Hundreds of women in pink gathered outside Plymouth County Courthouse this week in support of Lindsay Clancy, the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother charged with three counts of first-degree murder for strangling her three children — ages 5, 3, and 8 months — with exercise bands on January 24, 2023. Inside a television studio, the scene wasn't much calmer.
Former Obama adviser Laurie Watkins nearly broke down and stormed off camera during a live segment after political commentator Thomas Corbett-Dillon laid out the facts of the case.
"These are man-hating women that are standing outside," Corbett-Dillon said. "They think the husband did it. They're crazy."
Watkins initially tried the soft route — "I don't think anybody's defending what she did" — but that didn't hold up long. When Corbett-Dillon pressed further, pointing out that the women rallying in pink were openly sympathizing with a woman who allegedly sent her husband Patrick Clancy away from the house before killing all three of their children, Watkins snapped.
"What you just said was absolutely disgusting," she fired back. Then: "I've had it with you!" And she was gone.
The defense in the Clancy trial — being heard in a Duxbury, Massachusetts courtroom — rests on postpartum psychosis. Defense psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick has argued Clancy was not in control of her actions. Prosecution expert Dr. Kirk Heilbrun has countered that the killing was premeditated, that Clancy deliberately removed her husband from the home before acting. If convicted, she faces life imprisonment without parole.
What made the exchange so clarifying wasn't Watkins losing her composure. That happens on cable news every week. It was what triggered it. Corbett-Dillon didn't say anything incendiary. He described what was happening outside the courthouse — women rallying for a defendant charged with killing three children — and called it what it was. That's what was "absolutely disgusting" to Watkins. Not the rally. Not the pink shirts. The fact that someone said it out loud.
The postpartum psychosis defense is a legitimate legal strategy, and a jury will weigh it. But that's not what's happening on the courthouse steps. The women in pink aren't there because they've reviewed Dr. Resnick's testimony and have strong opinions about the insanity threshold under Massachusetts law. They're there because a woman is on trial, and in certain circles, that's all you need to know to pick a side.
Watkins could have made a measured case for the defense's argument. She could have cited the psychiatric testimony. She could have separated the legal question from the spectacle outside the courthouse. Instead, she said nobody was defending Clancy — while standing in for a segment about the hundreds of people literally defending Clancy — and then walked off when that contradiction was pointed out.
Clancy jumped from a second-story window after the killings and is now paralyzed, attending trial in a wheelchair. Three children — Cora, Dawson, and Callan — are dead. A husband lost his entire family in a single evening. And outside the courthouse, the pink shirts keep multiplying.
The question was never whether someone would snap on live TV over this case. The question was whether they'd snap at the person stating the facts or the people celebrating outside a murder trial. Watkins answered that one for us.
