A Tribute, Or A Tactic? The Lindsay Clancy Prosecutor’s Hair Bows Could Backfire

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, accused of strangling her three children, has gripped the nation. Social media has been filled with true crime sleuths at home finding alternate theories of the case and postpartum advocates pointing out the ways the system failed the entire Clancy family and just gossips getting the ick over how quickly the dad, Patrick Clancy, remarried. And of course, there’s the genuine grief over the loss of three young lives, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. But running alongside those questions is a smaller one that has become its own conversation, and a genuinely useful one for anyone who practices law. Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, and the widely circulated theory, floated by former prosecutor Margaret McLean on NBC10 Boston, is that they’re a tribute to Cora, the five-year-old who loved bows.

McLean, who has been livestreaming the trial daily, believes the intent is “pure” but called the bows “a little too obvious,” adding that it’s “something I would not have done as a prosecutor.” New Jersey defense attorney David Bruno, himself a former prosecutor, went further, calling the choice “improper” and warning that an appellate court “may have a problem with that.” Criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh split the difference: not technically improper, sure, but “a significant courtroom optics problem.”

Social media, predictably, has fewer reservations. One TikTok user cut right to it, calling the bows “a cheap gimmick and a tactic to manipulate the jury.” Others have gone full forensic, compiling montages cataloging every bow Buckingham has worn, day by day, like it’s a fashion week no one asked for.

Over on r/LawBitchesWithTaste, the skepticism ran deep even among people plainly not rooting for the defense. One commenter who identified as a prosecutor said she had once honored a young victim by quietly wearing the child’s favorite color, saying, “no one would have known but her family.” That’s the key — the tribute that works is the one the jury never clocks. Another poster found the bows “really inappropriate” and read it as an over-the-top bid for sympathy in a case that needs exactly none — no one, she pointed out, is at risk of forgetting that a sweet little girl who loved bows was murdered. A third put the strategic problem plainly: a juror might read the fashion choice as cynical, and decide the prosecution was “going way too hard as to be disingenuous,” distracting from its own case. When the courtroom-tasteful crowd and the true-crime feeds land in the same place, that’s something.

And here is where I’ll cop to my bias: as a grown ass woman who owns more bows than any adult reasonably should and wears them without a shred of shame, I want to be on the side of the bow. I really do. But watching a prosecutor pin a dead five-year-old’s favorite thing to her own head, in front of the jury deciding that child’s mother’s fate, day after day, I cannot get there.

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, accused of strangling her three children, has gripped the nation. Social media has been filled with true crime sleuths at home finding alternate theories of the case and postpartum advocates pointing out the ways the system failed the entire Clancy family and just gossips getting the ick over how quickly the dad, Patrick Clancy, remarried. And of course, there’s the genuine grief over the loss of three young lives, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. But running alongside those questions is a smaller one that has become its own conversation, and a genuinely useful one for anyone who practices law. Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, and the widely circulated theory, floated by former prosecutor Margaret McLean on NBC10 Boston, is that they’re a tribute to Cora, the five-year-old who loved bows.

McLean, who has been livestreaming the trial daily, believes the intent is “pure” but called the bows “a little too obvious,” adding that it’s “something I would not have done as a prosecutor.” New Jersey defense attorney David Bruno, himself a former prosecutor, went further, calling the choice “improper” and warning that an appellate court “may have a problem with that.” Criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh split the difference: not technically improper, sure, but “a significant courtroom optics problem.”

Social media, predictably, has fewer reservations. One TikTok user cut right to it, calling the bows “a cheap gimmick and a tactic to manipulate the jury.” Others have gone full forensic, compiling montages cataloging every bow Buckingham has worn, day by day, like it’s a fashion week no one asked for.

Over on r/LawBitchesWithTaste, the skepticism ran deep even among people plainly not rooting for the defense. One commenter who identified as a prosecutor said she had once honored a young victim by quietly wearing the child’s favorite color, saying, “no one would have known but her family.” That’s the key — the tribute that works is the one the jury never clocks. Another poster found the bows “really inappropriate” and read it as an over-the-top bid for sympathy in a case that needs exactly none — no one, she pointed out, is at risk of forgetting that a sweet little girl who loved bows was murdered. A third put the strategic problem plainly: a juror might read the fashion choice as cynical, and decide the prosecution was “going way too hard as to be disingenuous,” distracting from its own case. When the courtroom-tasteful crowd and the true-crime feeds land in the same place, that’s something.

And here is where I’ll cop to my bias: as a grown ass woman who owns more bows than any adult reasonably should and wears them without a shred of shame, I want to be on the side of the bow. I really do. But watching a prosecutor pin a dead five-year-old’s favorite thing to her own head, in front of the jury deciding that child’s mother’s fate, day after day, I cannot get there.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1