Day 19 - August 24, 2026

Kevin Reddington completed his questioning of prosecution psychiatrist Avram Mack, challenging his prior expert work, evaluation methods, and interpretation of Lindsay Clancy's symptoms. Mack maintained his diagnosis of a major depressive episode within major depressive disorder and his opinion that Clancy retained substantial capacity to appreciate wrongfulness. He acknowledged serious psychiatric suffering without adopting counsel's characterization of her symptoms as psychosis. He agreed that her MMPI was valid and showed no indication of malingering or exaggeration, but cautioned that it was not a lie detector. On redirect, the recorded expert interview was admitted as exhibit 292 without objection. Prosecution forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun then described his records review, interviews, and testing. Although he and Mack conducted joint interviews, Heilbrun said they wrote independent reports and disagreed on diagnosis. He diagnosed bipolar II disorder, relying substantially on Tewksbury treatment records while acknowledging difficulty identifying clear manic symptoms. He favored suicide accompanied by killing the children to prevent perceived suffering, which he termed altruistic filicide, over acute psychosis with command hallucinations. That explanation remained his interpretation, not a court finding. The court allowed a reformulated hypothetical addressing inconsistent accounts of a reported voice. After Heilbrun began discussing Catholic beliefs, Reddington objected and, outside the jury's presence, sought a mistrial alleging intentional prosecutorial misconduct. Jennifer Sprague denied soliciting the testimony. Judge William Sullivan denied the motion and directed the Commonwealth to warn the witness against further religious discussion. He then struck testimony about Clancy's religious upbringing and instructed jurors to disregard the witness's understanding of Catholic teachings as immaterial and irrelevant before excusing them until the next morning.