Paul Zeizel gave his criminal-responsibility opinion and faced questions about his sources, independence, and public comments. Outside the jury's presence, the judge excluded proposed testimony about McLean Hospital practices while permitting the defense to submit staffing and program records.
Full day summary
Defense expert Paul Zeizel concluded his testimony, offering the opinion that Lindsay Clancy had bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis and, at the time of the killings, could neither conform her behavior to law nor appreciate the wrongfulness of her act. He traced worsening symptoms and treatment efforts, clarified that her January 5 discharge from McLean was not against medical advice, and explained that psychosis could coexist with familiar activities such as driving and internet searches.
On cross-examination, Shanan Buckingham challenged his record review, medication history, impartiality, and early public comments. Zeizel acknowledged that his reports omitted initial mental-status examination results, corrected confusion between trazodone and Zoloft, and clarified that he had reviewed only parts of Resnick's and Spinelli's reports. He said provider records did not contain the reported voice telling Clancy to kill herself and distinguished earlier unspecified voices from the male voice she reported in recounting January 24, 2023. He disputed that his early news-conference discussion of command hallucinations was an assessment of Clancy. The court admitted hospital-record excerpts and the news-conference recording.
On redirect, Zeizel defended empathy as compatible with independent evaluation and said he had seen Clancy 60 times. He described constant one-to-one suicide monitoring at Tewksbury and said his lockup visits addressed stability and competence to stand trial. On final recross, he agreed that she had made no attempt to harm herself in three years other than January 24, 2023.
Outside the jury's presence, former McLean employee Emily Thorndike described historical weekend and holiday practices but acknowledged limits to her knowledge of Clancy's care. The judge found her credible but her proposed testimony of limited materiality and denied permission to call her before the jury. He permitted submission of staffing and program records, which were not admitted during the hearing. An unspecified unforeseen circumstance later prompted adjournment until the next morning, with instructions that jurors not speculate or hold the interruption against either side.
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