. Avram H. Mack, a board-certified forensic psychiatrist, took the stand as the prosecution’s rebuttal witness in the high-profile Lindsay Clancy murder trial, delivering testimony that directly challenged the defence’s insanity claim.
The 36-year-old mother is accused of killing her three children in January 2023 at their Duxbury. Massachusetts home.
According to the defence, she was suffering from extreme postpartum psychosis and manic depressive illness, which made her incapable of appreciating the moral quality of her actions.
Mack, who had met Clancy twice at Tewksbury Hospital in April 2026, stated that there was no evidence of “psychosis in any of her medical records and found that she was suffering from major depressive disorder and not psychosis or bipolar mania. He informed the jury that Clancy “murdered her babies methodically and with organisation in order to achieve a certain aim.”
As per Mack, Clancy told him she heard a “male voice” during the killings that said: “You should kill the kids. This is your last chance, so you can kill yourself,” and that she repeated “Go to God” as she strangled each child.
But Mack believed that the reality testing done by her, which she showed on an occasion when Clancy asked her mother whether she could “hear” her thoughts, proved that she did not have psychosis.
Mack testified: “The feeling of shame that comes from being horrified indicates that she was aware that it had been the wrong thing to do,” concluding that “she retained the capacities that were required for having criminal responsibility.”
During the intense cross-examination conducted by Kevin Reddington, the defence attorney, Mack was grilled on his experience and conclusions. At one point, Judge William F. Sullivan told Mack to “answer the questions” instead of asking his own. Although he admitted Clancy “was in a serious psychiatric state and she was suffering,” Mack stood by his conclusion that she knew what was right and wrong.
Arguments will be concluded early this week as jurors will be deliberating whether Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
