1.Kirk Heilbrun — Direct (Part 2)

KIRK HEILBRUN: I do.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Good morning, Your Honor.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes. That's the kind of thing that you experience when you're going through a very frightening or traumatic set of th- situation or circumstances or whatever, and it's the sort of thing that you can experience in the sense that you kinda feel that things are unreal or that it's not you. It's like you're watching yourself go through actions and so on. And it's the sort of thing that if you- talk about it, it sounds like it could be psychotic, but it's actually a recognized, more likely to be a recognized aspect of going through a traumatic situation or set of circumstances that many people going through something like that would experience.

KIRK HEILBRUN: That would be one example, because that was very traumatic for her.

KIRK HEILBRUN: She did. She talked about feeling like it wasn't her, like she was watching herself, like she was going through what she called no thinking, no decision-making, only responding to the voice and taking action.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yeah. This is difficult but important to say. That there are just many ongoing decisions that have to be made to accomplish a killing like this in 18 to 20 minutes. For example, why the basement? Who among the children goes first? What do you say to the kids to keep them from panicking? There are other examples, but, but—

KIRK HEILBRUN: Well, I tried to give some examples a minute ago, and I don't wanna go too—

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes, it is.

KIRK HEILBRUN: That's another example of the decision, yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Decisions.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes, they were.

KIRK HEILBRUN: It's actually something that is much more commonly experienced in that kind of set of circumstances than psychotic symptoms.

KIRK HEILBRUN: It's my testimony that those were the two possibilities that seemed to have some evidence. But at the end of talking to her, testing, reviewing all the information, doing the collateral interviews, everything I did as a part of this evaluation, the evidence much more strongly, in my opinion, supported the second explanation, which was the serious suicide attempt accompanied by killing the children out of love.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes, that's correct.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes. Actually, I interviewed her and worked with her on testing for three days. And during the first and the second day, she was...

KIRK HEILBRUN: Quite attuned to the question. Her recollection was good. Even considering that we were more than three years away from some of the events in question, she had, I thought, a very good memory for dates and medications and dosages and times and other relevant details. And she continued to have, to be attentive and responsive, good attention, concentration, that sort of thing, on the second day. On the third day, when we were talking about mental state at the time of the offense and the circumstances of what was going on with the alleged offense, she appeared to me much more cautious and guarded.

KIRK HEILBRUN: She more frequently said, "I don't remember, I don't recall," that sort of thing, during the third day than the second. Or the first. For one example, I ask her about wearing a smartwatch, which she had carried a phone, married a, carried a smartwatch as well. And one of the things I ask her is what wrist she wore it on. This was on the third day, and she said, "I don't remember."

KIRK HEILBRUN: I did. Now, that statement was not a statement so much as it was a written. She woke up and, having regained consciousness that evening. She was intubated, so she couldn't speak. But they asked her questions, and she wrote down the answer, and they asked her, "How are you feeling?" or, "What's your mood?" And what she said was, what she wrote was, "Horrified."

KIRK HEILBRUN: She said, "I don't, I don't remember writing that, and I don't remember why I would've been horrified."

KIRK HEILBRUN: Where are you... Are you in my report there? That-

KIRK HEILBRUN: I did, yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes, I do recall that statement.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes. That statement in Brigham and Women's to the attending psychiatrist was made in the context of her thinking about what happened... Well, let me see if I can find it here.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yeah. She was asked about what the voice had said on that afternoon, and her response was, it had said, "You have to kill yourself so you can kill the kids." It also said, "The kids will suffer without you." And when I ask her about that, whether the voice had said that, she said, "No, the voice only said, 'This is your last chance. You have to kill the kids, so you can kill yourself.'"

KIRK HEILBRUN: As I talked about in my testimony yesterday, when there is inconsistency, that's something that alerts me to the possibility of inaccuracy. And two statements that are mutually exclusive or inconsistent suggest to me that there is a problem. One of them, at least, is not accurate.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes. That was very unusual in my experience to have a crucial time interrupted by something like a phone call because one of the considerations there is that you then not only can document the time that it happened, and that helps be more precise about the time, but you also have whoever is on the other end of the phone, and this was her husband. When she—when he called her at 5:33, she didn't pick up, but she called back immediately at 5:34. And when I talked to him during the collateral interview, one of the things he said is that she sounded, on the short call, distracted, and like she was in the middle of something. But it wasn't anything that struck him as that unusual. He said, "When she's home with three kids, she's always in the middle of something." So that was one of the reasons that it was important. And then another reason, as I mentioned a minute ago, is it helps to establish a timeframe. We know when her husband left the house, which was 5:15. We know when he came home, which was around 6:00. And this is not quite in the middle of it, but close to that. And so it was unusual and valuable and important in trying to establish those kinds of things.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Well, one of the things I noticed from the records at Brigham and Women's is that several days after she came in, there were comments from staff and in the notes about how she was a little bit more future-oriented and thinking about what it would be like in the future, her life, and that sort of thing. So that's one of the considerations that was in response to kind of thinking about herself and being oriented toward herself.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Well,

KIRK HEILBRUN: I don't think that she was in any way over this or thinking only about herself. It's something that I noticed when I evaluated her in April, is that she is still grieving. She's still in mourning for those kids, and she used language like, "I have lost everything and I don't wanna be here." So I would not think of Lindsay Clancy as someone who is really self-centered or oriented only to herself. She is grieving her children.

KIRK HEILBRUN: One of the considerations is why she got to the point where she decided to take her own life. And

KIRK HEILBRUN: She's an individual who for

KIRK HEILBRUN: Most of her life has been disciplined and liked to control things, liked to work hard, liked to accomplish things. And one of the things that was striking about what happened with her between October and January is that she seemed to be doing her best, talking to the doctors, talking to the therapists, working on trying to get things accomplished in terms of lessening the anxiety and getting the right medications, and it wasn't working, and she couldn't help make it work. She could not control that through hard work and discipline and so on, and that had to be very frustrating, and I think got her to the point where it was very difficult for her to actually think about not being hopeless and going on with her life and so on.

KIRK HEILBRUN: I did, yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: That opinion is, yes, she was. She was experiencing bipolar II disorder, depressive symptoms, and there were other things that were exacerbating that, making it worse. One is the sleep problems and the, probably the continued adverse reactions to medication and so on. But yes, in my opinion, she did have a mental disease or defect on January 24th.

KIRK HEILBRUN: I did, yes. And I'm, at the end of my report, I was very careful about how I phrased this, and so—

KIRK HEILBRUN: I did, yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: That opinion is that she retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including killing her children. Her moral awareness of the wrongfulness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die and, if she were dead, not to leave her children behind. Some of this perception was realistic. For example, "My children will suffer without me," because they would have suffered, I think. And some of it was distorted. For example, "Nobody else can care for my children." But her awareness of the illegality and moral wrongfulness of such killing is best appraised by understanding these acts as a serious suicide attempt combined with altruistic filicide, killing her children out of love, rather than as a response to command hallucinations.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: That her capacity to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law is, again, best understood by considering the seriousness of her suicide attempt and her strong desire not to leave her children. She demonstrated such self-control throughout the day on January 24th, and her actions between 5:15 and 6 PM that afternoon were influenced by her depression and her hopelessness about her life and the desire to end the pain she had experienced since October. Although this depression and hopelessness influenced her decisions, she retained control over whether, when, and how she carried it out. And the inclusion of her children.

KIRK HEILBRUN: Yes.

KIRK HEILBRUN: My opinion, my clinical opinion, since I'm not the decision-maker here, but my clinical opinion is that she was criminally responsible on January 24th.