A former psychiatric hospital employee who made a TikTok criticizing prosecutors and the facility where Lindsay Clancy was briefly committed will not be allowed to testify at Clancy’s trial.
Emily Thorndike previously worked at McLean Hospital, where Clancy had been committed for several days in December 2022; she stopped working there the year prior.
On Wednesday, Aug. 19, Thorndike was questioned by both the defense and prosecutors at Clancy’s trial during a voir dire session without the jury present.
The proceedings were streamed live by the ᴀssociated Press.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, had filed a motion to add Thorndike to the defense witness list after she made a nearly 10-minute TikTok video, in which she lambasted the prosecution and claimed that the level of care at McLean was misrepresented during the trial.
Thorndike, a licensed independent clinical social worker, said in the TikTok caption that she wanted to address prosecutors’ “lies and misrepresentation.”
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Reddington said he was made aware of Thorndike’s video, which was created during the trial and has since garnered more than 600,000 likes, and had his private investigator track her down.
The defense wanted Thorndike to provide testimony about McLean’s staffing levels during holidays, including New Year’s, which is when Clancy was there.
During the voir dire session, Reddington took aim at the psychiatric hospital.
“I’m not looking to bring [Thorndike] in to disparage McLean Hospital,” he said. “They have done a good job of that themselves.”
Prosecutors objected to Thorndike’s potential inclusion as a witness, arguing that she had been watching the trial and that she hadn’t worked at the hospital while Clancy was there.
Judge William Sullivan ultimately ruled that Thorndike would not be allowed to testify in front of the jury, saying that there was “limited value” to her testimony given that she did not work at the facility when Clancy was committed.
Sullivan said staffing levels at McLean are found in the hospital’s records and that Reddington could introduce those into evidence.
Clancy is charged with murder in the January 2023 killings of her three children, who were strangled to death with exercise bands in their Duxbury, Mᴀss. home.
Clancy does not dispute that she killed the children, but her defense claims she is not criminally responsible, arguing she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and overmedication at the time.
A former psychiatric hospital employee who made a TikTok criticizing prosecutors and the facility where Lindsay Clancy was briefly committed will not be allowed to testify at Clancy’s trial. Emily Thorndike…