Lindsay Clancy is costing Massachusetts taxpayers lots of of hundreds of {dollars} a yr — and tens of millions in the long term — as she faces ongoing medical remedy after her mistrial.
Clancy’s care possible prices at the very least $620,500 per yr whereas she stays at Tewksbury Hospital, the place she’s been receiving remedy for many of the three and a half years since killing her kids and making an attempt to take her life in Jan. 2023.
The state-run hospital north of Boston costs the federal government at the very least $1,700 a day for each resident psychiatric affected person, which Clancy — going through a bi-polar analysis and different psychological wants like PTSD — would possible qualify as.
However Clancy — who was left paralyzed and wheelchair-bound by her post-murder suicide try — may additionally qualify as a “continual affected person,” which the hospital payments at $1,850 per day and at the very least $675,250 per yr, in accordance with the Massachusetts Division of Public Well being’s newest figures.
And Clancy’s each day prices may very well be even larger — she has been underneath stringent suicide watch for the reason that murders, which requires her to have an attendant together with her 24-hours a day.
It stays unclear precisely what her care would value, nonetheless. The Division of Public Well being didn’t reply to request for remark.
Clancy, 36, claimed she was affected by extreme post-partum despair after the start of her third baby within the months main as much as Jan. 24, 2023, which she stated culminated in hallucinations of a daunting voice urging her to hold out the murders.
The issue was exacerbated by a cocktail of medicines her numerous healthcare suppliers had prescribed, which she claimed led on to her strangling the children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month Callan — earlier than slashing her throat and leaping out a bed room window.
Whether or not she was actually legally insane was the crux of her six-week trial — prosecutors argued that choices she made, together with laying plans for the murders and asking her husband to run an errand earlier than committing them, indicated she knew what she was doing and was criminally accountable for the deaths.
Most jurors agreed with the prosecutors and needed to search out her not responsible by motive of madness, however one hold-out refused to agree and led to a mistrial on Sept. 4 after a grueling week of deliberations.
Meaning Clancy will head to courtroom once more someday sooner or later — and if she succeeds at being discovered not responsible by motive of madness would possible spend years in a state-run hospital just like Tewksbury.
Clancy could be eligible for launch if medical doctors deem her not a hazard to herself or the general public, however Decide William Sullivan advised jurors earlier than deliberations she may “stay dedicated at some stage in her life.”
Massachusetts felony protection lawyer Peter Elikann agreed with Sullivan’s evaluation, telling The Publish “she could by no means see the sunshine of day, or she may presumably be launched a long time from now.”
One hospital she may wind up spending that point in is Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility south of Boston, which spends about $367,007 per affected person annually — which means her care may value taxpayers tens of tens of millions through the years.
And if she have been discovered responsible the prices of her care would even be excessive, although not as severely.
Massachusetts prisons’ annual per-patient prices usually run round $100,000 and $250,000 per yr.
