This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey, it's Drew Franklin from NFL Cover Zero. The 2026 season is underway and we are loving football on TV. Here's what you can expect from the podcast in our second season. I would suggest for these preseason games, I think they should do what they do on the NFL draft. You know, when coverage of the NFL draft is basically for moms and they're just like, hey, he has a dog named Spark. Listen to NFL Cover Zero on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, I didn't expect all of this to happen this quickly, but it has. We are officially on verdict watch as it relates to the Lindsay Clancy trial, which now has captivated the entire country. The woman now is admitted to strangling her three children after what seemed like a premeditated act to me, and that is sending her husband out of the house and then one at a time strangling her three kids. Other interesting facts that came out in the course of this, one of the first things she asked for when she woke up after this had all happened is, can I have a lawyer? Which, I don't know, that was very lucid for somebody whose defense case is resting on the idea that she was a good mother and that, you know, she made a choice, and then prosecutors saying she made a choice to kill her kids and all the other facts that have come out in the case. Now, I thought that closing arguments today, actually on both sides, were pretty phenomenal. And let me, you know, for the record, let me play part of it because I think it's worth playing. Let's play Kevin Reddington. This is Lindsay Clancy's attorney saying that the prosecution has ripped the soul out of this girl. Wow, what about the soul of the three dead kids?
I told you in an opening statement that this is a prosecution that has ripped the soul out of this girl. This is what they have. This is their family. How does this turn into this? Because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got.
You can troop as many paid experts as you want to come in here and tell the jury, oh, well, she didn't say that she heard voices inside her head. She said she heard voices from outside her head. She said she was making chicken McNuggets. There was a bowl on the sofa. She wasn't making chicken McNuggets. She said something. As I think and I muse and I try real hard to tell you what my opinion is, that this woman was acting in her right mind when these children were killed.
So, again, I thought that closing arguments would take a whole day. Maybe jury instructions would get in as well, and then it would go to the jury tomorrow. No, it all happened much faster than I expected. In a lot of ways, I could argue to you that both the prosecution and defense made really good closing arguments on both sides, but I know what they're trying to do here. You know, they're trying to say that this case is about her state of mind, not about the system. And let me go to the prosecution. The assistant DA in this case, Jennifer Sprague, says that Lindsey Clancy's actions showed what are deliberate choices.
that she made. And again, in rebuttal, I thought the prosecution in particular really gained a ton of momentum at the end of this case as they put up one expert after the other, including an FBI mental health expert that made the point that she knew damn well what the hell she was doing. But anyway, Jennifer Sprague, the assistant DA, made the final arguments for the prosecution, saying that Clancy's action showed deliberate choices and that she was in full control when she was killing one children after another after another after sending her husband out of the house to go shopping. Listen. And the order also shows a rationality. The order she killed them in. Because...
Cora and Dawson are older. If she had tried to strangle one in front of the other, they would have known this is bad. And they would have tried to intervene or run and hide. And she had a very limited time. She didn't have time to try to find a child who ran off and hid. So taking Dawson first and moving him to a separate room, having Cora stay with Kellen and having Dawson go in another room, that's rational. That makes sense. That's ordered thinking. And we didn't show you that post that she made about Dawson being a handful and not being compliant to show she was a bad mom. We showed it to you because it proves she knew that he was a handful. She knew that he was less likely to be compliant to just go along. She knew that he might struggle. And so it made sense rationally.
to remove him and separate him first and kill him first. And she brought him into that room, into the office, and closed the door. And she wrapped that band around his little neck. And she squeezed until he was unconscious. As the blood's pooling in his face and causing those blood vessels to burst, causing him pain and panic and confusion. And defense calls Dr. LaPosada to say, no, it wasn't 20 or 30 seconds. It was only five or 10 seconds until he went unconscious.
I'm sorry, how many seconds is it okay for them to have been in pain and panic and confusion? How about it wasn't okay for one second for any of those children to feel that? Unbelievable. I mean, this is pretty remarkable as they presented their closing arguments. Here's the other twist that happened today. And I was predicting this was going to happen. Greg Jarrett was going to join us later along with Paul Morrow. Greg Jarrett was agreeing with me. And, you know, as this trial was unfolding, really the options that were going to face the jury were first degree murder. And that conviction would carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Or the jury would decide. And again, remember, you need a unanimous verdict. You need all 12 jurors to agree or.
quote, not criminally responsible. In other words, that would be the insanity verdict. And if the prosecution, quote, fails to prove she was legally responsible beyond any reasonable doubt, Clancy would then be committed to a state psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts. Now, the surprise, the curveball came from the judge, although it came as a surprise to the legacy media and people online. I was not surprised by it. I was actually predicting it, that he now has opened up a conviction on lesser charges, which is they can also weigh the charge of second degree murder or manslaughter.
There's a lot of people online that are saying about manslaughter, and I don't think they're wrong. I only know this. I don't have access to my social media accounts. Sweet Baby James scrolls it constantly, and the rest of my team does as well. And a lot of people pissed off about this to say, okay, is it premeditated? Is it intentional? Was she sane or was she not? Excuse me, manslaughter. Why do I think the judge did this? And I'm speculating here. It's because I think the judge, looking at all of the arguments, is pretty...
wise in the sense that he understands getting a first-degree murder conviction is going to be hard, and yet she is responsible for what happened here. Yeah, are there mitigating circumstances? Sure. Maybe even the possibility of doctor shopping, which is a pretty common phenomenon. Unfortunately, the addiction to pain medication will cause people to go from one doctor to another doctor to another doctor to get as many prescriptions as possible and then have them billed at different pharmacies, etc., etc., or they get other people to do it for them. You know, what complicates that as a defense, though, is she was a nurse.
And at some point, she has to know that these psychiatric drugs can interact with each other and cause a severe mental breakdown. Now, there's another complication. Postpartum psychosis, depression, postpartum depression. I just personally believe it's real, but I don't believe it's an excuse. Postpartum psychosis is real, but according to the experts in this case, it is extremely, extremely rare that it would be so extreme that somebody wouldn't know what they're doing. So, again, the jury is hearing conflicting expert testimony. It's kind of a battle of the experts, which is often the case in a criminal trial.
But I find the whole thing fascinating. You know, if I could see through this microphone from my free state of Florida into the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where Linda now permanently resides. Why do I think that she is just rolling her eyes? Because I'm kind of I do see why the judge did this. I understand. Because I think to get a conviction, that means a unanimous verdict of 12 people, first degree murder, life in prison without parole. He probably saw as a very difficult thing to do. And I think he.
probably with a degree of wisdom, you know, thread the needle and said, you know what, I need to offer you all more options here. In a sense, you could say it was a lifeline of options. If in fact there is disagreement in that jury room, you never know what's going on in the jury room. I personally am not expecting a verdict to come back today, although we are officially on verdict watch, but it's possible. I mean, and I don't even know what to tell you if usually, for example, in a criminal case, if a verdict comes back very quickly, usually it's guilty and guilty of all charges. And boom, that jury made up their mind a long time ago.
There was a moment, according to one report, where one of the jurors listening to the assistant DA in closing today, you know, started tearing up and started crying. I mean, you know, very emotional today. So but, you know, to listen to the closing arguments, I just found it pretty fascinating. You know, each side was allotted an hour for their statements. Then the judge issues instructions. And the judge, again, not surprising to me, made the call that they can consider lesser charges against second degree murder or manslaughter. The manslaughter one in particular has gotten people really pissed off on social media. That part I can tell you.
Another group of people are angry. One of the things, it's kind of like the, it's a different case, obviously. You know, how is it possible people get so caught up in a case, meaning it captures the nation's attention? You know, there are so many people that we can predict are going to be murdered on any given weekend in the city of Chicago. And I've been scrolling names of people shot, shot and killed since 2009. Nobody knows their names, usually because it can't be weaponized, it can't be politicized. You know, but then there are other cases that just captivates the nation's attention. If you ask me why that is, I don't really have an answer, but I work in the news business. It just happens.
And especially in a social media era, this has been the one thing that has captured the attention of the country. And so it is what it is. And it's even captured my attention. I'm fascinated with all of this. You know, I watched, for example, the prosecutor Reddington, you know, make a point in his closing arguments. He thanked the jurors, said Cora, Dawson, and Callen. They are the victims in this case. Said that right in front of the jury, Lindsay Clancy was wiping away tears herself from behind the defense table. And then he used several large postcards with exhibit printouts, including a crime scene photo, text messages, pictures of the Clancy family. You know, how does this, as he held up a photo of the smiling family before the killings, turn into this? And then he pointed to a photo.
of lindsey in the hospital after the fact and by the way one of the first things she asked for was a lawyer and again she was a nurse you know and then of course uh on the other side of this i'm sorry reddington is the um you know he said because of the damn medicine lousy medical care she got she was a nurse and even though 30 medications were brought up in the case and they very wisely on the defense side put up all the medication she had been you know prescribed but she was a nurse and i think my understanding is there were only three of the 13 but ultimately 30 medications that she had um that were in her system at the time uh according to evidence presented and He repeatedly emphasized Clancy's background as a nurse and a loving and hardworking mother. And this young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was a nurse, a daughter, a wife, a darn good mother. And she ran into Dr. Tufts. They're trying to blame it on the doctor. Prosecutors say no. She made a choice to kill her kids. It's not a case about the mental health system and how it treats women. What's on trial here, what's the issue here, is what Lindsay Clancy did the night of January 24, 2023, and so on and so forth. That was the DA in her closing arguments. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it.
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Football's back. Hey, it's Drew Franklin from NFL Cover Zero. Enjoy the NFL season while listening to NFL Cover Zero. We have storylines, predictions, and lots of silliness. Here's what you can expect from the podcast in our second season. When you meet people and you say your job's a sports announcer, it's always interesting to see what the first thing they say is. I did have one of the more difficult questions, though. He sits next to me and he sees I'm on my computer and he goes, big sports fan. And I was like, yeah, actually. And he goes, we met my Jaguars this year. I realized like no one's ever asked me that question ever about anything.
And I was like, Duval. Listen to NFL Cover Zero on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...of conflict or peace. We keep our law enforcement and military personnel in our prayers. And we ask you, the members of Hannity Nation, to do the same. God bless them. Sean Hannity. I don't know why in certain cases, I mean, we've been watching and witnessing a phenomenon that unfortunately we see in high-profile trials like this one with Lindsey Clancy.
You know, why do all these women, you know, in the case of Luigi Mangione, why, you know, in cold blood, now he's admitting to it. Why, you have the video of this, cold blood kills the CEO of United Healthcare and, you know, just shoots him in the back of the head, murders a father and a husband. And yet he has this fan base of lunatics, even supermodels, apparently, and online influencers and all these people that not only want to date him, marry him, have his children, give him money. And his biggest problem in prison, apparently, is he doesn't have enough time to answer all of them back. I don't know how that happens.
Now, I can understand people have a different point of view on mental health, a different point of view on medications or whatever. But there's too many people that don't even bring up ever that three young children were killed violently, you know, by their mother. And what appears, you know, evidence presented convinces me there's some premeditation here. And she's a nurse that should have known about her own medication status. We'll continue. More Hannity, less big government. This is the Sean Hannity Show. Let me play, and then we're going to be joined by the one and only Nancy Grace.
Let me play for you what I believe is the most outrageous statement made by the defense attorney in the Lindsey Clancy trial. And it really pisses me off. And see if it makes you as angry as it's making me. I asked you this morning, Mr. Reddington, what you hope to convey in the closing. You didn't really have an answer. No, I don't. Well, I hope to convey that I truly care and love her. She's just such a marvelous suite.
innocent person she's just amazing and so strong and just trying so hard to get up from she's just been beat down for three and a half years and she feels that she's had a fair trial with the judge and the jury's been very attentive and all we can do is hope for the best do you want to say she said anything about women raising postpartum psychosis she's very concerned especially as a labor and delivery nurse she's very concerned about women's rights the fact that women are pretty much marginalized. I think it's readily apparent. The DSM is a joke. I couldn't get into the social implications in the trial, understandably, but if the United States would take a lesson from Europe, Belgium, England, France, Peru, a lot of these countries, they take care of their women that have psychosis, keep them with their babies. They don't rip the babies away from them and put the women in jail where we do.
Lindsay Clancy, such a marvelous, sweet, innocent person. She's just amazing. And Clancy is very concerned about women's rights. She's also a nurse. You know, there is a practice, I don't know if it's relevant here, called doctor shopping, where people, when you look at all the different medications she had, I think it's 30 prescriptions, and 13 in particular. She's a nurse that would know that drugs can interact with each other. I don't think that works in her favor in any way. I think the issue of premeditation becomes very real because she sent her husband out of the home before she then, you know, went about one after another, one by one by one.
and strangled Cora, Dawson, and Callan. You don't hear those words a lot in the legacy media, but she did that. Do I think postpartum depression is real? Yeah. Do I think that the prosecution had effective expert witnesses, especially at the end of this case, that said, sorry, she knew what she was doing, including FBI experts. Anyway, the person that I trust on all issues, one of the people I trust on the legal side is Greg Jarrett and people like Paul Mora on the absolute prosecution side versus the defense analysis. There's only one person to go to. It's our friend Nancy Grace from Fox One and a friend and colleague of mine.
I know I'm taking you away from your family for a brief time here, and you're going to join us on TV tonight. My apologies up front, but I have to know what you're thinking about what happened today, closing arguments by both the defense and the prosecution. I didn't think it would happen this quickly. They gave an hour for it. They got jury instructions. The judge opened up lesser charges of second-degree murder or manslaughter, so it's not just either first-degree or not criminally responsible. I want your thoughts on all of it. Well, number one, thank you for inviting me. This is a topic very near to my heart because I am a mother of two, which has changed my world.
I never thought I could be as happy as I have been in the last 18 years raising my children. My alter identity as a felony prosecutor where I represent people like Dawson, Callen, and Cora. So I must say I am not torn about this case because the law is clear. Whether we like the law or not, the law is if you had intent to kill, you are responsible. She had intent. And this is why I say that. This does not bring me joy, Sean. It does not bring me joy. And I have seen people that I truly believed were insane. And I did not want them in with GP general population at all. That is not justice. That is cruel torture. She sent her husband away from the home, much like Andrea Yates did. She sent him to a restaurant. They had never gotten takeout from there before because it was too far away. There and to the pharmacy at night.
She sent him away as soon as he left, and she admits, although the Internet is a lie, people attack me in Walmart. Why aren't you admitting Patrick Clancy did this? Because he didn't. He did not do it. It's proven forensically, digitally, he did not do it. Accept it. Whatever you like him or hate him, don't care. He didn't do these murders. Period. She systematically herded the children into the basement, then one by one put them face down and strangled them with her own elastic exercise bands.
Many people scream, her fingerprints were not on there. Okay, right. When you pull a rubber band, you smear your fingerprints. Think about it. Her DNA, however, was on the elastic bands. So let's just clear that up right now. One of the children, Dawson, tried to get away. He was found in his father's office also in the basement. The systematic strangling of the children, as you know, Sean, intent can be formed in the twinkling of a moment, the blink of an eye, the time it takes to pull a trigger, much less the time it takes you to herd your children in the basement. Three of them. Three.
Tots. Have you ever taken a tot to the airport, much less two or three, herding them into the basement and systematically strangling them dead till they turned purple, till their necks were abnormally small, too small to even hold up a head, the bands were pulled so tightly? That's intent. She knew what she did was wrong and tried to jump out of a window. Why did she try to jump out of a window? Because she knew what she had just done was horribly, horribly wrong. Do I like this scenario? No. It's like a dirt sandwich in my mouth.
But this is what happened. That's what happened. And we cannot turn away from the fact. And that is what I would tell the jury. I want to turn away. I don't like delivering this closing statement. It's like acid to the touch. But this is the truth. And you must confront it because you have taken an oath to do the right thing. Now, what may the jury do? They may do jury notification. They may say, screw you and the horse you rode in on.
I'm not putting her in jail and find her in GBRI, not guilty by reason of insanity. What will that mean? Well, it depends. Look at Andrea Yates. She murdered her children, and she's still in a mental facility today. Then you've got, on the other end of the spectrum, Deanna Lacey. She murdered her children, left one, brain damaged for life. She did a few years in a mental facility, and she walked free, and she is living amongst us now. So it really depends on what happens once she's in a mental facility. She could walk in five years or not.
That's what's happening. They'll either follow the law and convict her on murder one, which is life without parole, or they will give her an NGBRI, not guilty by reason of insanity. I tried insanity cases. The kicker to insanity cases, Sean, is the perp admits they did it. It's all this business about it. It was really Patrick Clancy. It's not. She stood up in court, like Brian Koberger, and said, I did it. But in her case, she said, but I was insane. There. That's the law. Those are the choices.
You know, we did a long podcast and I find the hardest interviews to do. And I interviewed on the podcast also the parents of one of the victims in the Koberger case. It kills me. And I taped another recent podcast where somebody lost their child. And you told this whole story. You were 19 years old. You were engaged to be married and that your fiance was murdered. And I just sat there. You know, I knew the story, but to hear it from a friend, it's the hardest thing to hear from anybody you're interviewing. You know, I wouldn't mind. I'm willing to listen to the arguments.
But the idea, the first thing she does when she wakes up after this whole thing is wants a lawyer. The fact that she's a nurse I don't think helps her in this case. She should have been more responsible for her medical care. I don't care that she was using different doctors with drugs that interact with each other. She had knowledge that most people don't have. I do believe that postpartum depression is real, but I also was really swayed in rebuttal by the prosecution witnesses that said she knew what the hell she was doing, as evidenced by the premeditation factor that you brought up of sending the husband out to the store.
and then the whole process of it. So I'm thinking what the judge did today is the judge realized this is an emotionally charged case capturing the attention of the nation and threw them a lifeline to thread the needle knowing how hard it is to get 12 people to agree on anything. Am I wrong? You're absolutely right. Much has been made of the women congregating outside of the courthouse, all dressed in different shades of pink and coral. Much has been made of that, but you know what? This is America. You can protest. You can even burn our beloved flag, and that's okay. So if these women want to bring attention to postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, I say bring it on. We need attention to that. Sean, I remember having the twins, and one would be up at 1230, 130, 330, and 430, and I would be up at 5. Sometimes I would be swinging in in bucket swings at a quarter of 5 in the dark.
behind our church because I was so tired and had to go back to work at HLN a month early of my maternity leave. I was literally seeing stars. It was like explosions with my eyes wide open. I get it. Combined with extreme depression, the statistics are interesting. And of course, statistics are not allowed in as evidence, but only one to two per thousand of women with postpartum depression have postpartum psychosis.
Also, when you have auditory hallucinations, not that you think you see your great-great-grandma in the door, but no, an auditory hallucination is much more extreme, an extreme form of mental illness. She said a male voice told her she had to kill the children. When you have this type of psychosis, it doesn't just come and go. Like the Twinkie defense? No.
auditory hallucinations usually come for a period of time, weeks if not months, ordering you to do an evil deed, and they stay with you after the deed. Her psychosis only lasted, what, 20 minutes? I've never heard of that, and I prosecuted a lot of cases. So to me, that stood out as a very curious fact that it's hard for me to believe, knowing what I know about psychosis. It doesn't just come in the blink of an eye and then leave, like Tinkerbell out the window. No, it's not like that. Let me lean on you, because I've got 20 seconds left, and you've been so gracious to come on, and we'll have more with you tonight on Hannity.
How do you see this verdict coming down if you had to give your best professional opinion? Well, I've been wrong two times before. Well, calling verdicts anyway. I've been wrong a lot more than that, but I say they're going to follow the law. The one and only Nancy Grace. We really appreciate you, Nancy. And I know you're with your beautiful children. Please send my best. We'll see you tonight on Hannity. We are an official verdict watch in this Lindsey Clancy case. We're going to look at the legal aspect and the criminal aspect of it with Paul Morrow and Greg Jarrett on the other side of this. You know, and there's huge developments in the WNBA. We still have scheduled Ennis Cantor freedom, maybe starting a big lawsuit. He'll tell us about that on the other side as well.
All right, we got a lot of ground to cover. We are an official verdict watch in the Lindsey Clancy case. We'll get more analysis. We've got Greg Jarrett and Paul Morrow coming up. Also, we have Ennis Cantor freedom booked, huge developments in the WNBA, and he's now threatening a lawsuit. He'll explain that. And jury watch continues. Straight ahead, verdict watch.
Hey, it's Drew Franklin from NFL Cover Zero. The 2026 season is underway and we are loving football on TV. Here's what you can expect from the podcast in our second season. I would suggest for these preseason games, I think they should do what they do on the NFL draft. You know, when coverage of the NFL draft is basically for moms and they're just like, hey, he has a dog named Spark. Listen to NFL Cover Zero on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.