Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial told Judge William Sullivan on Tuesday that they were deadlocked, meaning they could not agree on a unanimous verdict. The development raised a familiar question in Massachusetts courtrooms: how long can deliberations continue when a jury says it is stuck?
Sullivan instructed the panel to return to the jury room and keep working through the case. Deliberations continued until about 3:30 p.m., when jurors were dismissed for the day without reaching a verdict.
Hung jury in Karen Read and Emanuel Lopes trials
Deadlocked juries have been at the center of several closely watched Massachusetts trials in recent years, including the cases of Karen Read in 2024 and Emanuel Lopes in 2023 and 2024. Those proceedings offer some context for what can happen next when jurors report they are unable to reach agreement.
Lopes was accused of murdering Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna in 2018. His first trial in 2023 ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a unanimous decision.
His second trial, held in 2024, also reached a tense point when the jury reported three separate times that it was deadlocked. But after six days and 32 hours of deliberations, jurors ultimately returned a unanimous guilty verdict.
Read’s first trial in 2024 followed a different path. That jury also became deadlocked, and after five days and 27 hours of deliberations, the judge declared a mistrial.
In Read’s case, jurors first told the court they were at an impasse after 17.5 hours of deliberation. They reported being deadlocked again after 23.5 hours. Each time, they were sent back to continue deliberating, but after a third notice that they remained unable to agree, the mistrial was declared.
Read was acquitted the following year after a second trial.
Nancy Lane/The Boston Herald and Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger
What is the “Tuey-Rodriguez” instruction?
In both of the above cases, the judge gave the jury what’s commonly known as a “dynamite” charge to encourage them to reach a verdict.
In Massachusetts, the dynamite charge is called a “Tuey-Rodriguez” instruction, named after a 1973 case.
The law permits judges to send deadlocked juries back to deliberate twice. More chances are allowed if jurors ask clarifying questions about the law.
Upon the second reporting of being “deadlocked,” judges will consult with the attorneys involved in the case, then will often read jurors the Tuey-Rodriguez charge, which says, in part:
“You should consider that it is desirable that the case be decided. You should consider that you have been selected in the same manner, and from the same source, as any future jury would be. There is no reason to suppose that the case will ever be submitted to six persons who are more intelligent, more impartial, or more competent to decide it than you are, or that more or clearer evidence will be produced on one side or the other. With all this in mind, it is your duty to decide this case if you can do so conscientiously.”
After this is read, if the jury returns deadlocked a third time, the judge then has the discretion to declare a mistrial.
If a mistrial is declared, the conditions for the defendant go back to what they were pretrial. In this case, that would mean Clancy would remain “in custody” at Tewksbury State Hospital under psychiatric care.
The Plymouth County district attorney, Timothy Cruz, would then get to decide whether to retry Clancy for first-degree murder — or for a lesser charge — or to not retry the case at all.
