Lindsay Clancy has turned to Massachusetts’ top court in an effort to stop a mistrial in her closely watched triple murder case, asking that the judge be ordered to question a holdout juror individually — or remove him — before ending the trial.
Her defense team filed an emergency petition Friday afternoon with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, seeking to prevent Judge William Sullivan from declaring a mistrial. The filing argues Sullivan erred by declining to examine a male juror who is accused of failing to properly apply the legal standard for reasonable doubt.
Follow The Post’s live updates on the Lindsay Clancy trial
Earlier in the day, Reddington urged Sullivan to question the juror directly. The judge refused, noting that he had already addressed the panel Thursday by asking each juror, one at a time, whether they could follow his instructions on the law. Sullivan also repeated his explanation of reasonable doubt for the jury.
“A mistrial at this point is entirely avoidable, but only if the court does its job,” Clancy’s lawyer, Dana Goldblatt, wrote in the emergency appeal papers.
Clancy’s filing asks the high court to require further questioning about whether the juror can “apply the law” and to bar him from continuing deliberations unless the trial court first determines that he is both willing and able to follow the judge’s instructions.
“Intervention is necessary in this case to avoid an avoidable mistrial of a case that is so time and labor intensive and that has captured so much public attention,” the filing stated. “It is also necessary to preserve the defendant’s right to a fair trial by unbiased jurors applying the law.”
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s trial for allegedly murdering her three children:
The 12-member jury, made up of nine women and three men, had spent more than 38 hours deliberating across more than a week when Sullivan appeared ready Friday to declare a mistrial after receiving the panel’s third note saying it was deadlocked.
The group was deciding whether to convict the 36-year-old Duxbury mom of first-degree murder for strangling her three kids, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan, 8 months, on Jan. 24, 2023.
Redding asked jurors to find her not guilty by reason of insanity based on his claim she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis and heard a voice telling her to kill the kids and herself.
Prosecutors argued she carefully planned the slayings because she was tired of taking care of the children and wanted to end her live and take them with her.
