The day the jury first heard from the clinicians who were actually treating her, and the day the defense got its best material out of the Commonwealth's own witnesses. East Idaho News records the judge at about 8:52 preparing to rule on a defense motion about expert witnesses to answer the Commonwealth's evidence on her psychiatric care and on how serious the suicide attempt was; no outlet read reports the ruling. The lawyers were called to sidebar at about 9:16, and at about 9:19 Judge Sullivan told the jury to expect a full day. Two short lay witnesses opened. Kimberlee Hardy, formerly the child services director at the Kingsbury Club in Kingston and East Idaho News's Commonwealth witness 57, described the club playroom where Cora and Dawson were left for supervised sessions while a parent stayed on the premises. Patrick Clancy usually did the drop-offs. The Clancys never brought Callan; Hardy was told the defendant was nervous about colds in cold and flu season. She described the defendant as shy, in workout clothes, never late collecting the children. Reddington's cross took only the points he wanted: the children were happy to see their mother, she seemed happy to be with them, she was always on time, Hardy had never seen her angry with them, and people exercise for their health — East Idaho News renders the last as psychiatrists commonly recommending exercise. Sarah Carney, witness 58 and about ten minutes on the stand, testified that she and her husband Kyle knew Patrick Clancy from college and that the families socialized. She saw no change in the defendant after any of the three births, though in the fall of 2022 she looked thinner. Two days before the killings the Carneys hosted a bonfire that Patrick, the defendant, Cora and Dawson attended; the defendant was quiet but fairly normal and said she was good. On cross Reddington established that the friendship was social rather than close, that Carney had seen the defendant alone only once that fall, and that she had looked quieter and thinner at the bonfire. Dr. Alia Goodheart, the McLean Hospital psychiatrist and witness 59, took the stand at about 9:43 and stayed until about 12:25. She is a named defendant in the defendant's medical malpractice suit. On direct — CBS Boston names ADA Shanan Buckingham; no other outlet read names the prosecutor — she described the inpatient unit's team working and its graded observation levels, then the admission: referred from Massachusetts General Hospital, arriving by ambulance and checking in voluntarily at about 4 a.m. on January 1, 2023, medically stable, complaining that she could not sleep without medication and reporting that she felt numb. The provisional diagnosis was major depressive disorder, severe, without psychotic features. She was rated a low or minimal safety risk on fifteen-minute checks. The records showed thoughts of wanting to be dead but no plan, and no signs of psychosis; the intrusive and suicidal thoughts had begun in December 2022 and she attributed them to her medications. East Idaho News names Dr. Elizabeth Madva as the psychiatrist who saw her on January 1 and records her medications on arrival as Seroquel 100 mg daily, Valium 2 mg and Benadryl. Goodheart met her face to face for the first time on January 3: anxious but cooperative, thinking linear and goal-directed, returning again and again to feeling numb, which Goodheart said can be a side effect of Seroquel, and saying she did not want to depend on an antipsychotic to sleep. Asked what stopped her ending her life, she gave her children, her family and her mother. Goodheart recorded a diagnosis of insomnia with a mental health condition and said she did not have enough to go further; she tapered the Seroquel, suggested Cymbalta to follow, switched Valium to Ativan and used trazodone for sleep, and told the jury she was watching for bipolar disorder because sleep deprivation can tip a patient into a hypomanic episode. Boston 25's filed story reports her saying postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis were serious considerations as the team tried to understand her. The stay ended early at the defendant's own request — she was anxious about being in hospital and wanted to go home, and outlets tie the request to a birthday party for Cora — and Goodheart agreed on condition of psychiatric follow-up the next day, which the defendant arranged herself, a task Goodheart described as a way of assessing her thinking. She was discharged on the afternoon of January 5 with fourteen days each of Ativan and trazodone, denying any wish to kill herself, any plan, and any thought of harming anyone. Goodheart said she had no concerns about her safety or anyone else's: the defendant was future-oriented, a caring mother, had family support, stable housing, no history of psychosis and no history of attempts. Reddington's cross ran from about 10:46 and is the substance of the day. He established that McLean made no collateral inquiry beyond speaking to Patrick Clancy, obtained no records from the clinicians who had been treating her, never asked her to sign a release, administered no MMPI, no Edinburgh postpartum depression scale and no thyroid test, and did not draw blood to measure the levels of the drugs she was on — to which Goodheart answered that this is not a regular procedure and that psychiatry does not depend on blood tests. She did not know the defendant had called a suicide hotline, and did not recall her saying she had gone forty-eight hours without sleep after starting Zoloft. Asked how many women with postpartum psychosis she had treated, she paused a long time and said she had not seen any; over about twenty years she had seen many patients with postpartum depression but could not put a number on it. Reddington held up the diagnostic manual and she could say that postpartum depression sits under depression but not where postpartum psychosis sits, and was only vaguely aware of the argument about where it should go in the next edition. She held the line on the parts that mattered to the Commonwealth: the defendant was cooperative and forthcoming and she had no reason to think her an unreliable reporter, and clinicians read presentation and body language as well as words. Asked whether the defendant was very sick, she declined the characterization. The morning recess came at about 11:35. After it, before the witness resumed, Reddington told the court he wanted to raise an issue and refused to take it to sidebar, saying in open court and out of the jury's hearing that prosecutors had been picked up on a hot microphone during Thursday's autopsy testimony saying words to the effect of shut her up as the defendant was wheeled out sobbing. Judge Sullivan's voice rose; he said he needed to know what was going to be said and that there were privileged issues, and the parties went to sidebar. The Boston Globe attributes to the judge, and CBS Boston to Reddington, the remark that this is not The Handmaid's Tale and nobody is taping her mouth shut. Goodheart resumed at about 12:11, agreed on cross that the discharge was not against medical advice and that an appointment with Dr. Tufts followed soon after, and the Commonwealth's redirect took her through the discharge packet and back to the low risk rating and to her answer that the defendant never stated a plan to kill herself. Dr. Jennifer Tufts, witness 60, followed. Licensed about four years and practicing at Aster Mental Health in Braintree and Peabody, she is also a named defendant in the malpractice suit, and she is the psychiatrist the defense has spent the trial pointing at. ADA Jennifer Sprague took her through the whole treatment relationship in order, from the first telehealth appointment on September 15, 2022 to the last on January 23, 2023, the day before the killings. The through-line of the direct is that at every single visit the defendant denied suicidal ideation, denied homicidal ideation, denied hallucinations and showed no sign of psychosis, while the medications changed constantly and nothing worked: Zoloft she would not start, then started and felt awful on; Ativan that helped anxiety but not sleep; Buspar she was too afraid to begin; over-the-counter Benadryl for sleep; Prozac, Remeron, Klonopin, trazodone and Seroquel through South Shore's perinatal program; a December report of intrusive thoughts on Remeron that she described as a feeling that she was going to die, with hopelessness and being close to suicidal without a plan; a December 16 visit to the Massachusetts General emergency room and a refusal of the inpatient bed offered; a referral toward the Women and Infants program in Rhode Island; a January 11 email asking about ketamine, which Tufts called a good option but not yet warranted; amitriptyline started on January 16 when bonding with the baby felt forced. Tufts raised bipolar disorder with her in December and testified she did not meet the criteria, having no mania, no euphoria, no grandiosity and no increased risk-taking. On January 23 the defendant was depressed and flat, said she had no motivation and had to force herself out of bed and out of the house but could, and reported — per WBUR — bouts of racing-heart anxiety; the amitriptyline went up to 20 mg for sleep. Tufts recorded her insight as poor, because across fourteen visits she kept attributing her symptoms to the medication rather than to the illness, and the Globe's filed story reports her telling the jury she thought the defendant was simply depressed. Sprague ended on the two questions the Commonwealth wanted the weekend to end on: had she ever said she was planning to kill herself, no; had she said on the 23rd that she was planning to kill her children, absolutely not. The parties went to sidebar and Judge Sullivan excused the jury at about 3:45, telling them to keep an open mind, with the cross-examination of Tufts to begin Monday at 9 a.m. Court had broken for lunch at about 1 p.m. — and with the jury gone the judge delivered the warning the hot-mic complaint had produced: no inappropriate or disruptive comments in the courtroom, there are microphones everywhere, anyone found making them is escorted out and barred for the rest of the trial, no warnings and no yellow cards. Later in the day Beth Stone, spokesperson for District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz, said the office had reviewed the video and that what was said was shut it off, referring to taking the autopsy photographs off the screen; boston.com reports the office first attributing the remark to one of its prosecutors and then correcting that.
