Fox News Legal Analyst Argues Lindsay Clancy’s Defense Team Has an ‘Advantage’

George Washington University legal professor and Fox News analyst Jonathan Turley argued the defense team for Lindsay Clancy has an “advantage” with jurors because it has a more compelling and “complete” story than the prosecution to explain why she killed her three children.

Turley weighed in on the case — which has become a national news story and sparked heated debates on social media about mental health and whether Clancy should be punished for the slayings — during a Saturday interview on Fox & Friends Weekend.

His appearance came one day after Clancy’s defense team rested its case. Clancy has not denied killing her three children — all of whom were five-years-old or younger — at her Massachusetts home in 2023, but the former nurse has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder.

The case hinges on “criminal responsibility,” with her legal team making the state’s equivalent of an insanity defense by arguing Clancy was mentally unwell, suffering from anxiety, and experiencing hallucinations before the killings.

The prosecution has argued the defense is bogus and she in reality “coldly and calculatingly” planned the killings, including by sending her then-husband out of the house to create an opportunity to murder.

Turley said the defense made the better case.

“I think that the defense closed with an advantage here with the jury,” Turley said. “Every jury is a war of narratives, each side telling a story. The defense story was complete: it had complications of bipolar history, it had complications [from] a postpartum issue. But more importantly, this is such a heinous crime that contradicts the very nature of being a parent and a mother, and so that jury has a complete narrative that something took a hold of this person.”

He continued:

The best thing the state could do is to try to poke holes in this, showing little episodes where people saw her having clarity of thought. That doesn’t really offer the jury to why, how, a mother could take a step that most mothers find completely unthinkable.

So I think in the end, because the burden in Massachusetts uniquely stays with the state, I’m pretty confident the jury has some doubts with regards to the state’s case.

Co-anchor Charlie Hurt followed up by saying “because of that burden, they have a very strange definition of what criminally culpable means for somebody who’s making an insanity defense.”

“I think that’s right,” Turley said. “I think that what they have is a woman who committed the unthinkable, who has a history of mental illness, a lot of experts who believe she was in the hold of this condition, that’s probably going to be enough, if you look at how the jury was reacting.”

Watch above.

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