LINDSAY Clancy’s defense attorney risked losing the jury at the beginning of the trial with his behavior and one key witness, an expert has told The U.S. Sun.
The 36-year-old has to murdering her three children in 2023, and is seeking an insanity defense, arguing she was suffering from undiagnosed.
Attorney Kevin Reddington, pictured on Monday, is defending Lindsay Clancy in her trial where she faces three murder charges for strangling her three children
Jean Cirillo, a psychologist and attorney, told The U.S. Sun that there were two moments where Reddington risked losing the jury
Lindsay’s three children Cora, Callan and Dawson were found with exercise bands around their necks in January 2023
Lindsay, pictured on Monday, has admitted to strangling her children but seeks an insanity defense
Five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old were found in the basement of their Mᴀssachusetts home with around their necks on.
Dozens of witnesses have taken the stand in Lindsay’s trial, including her,, and people who worked on her case, including, and medical examiners.
And several of their testimonies from the former labor and delivery nurse as she sat at the defense table.
At one point early on, the trial was halted after while a medical examiner shared graphic details of her children’s autopsies on the stand.
Hidden tactics as Lindsay Clancy’s trial divides USA – murderer or victim?
was also seen several times throughout the trial, even as the 911 call her then-husband made was played in court.
Patrick in the backyard after she tried to end her life shortly after strangling their three children.
Speaking exclusively to The U.S. Sun,, a psychologist and attorney from New York, said those moments could have hurt Reddington’s case in the eyes of the jury.
“Reddington, if anything, he scored a little bit of a negative for the defense in the beginning when he seemed to be patting Lindsay, holding her hand, treating her like a wounded child or a victim,” Cirillo said.
“And obviously he has to do that to give his client the best defense. But it looked almost like he was trying too hard to win the jury sympathy, and that might have taken away a little bit.”
When asked about the reports that Reddington has a, Cirillo said, “It could be a character trait, but I think that it’s more a technique in this case.”
Cirillo also broke down in the trial, saying she believes the defense risked losing the jury when medical examiners took the stand, detailing the extent of the injuries Lindsay’s children suffered.
“The prosecution won with the medical examiner’s testimony,” she said.
Reddington seen holding Lindsay’s hand on July 29 as she sobs while the 911 call her ex-husband Patrick made is played for the court
Reddington seen consoling Lindsay after she broke down during a medical examiner’s testimony on August 12
Lindsay seen gripping Reddington’s hand during the graphic testimony from a medical examiner
Cirillo told The U.S. Sun she believes that Reddington, pictured on Tuesday, is using his apparent closeness to Clancy as a technique to win sympathy from the jury
Cirillo argued it was “devastating” for the defense when the medical examiner went through what they found through autopsy reports and “how [Lindsay’s children] had been strangled slowly with her elastic bands, you know that it wasn’t a quick death.”
“It wasn’t painless,” she said of the Clancy children’s deaths.
“The worst thing they could let the jury hear is how long it took, how she would have had time to stop, she would have had time to get help.
“The youngest was still alive, although they died later, and that she could have at any point changed her behavior. And she didn’t. And that shows premeditation, even if it’s only for a few minutes.”
Cirillo also picked up on some subtle things about Reddington’s while medical examiners testified.
“You could see him squirming when the medical director was on the stand. That was the one who was so positive toward the prosecution, describing how the children died.
“You could see his legs crossed. You could see him lean over, and he did the right thing for a defense attorney. That’s what any good lawyer would do.
“You know you’re not going to score any points for your side with this witness. Get them on the stand, get them off the stand.”
Cirillo said there was a witness later in the trial who helped the defense’s case: psychiatrist
ᴀssistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague holds up the pajamas Callan wore on the day Clancy strangled him as evidence in court on July 29
A view of the jury box where the 18 jurors in Lindsay’s trial sit each day at the Plymouth Superior Court
A crime scene pH๏τo the jury saw in court shows Callan’s pajamas next to an exercise band and stethoscope after first responders rushed to revive him
Cirillo said the medical examiner’s testimony was a strong win for the prosecution, which includes Sprague, right, and ᴀssistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham, left
The prosecution tasked Mack with evaluating Lindsay’s mental state.
He testified that he believes she suffered from a major depressive episode at the time, but she knew right from wrong. He also said he found no signs of psychosis.
Reddington tore into Mack’s credentials during his first day on the stand, and when he returned to conclude his testimony on Monday morning.
“When Reddington cross-examined him, he found out that Dr. Mack really was only skilled in treating children and adolescents’ addictions. He hadn’t had that much experience, if at all, with severe depression and postpartum depression,” Cirillo said.
Cirillo said prosecution witness Dr. Avram Mack, seen testifying on Monday, helped the defense’s case more rather than the commonwealth’s
Reddington shows Mack a psychology book during a tense cross-examination on Friday
“Whereas [forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip] Resnick, who had been brought in originally, had lots of experience with people that were suffering from postpartum depression and severe depression and postpartum psychosis.
“So that was certainly a large load of points for the defense in this case, showing that their witness really was not as skilled.”
has worked on dozens of high-profile cases, including, – who of murdering her two-year-old daughter – and, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity after she drowned her five children in 2001.
Despite those possibly bumpy moments for the defense, Cirillo thinks Reddington has made the strongest argument in Lindsay’s case.
Forensic psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, who has worked on dozens of cases including Andrea Yates’ and Jeffrey Dahmer’s, testified remotely in Lindsay’s trial on Friday
Cirillo said she believes the defense has made the strongest case in Lindsay’s trial
“I think the thing that put it over the edge was that the prosecution psychiatrist wasn’t that skilled in dealing with postpartum psychosis.
“And also the very strong point that in this case, the burden is on the prosecution to prove she wasn’t criminally insane, which is is hard to prove. How do you prove somebody is not crazy?
“You could act sane 364 days out of the year [and] on the 365th, you murder somebody. Does that mean you’re sane or insane? So it’s very hard to prove something that’s as subjective as the level of mental illness.
“Obviously, there’s something wrong with Lindsay. She’s had depression. She might even have mild psychosis. But was she able to distinguish right from wrong in the wrongfulness of her behavior?
“And was she able to conform her behavior to the standards of society? The prosecution has to prove one or both of those things.
“It’s hard to prove in retrospect, three years later, what was going on in Lindsay’s head exactly when she committed the act?”
Another moment in the trial that hurt the prosecution was when Lindsay’s former mother-in-law Susan Clancy was on the stand.
During cross-examination, the prosecution asked Susan if she was a member of and then proceeded to ask, “Are you aware murder is a mortal sin?”
Susan Clancy, Lindsay’s former mother-in-law, was asked a question about mortal sin by the prosecution, which was ultimately stricken by the judge
Lindsay has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges
called an immediate sidebar and later told the jury to disregard the question and answer, stating it could not be used in their deliberations.
“That seemed like a low blow to make toward a grandmother, a bereaved grandmother,” Cirillo said.
“And often people do that when they’re feeling desperate, when they don’t have any other cards to play. So they pull one out and they say, ‘Let’s hope this works, I’ll see where it lands.’
“Maybe I’m just projecting, in my mind that would be the final card you pull out when you feel like, well, it’s a Hail Mary; I’m going to lose anyway. My argument isn’t that good.
“Anybody would expect his mother to, at the very minimum, be ambivalent about whether or not Lindsay was criminally responsible for what she did to the three grandchildren, and she was very much on Lindsay’s side.
“She thought Lindsay had to have completely lost it and that she never saw any indication that Lindsay was a bad mother.”
Cirillo also mentioned how the prosecution questioned Susan about how much time she would spend with her grandchildren as if she were “trying to stir up jealousy.”
“[The prosecutor] was leading her in a very bad direction. She tried by saying, ‘Did you sleep over at their house? Did Lindsay ever invite you? She invited her own mother, but she didn’t invite you,’ like trying to stir up jealousy as if the mothers-in-law were two jealous teenagers.
Lindsay pictured with Patrick, Dawson, Cora and Callan in the weeks before her kids’ deaths
The area of the basement where Patrick found Cora and Callan
“Again, that seemed to me to be a bit of desperation.
“I don’t think the prosecutor expected this much support for Lindsay from the family members. And certainly not the mother-in-law.
“The prosecutor was trying to get back some territory for the prosecution by saying, well, you know, ‘You didn’t get along with her that well after all. Well, she seemed to favor her own mother,’ which isn’t unusual, that somebody will favor their own parent over an in-law.”
Closing arguments are expected toward the end of the fifth week in Lindsay’s trial after the prosecution’s reʙuттal witnesses conclude their testimony.
If Lindsay is found not guilty and to have lacked criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility, but if found guilty, she faces life in prison without parole.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
