A full sitting given over almost entirely to one witness, and the fullest day of the trial so far on the psychiatric treatment Clancy received in the seven weeks before the killings. The day opened at about 09:12 with a sidebar and then an argument, outside the jury's presence, over a witness the defense wanted to add: Emily Thorndike, a clinical social worker who had worked at McLean Hospital for about seven years and had recently posted a video on TikTok saying she could not let the accounts of McLean given at this trial stand. Kevin Reddington told the court the jury had been left with the impression that Clancy turned down services at McLean over the New Year holiday when in fact little was on offer, and that Thorndike could speak to what the place was like on holidays. ADA Shanan Buckingham opposed, arguing that McLean's own records show what was offered, that Thorndike had left the hospital well before Clancy was ever there, and that she had publicly called this prosecution an abomination. Judge Sullivan was openly skeptical of a witness who left a year before the admission in question and, per boston.com, said he would not admit what amounted to a hotel review; he took the motion under advisement and indicated he was inclined to hear Thorndike, or someone else who could speak to actual holiday staffing, on voir dire outside the jury's presence. No ruling was made on this date. The jury came in at about 09:44 and Julie Paul, the perinatal nurse practitioner whose direct had run on August 10, returned for a cross-examination that lasted roughly a minute: Reddington established only that the referral had come through a mutual acquaintance of Paul and Patrick Clancy's mother, and she stepped down at about 09:48. The Commonwealth then called Rebecca Jollotta, its sixty-second witness by East Idaho News's count, a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner at South Shore Health's perinatal behavioral health clinic who took over Clancy's care when Paul left the practice. Her direct examination, conducted by Buckingham, ran from about 09:49 until about 13:00 and walked the jury through her entire contact with Clancy day by day, almost all of it in writing: MyChart portal messages, telephone notes, and two screening scores at each visit. Jollotta had exactly three contacts with Clancy in total, two by telehealth on November 29 and December 13 and one in person on December 6, and her last communication of any kind was December 21, 2022, more than a month before the deaths. Her account was of a patient who wrote to her nearly every day, who repeatedly asked to come off medications or change them before they had had time to work, who was afraid she had become addicted to lorazepam, and who described intrusive thoughts, hopelessness and numbness while consistently denying any plan or intent to hurt herself. Jollotta told the jury she screened for mania and psychosis at each contact and found neither; that Clancy's thinking was linear and goal-directed throughout; that she raised the possibility of an underlying bipolar disorder at the December 6 in-person visit, on the strength of an activating reaction to sertraline and forty-eight hours without sleep and without tiredness, and that Patrick Clancy told her flatly his wife was not bipolar while Clancy herself said nothing; that Clancy screened negative for mania and did not meet the diagnostic criteria; and that she strongly recommended a partial hospitalization program from mid-December on. Reddington's cross-examination began at about 14:12 to 14:15 and was the sharpest part of the day. He established that Jollotta never spoke to Dr. Jennifer Tufts, the psychiatrist treating Clancy at the same time, never obtained her records, and never learned what Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island had concluded when Clancy was not taken into its program; that she did not know Women and Infants had diagnosed depression due to adverse drug effects and had raised over-medication; that a doctor there had tried to reach her about weaning the quetiapine and, on her account, never got through; that she did not know Clancy had been searching her medications online dozens of times a night, had stopped driving, or had run a 5K road race soon after giving birth; and that after Clancy was admitted to a locked psychiatric ward at McLean in early January she made no attempt to find out the diagnosis or the treatment and never asked for a release to obtain the records. He put to her a December 5 note by the social worker Latisha Dukes recording that Clancy had contacted the Aspire crisis service and been told she did not meet the criteria for inpatient care because she had no suicide plan, and Patrick Clancy's statement to the therapist that his wife's anxiety had become vastly worse since the medications started. The Commonwealth objected when Reddington asked whether Jollotta was the only provider who had considered a bipolar spectrum disorder, and the question was withdrawn; an objection to his asking whether Patrick Clancy had been angry rather than merely concerned was overruled. On redirect, Buckingham took Jollotta back through the prescription record to show that changing dose meant a new prescription rather than a stacked one, and closed on the two answers the Commonwealth wanted: that Clancy never articulated a plan or intent to harm herself or anyone else, and that Jollotta never had a concern that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Reddington's response to that last answer was a remark that it appeared she had been; the Commonwealth objected and he withdrew it. Jollotta stepped down and the jury was sent home for the day, the outlets putting the adjournment somewhere between about 15:34 and just before 15:45. Court was to resume at 09:00 Wednesday.
