She also slashed her own neck and wrists and jumped from a second-story window in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Paralyzed from the waist down, Clancy remains in custody at Tewksbury Hospital and is brought into the courtroom each day in a wheelchair.
The responses from the prospective jurors are confidential, but the questions nonetheless offer insight into the painstaking effort to give Clancy a fair trial.
They include whether a prospective juror has been diagnosed with postpartum depression, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, or bipolar disorder, or whether a family member has. They are also asked whether they or a family had an experience with the mental health system that would prevent them from being fair and impartial.
And in addition to being asked about the use of an insanity defense, the prospective jurors were also asked if they could remain impartial while hearing evidence on medical treatment and reviewing photographs of the autopsy.
So far, prosecutors and the defense have agreed on 17 of the 18 jurors, including six alternates, needed for the high-profile trial, and will return on Thursday to select that final juror.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said potential jurors were not automatically excused if they answered yes to some of the questions. Rather, the goal was to gain insight into their thoughts about issues that are central to the case.
“We’re just trying to get fair people,” Reddington said after Wednesday’s session.
Janice Bassil, a longtime defense attorney, said that in a case such as this, the questions about the jurors’ experiences with mental health can suggest how they may interpret testimony from mental-health professionals, for example, or take in information on someone else’s struggles.
Clancy would avoid prospective jurors who seem too overwhelmed by the details of the case — they might be crying for example, or otherwise appear upset — as well as those with young children. Many jurors want to believe they can be objective, Bassil said, but in a case like this, “I don’t know how you could not think about your own kids.”
Ultimately, feelings of horror and sadness are going to come up in a case with brutal details, added Christina Miller, a former Suffolk County prosecutor who now teaches at Suffolk Law. But the key, she said, is to determine whether a prospective juror can “set aside” those feelings and make a fair decision.
“It’s a lot to ask,” she acknowledged.
One indication of the intense subject matter jurors will confront is reflected in a motion filed this week by Clancy’s former husband, requesting the trial judge, William F. Sullivan, block public access to the photos of the victims as well as his own anguished 911 call. That information, Patrick Clancy argued, should be limited to only the attorneys on both sides, jurors, and court staff.
“The potential harmful and everlasting emotional impact to Mr. Clancy and his family of any public dissemination of such graphic and sensational evidence and exhibits related to his three children is immeasurable,” Patrick Clancy’s lawyer, David E. Meier, wrote in the filing. “Likewise, the disrespect for the dignity and memory of the three child victims that would inherently be occasioned by such dissemination speaks for itself.”
During jury selection this week, each person from the pool was brought into the courtroom after completing their questionnaire and interviewed by Sullivan, Reddington, and assistant district attorneys Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham.
Although the sidebar conferences were conducted out of earshot of the media, snippets of the conversations could be heard as some potential jurors said they couldn’t fairly judge Clancy. A handful of potential jurors cried while they were being questioned and were promptly excused. A box of facial tissues was placed nearby.
When Sullivan asked the larger pool of prospective jurors in open court whether they could not be impartial, 20 raised their jury cards, indicating yes, on Monday, and another 31 did so on Wednesday.
In an unusual move, Clancy sat in the witness box next to the judge so she could listen as jurors were questioned about whether they could fairly decide her case.
Reddington, an experienced criminal defense lawyer who has tried hundreds of cases, said it’s standard practice for him to have his clients participate in jury selection. But in Clancy’s case, since she is in a wheelchair, she was allowed to sit facing potential jurors so she could hear them. She seemed engaged in the process as she flipped through the questionnaires and whispered to Reddington.
Prosecutors allege Clancy premeditated the slayings and sent her husband out for takeout at a restaurant far enough from their home to carry out her plan, and that she “did not feel love or connection with some of her kids,” according to court filings.
Her defense lawyer, in turn, has described Clancy as a loving mother who desperately sought help for postpartum depression and anxiety in the months after her third child was born and was overmedicated on 13 drugs, leading to “homicidal ideation, suicidal ideation.”
Under state law, the burden is on prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was not mentally ill when she killed her children, or, if she were, that she knew it was wrong or illegal and was capable of obeying the law.
Jurors will be instructed that if Clancy is found not guilty due to mental illness she will be committed to a psychiatric hospital. She would be evaluated periodically to determine whether she may be released because she no longer poses a danger to the community.
Opening statements and testimony may begin Friday.
Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph. Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.