Trial begins for woman whose lawyers say postpartum psychosis drove her to strangle her 3 children

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a mother who pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of her three children. 

Lindsay Clancy, 36, strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, who was 8 months old, on Jan. 24, 2023. Afterward, she threw herself out a window, becoming paralyzed in the fall. She is being held at a state hospital, NBC News reported. 

Clancy's lawyers and her husband don't dispute that she killed her children. However, they argue she is not responsible for her actions since she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, which is a condition afflicting a small percentage of women who give birth and develop delusions and hallucinations after giving birth. 

Prosecutors argue that the killings were not the result of someone who wasn't aware of her actions, and that she planned the killings. 

On the day the killings happened, Clancy asked her husband, Patrick, to go out for takeout food and to pick up an item at the pharmacy. She then used exercise bands to strangle her children in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home.