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Facts vs Rage: Can Lindsay Clancy's Jury Stay Unbiased?

What does it take to be a juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial? As week two begins in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, jurors are facing one of the hardest assignments in the criminal justice system: separating heartbreaking evidence from the law. They have already heard Patrick Clancy's emotional 911 call, watched first responders struggle through testimony, and seen evidence from inside the Duxbury, Massachusetts home where 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan died in January 2023. 

Today’s expert explains what it takes to separate emotion from fact in cases that push jurors to their limits.

In this episode of Criminally Obsessed, investigative reporter Anne Emerson sits down with Jury Consultant and Body Language Expert Susan Constantine to discuss the emotional toll trials like this take on juries. She has spent years studying how juries respond in some of America's most emotionally devastating trials. She attended the Casey Anthony trial in 2011, and worked with the jury consulting firm that helped select jurors for Andrea Yates' retrial in 2006, where Yates was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning deaths of her five children. 

We revisit and react to some of the most brutal evidence the jury has seen so far in the Lindsay Clancy trial, like the prosecutor holding up the exercise bands used in the deaths of the children and the pajamas they had on the night they died. Right before the jury heard the 911 call, the judge instructed them to separate their emotions from the facts in the audio they were about to hear - Susan offers her expert perspective on whether this was a realistic expectation.

The jury will ultimately decide whether Lindsay Clancy should be convicted in the deaths of her children or found not guilty by reason of insanity based on her defense of postpartum psychosis. Before they reach that verdict, they must answer a difficult question: how do you judge a case this heartbreaking based on the evidence alone?

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Learn more about Susan Constantine’s work

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