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The psychiatrist who supervised Lindsay Clancy's discharge from McLean Hospital in January 2023 — sending her home three weeks before she strangled her three children — testified Friday that in more than 20 years of practice she had never treated a patient with postpartum psychosis. Dr. Goodheart's Day 9 testimony was confirmed by Boston Globe, Boston25, CBS Boston, and AP reporting on August 7, 2026.
Dr. Alia Goodheart's admission came under cross-examination by defense attorney Kevin Reddington on Day 9 of testimony in Plymouth Superior Court, capping a week that also produced a courtroom confrontation over a disputed hot-mic remark and completed the prosecution's effort to build a clinical wall: two treating psychiatrists, both testifying they saw no signs of psychosis in the months before Clancy allegedly killed her three children. The defense's response to that wall is not yet before the jury. Reddington has not yet cross-examined Dr. Jennifer Tufts, the outpatient psychiatrist who issued 12 of the 30 prescriptions Clancy received in the four months before the killings, and the defense's own psychiatric experts — expected to directly contradict every prosecution witness on the question of psychosis — have not yet taken the stand. Trial resumes Monday, when Reddington is expected to begin that cross-examination.
What McLean Didn't Know — and Why the Gap Was Predictable
When Reddington pressed Goodheart on the specifics of her evaluation, the cross-examination revealed a series of concrete omissions that go beyond the general "fragmented care" argument the defense has already put before the jury.
Goodheart acknowledged that McLean did not administer the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale — a 10-question validated screening tool specifically designed to detect postpartum mood disorders in clinical settings. She acknowledged that McLean did not test Clancy's blood for prescription drug levels, even though Clancy arrived on a combination of medications including Seroquel and Valium. She acknowledged that McLean did not obtain Clancy's medical records from her prior providers — the hospital made no formal collateral inquiry beyond asking Patrick Clancy questions and accepting what his wife voluntarily disclosed.
Read more: Lindsay Clancy Trial: Prosecution Psychiatrist Concedes Psychosis Can Coexist With Planning
Goodheart did not know that Clancy had twice called a suicide hotline before her admission. She did not know that Clancy had gone 48 hours without sleep after initially starting Zoloft. She defended the hospital's approach in terms that capture how inpatient psychiatry currently functions. When Reddington pointed out that McLean did not take blood samples to test drug levels, she responded that it was not standard practice in the field, stating: "Psychiatry as a field is not dependent on blood tests."
None of these admissions constitute legal wrongdoing on their own. But they are clinically significant for a reason that the malpractice lawsuit against Goodheart and McLean has already articulated: a patient admitted with escalating insomnia, multiple concurrent medications, suicidal ideation, and a provider-noted suspicion of bipolar disorder received a five-day inpatient evaluation conducted without validated screening instruments, without drug level confirmation, and without review of her prior clinical record — and was discharged by a psychiatrist who, by her own acknowledgment, had no prior experience with the specific condition her defense now claims she had.
That combination is not a coincidence, and Reddington made sure the jury understood why. By holding up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and asking Goodheart about its postpartum psychosis classification, he surfaced an institutional reality that runs beneath the entire trial: postpartum psychosis is not a standalone diagnosis in the DSM. It was removed from that classification system in 1980 and has existed since only as a specifier — "with peripartum onset" — attached to other diagnostic categories. Goodheart said she was "vaguely" aware of discussions about whether postpartum psychosis should be added to the next edition. What the jury heard is that the woman responsible for Clancy's discharge summary had no clinical framework that specifically trained her to look for the condition the defense says was present.
The history of this diagnostic gap matters: when the term "postpartum" was removed from the DSM in 1980, a generation of American clinicians trained without a formal diagnostic category for the condition — and without institutional pressure to build specialized care pathways around it. Goodheart's admission that she had never treated a postpartum psychosis patient is, according to the MGH Center for Women's Mental Health, a foreseeable consequence of a classification decision that has shaped provider training for more than four decades.
Clancy Was 'Depressed and Flat' the Day Before the Killings
Before Goodheart's testimony, Dr. Jennifer Tufts — the outpatient psychiatrist who began treating Clancy in September 2022 — spent most of the day walking the jury through a clinical record that ran from Clancy's first appointment to their final video call on January 23, 2023, one day before the killings.
Tufts testified that at that last appointment, Clancy appeared "depressed" with a flat affect. She had to force herself to get out of bed. She denied suicidal and homicidal ideation. Her amitriptyline dose had just been increased to 20 milligrams to help with sleep. Tufts saw no reason to order hospitalization.
When prosecutors asked whether Clancy had ever indicated she planned to kill herself or her children, Tufts answered: "Absolutely not."
Tufts issued 12 of the 30 prescriptions Clancy received in the four months before the killings, and is named alongside Goodheart as a defendant in the civil malpractice lawsuit Clancy filed in January 2026. The pending civil malpractice case alleges a pattern of inadequate evaluation by multiple providers — that Clancy communicated her worsening symptoms, that her medications were making her worse, and that no single provider had a complete clinical picture.
The details Tufts offered on direct and cross established a clinical arc the defense will argue amounts to institutional negligence at scale: in October 2022, Tufts noted that Clancy's condition was "poor insight" — Clancy was attributing her depression to her medications rather than to a psychiatric condition. In December 2022, Clancy reported a "feeling" she was going to die. In January 2023, she asked about ketamine therapy, a request Tufts said she supported in principle but declined to pursue because she did not think they had reached that point yet. The defense will argue they had.
The Hot-Mic Confrontation
The most publicly visible moment of the day came before testimony resumed, when Reddington publicly accused prosecutors of having said "shut her up" on a hot microphone as Clancy was wheeled from the courtroom sobbing the previous day during medical examiner Dr. Kimberly Springer's autopsy testimony on 8-month-old Callan.
The Plymouth County District Attorney's office flatly denied it. Spokesperson Beth Stone said a review of the video showed that the audible whisper — picked up as the livestream camera zoomed away — said "shut it off," a reference to turning off a courtroom monitor still displaying autopsy images, not a comment directed at Clancy. The DA's office later clarified that the speaker was not either of the two prosecutors at the table, but an unidentified individual in the courtroom.
Reddington was not satisfied with a sidebar. The Handmaid's Tale reference from his remarks drew significant attention from courtroom livestream viewers: "This is not like The Handmaid's Tale. You can't tape her mouth shut," he told Judge William Sullivan, who pressed him to take the matter privately. The exchange played out on the court livestream and
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The psychiatrist who supervised Lindsay Clancy's discharge from McLean Hospital in January 2023 — sending her home three weeks before she strangled her three children — testified Friday that in more than 20 years of practice she had never treated a patient with postpartum psychosis. Dr. Goodheart's Day 9 testimony was confirmed by Boston Globe, Boston25, CBS Boston, and AP reporting on August 7, 2026.
Dr. Alia Goodheart's admission came under cross-examination by defense attorney Kevin Reddington on Day 9 of testimony in Plymouth Superior Court, capping a week that also produced a courtroom confrontation over a disputed hot-mic remark and completed the prosecution's effort to build a clinical wall: two treating psychiatrists, both testifying they saw no signs of psychosis in the months before Clancy allegedly killed her three children. The defense's response to that wall is not yet before the jury. Reddington has not yet cross-examined Dr. Jennifer Tufts, the outpatient psychiatrist who issued 12 of the 30 prescriptions Clancy received in the four months before the killings, and the defense's own psychiatric experts — expected to directly contradict every prosecution witness on the question of psychosis — have not yet taken the stand. Trial resumes Monday, when Reddington is expected to begin that cross-examination.
What McLean Didn't Know — and Why the Gap Was Predictable
When Reddington pressed Goodheart on the specifics of her evaluation, the cross-examination revealed a series of concrete omissions that go beyond the general "fragmented care" argument the defense has already put before the jury.
Goodheart acknowledged that McLean did not administer the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale — a 10-question validated screening tool specifically designed to detect postpartum mood disorders in clinical settings. She acknowledged that McLean did not test Clancy's blood for prescription drug levels, even though Clancy arrived on a combination of medications including Seroquel and Valium. She acknowledged that McLean did not obtain Clancy's medical records from her prior providers — the hospital made no formal collateral inquiry beyond asking Patrick Clancy questions and accepting what his wife voluntarily disclosed.
Read more: Lindsay Clancy Trial: Prosecution Psychiatrist Concedes Psychosis Can Coexist With Planning
Goodheart did not know that Clancy had twice called a suicide hotline before her admission. She did not know that Clancy had gone 48 hours without sleep after initially starting Zoloft. She defended the hospital's approach in terms that capture how inpatient psychiatry currently functions. When Reddington pointed out that McLean did not take blood samples to test drug levels, she responded that it was not standard practice in the field, stating: "Psychiatry as a field is not dependent on blood tests."
None of these admissions constitute legal wrongdoing on their own. But they are clinically significant for a reason that the malpractice lawsuit against Goodheart and McLean has already articulated: a patient admitted with escalating insomnia, multiple concurrent medications, suicidal ideation, and a provider-noted suspicion of bipolar disorder received a five-day inpatient evaluation conducted without validated screening instruments, without drug level confirmation, and without review of her prior clinical record — and was discharged by a psychiatrist who, by her own acknowledgment, had no prior experience with the specific condition her defense now claims she had.
That combination is not a coincidence, and Reddington made sure the jury understood why. By holding up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and asking Goodheart about its postpartum psychosis classification, he surfaced an institutional reality that runs beneath the entire trial: postpartum psychosis is not a standalone diagnosis in the DSM. It was removed from that classification system in 1980 and has existed since only as a specifier — "with peripartum onset" — attached to other diagnostic categories. Goodheart said she was "vaguely" aware of discussions about whether postpartum psychosis should be added to the next edition. What the jury heard is that the woman responsible for Clancy's discharge summary had no clinical framework that specifically trained her to look for the condition the defense says was present.
The history of this diagnostic gap matters: when the term "postpartum" was removed from the DSM in 1980, a generation of American clinicians trained without a formal diagnostic category for the condition — and without institutional pressure to build specialized care pathways around it. Goodheart's admission that she had never treated a postpartum psychosis patient is, according to the MGH Center for Women's Mental Health, a foreseeable consequence of a classification decision that has shaped provider training for more than four decades.
Clancy Was 'Depressed and Flat' the Day Before the Killings
Before Goodheart's testimony, Dr. Jennifer Tufts — the outpatient psychiatrist who began treating Clancy in September 2022 — spent most of the day walking the jury through a clinical record that ran from Clancy's first appointment to their final video call on January 23, 2023, one day before the killings.
Tufts testified that at that last appointment, Clancy appeared "depressed" with a flat affect. She had to force herself to get out of bed. She denied suicidal and homicidal ideation. Her amitriptyline dose had just been increased to 20 milligrams to help with sleep. Tufts saw no reason to order hospitalization.
When prosecutors asked whether Clancy had ever indicated she planned to kill herself or her children, Tufts answered: "Absolutely not."
Tufts issued 12 of the 30 prescriptions Clancy received in the four months before the killings, and is named alongside Goodheart as a defendant in the civil malpractice lawsuit Clancy filed in January 2026. The pending civil malpractice case alleges a pattern of inadequate evaluation by multiple providers — that Clancy communicated her worsening symptoms, that her medications were making her worse, and that no single provider had a complete clinical picture.
The details Tufts offered on direct and cross established a clinical arc the defense will argue amounts to institutional negligence at scale: in October 2022, Tufts noted that Clancy's condition was "poor insight" — Clancy was attributing her depression to her medications rather than to a psychiatric condition. In December 2022, Clancy reported a "feeling" she was going to die. In January 2023, she asked about ketamine therapy, a request Tufts said she supported in principle but declined to pursue because she did not think they had reached that point yet. The defense will argue they had.
The Hot-Mic Confrontation
The most publicly visible moment of the day came before testimony resumed, when Reddington publicly accused prosecutors of having said "shut her up" on a hot microphone as Clancy was wheeled from the courtroom sobbing the previous day during medical examiner Dr. Kimberly Springer's autopsy testimony on 8-month-old Callan.
The Plymouth County District Attorney's office flatly denied it. Spokesperson Beth Stone said a review of the video showed that the audible whisper — picked up as the livestream camera zoomed away — said "shut it off," a reference to turning off a courtroom monitor still displaying autopsy images, not a comment directed at Clancy. The DA's office later clarified that the speaker was not either of the two prosecutors at the table, but an unidentified individual in the courtroom.
Reddington was not satisfied with a sidebar. The Handmaid's Tale reference from his remarks drew significant attention from courtroom livestream viewers: "This is not like The Handmaid's Tale. You can't tape her mouth shut," he told Judge William Sullivan, who pressed him to take the matter privately. The exchange played out on the court livestream and
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The trial of a mother accused of killing her three children has wrapped its second week. Two psychiatrists who treated Lindsay Clancy before her children's death testified in court today. NBC News' Steven Romo and legal analyst Misty Marris break down the doctors' testimony.Aug. 7, 2026
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