Lindsay Clancy’s attorney has clarified his courtroom remarks after appearing to reverse course on his trial strategy by suggesting there was no evidence that the accused mother strangled her three children.
At Tuesday’s hearing for the 36-year-old mother, defense lawyer Kevin Reddington appeared to retreat from an approach that accepted Clancy killed the children while arguing she was psychotic at the time.
“Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington asked the court, maintaining that “this entire case is based on speculation.”
“She was told what happened. She had no memory of what happened,” he said. “There’s no evidence that she admitted that she did this.”
Reddington argued that prosecutors still had to meet the minimum evidentiary standard for the triple-murder charges and failed to do so. He again urged the judge to issue a required finding of not guilty, a motion he unsuccessfully presented twice during the trial.
“What I did was argue exactly what I argued in my closing to the jury, exactly what I argued in motions for required finding,” Reddington said on “Hot Mics with Billy Bush.”
“The government has to prove probable cause,” he continued. “If they can’t prove the guilt of the citizen based on their investigation, that person is entitled to a not guilty regardless of what a defense may be.”
“This investigation was so horrific, so atrocious that it just defies, it boggles the mind why this investigation ended up the way it did, so I had to raise that issue on the motion for a required finding,” he said.
The 75-year-old defense veteran said Tuesday that investigators lacked sufficient DNA and fingerprint evidence, that the alleged timeline was impossible and that the investigation remained incomplete.
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham called the claim “laughable,” arguing there was ample evidence that Clancy used elastic exercise bands to strangle her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — on Jan. 24, 2023.
Prosecutors pointed to Clancy’s DNA on the ends of the exercise bands, her status as the only adult in the house and Apple Health data tracking her movements through the home as evidence that she carried out the killings.
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Judge William Sullivan said he would issue a ruling at a later date.
During the trial, Reddington did not dispute that Clancy killed the children. Instead, he argued that she was experiencing severe postpartum psychosis, hallucinating a voice that ordered her to kill the children and then herself.
Prosecutors countered that Clancy deliberately planned the killings, including by sending her then-husband out to run errands.
The jury, consisting of nine women and three men, heard that Clancy had struggled with her mental health for months before the killings.
She had seen a psychiatrist, called a suicide hotline twice, consulted two perinatal clinics and spent nearly five days at a mental health facility during that period.
Clancy was also prescribed 13 psychiatric medications, which Reddington said contributed to the deterioration of her mental state.
After five weeks of testimony and seven days of deliberations, Sullivan declared a mistrial when the jury sent three notes saying it was hopelessly deadlocked.
Several jurors later spoke publicly, saying that 11 of the 12 panel members wanted to find Clancy not criminally responsible, while only one was prepared to convict her.
Prosecutors haven’t yet said how they plan to proceed with the case and whether they will retry Clancy on the same charges, downgrade the charges, drop them altogether or attempt to strike a plea bargain with the defense.
Clancy is due back in court on Nov. 2.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
