PLYMOUTH, Mass. – The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy appeared headed for a mistrial Friday after jurors remained deadlocked on their seventh day of deliberations, though the judge briefly delayed the move to give her attorney one hour to pursue an emergency appeal.
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The 12-member panel, consisting of nine women and three men, informed Judge William Sullivan that it could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy, 36, should be convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.
Sullivan had planned to bring the jury into court and formally declare a mistrial after receiving its third note reporting an impasse. But defense lawyer Kevin Reddington objected, asking the judge to pause the proceedings while he sought an emergency stay to challenge the decision.
The judge granted Reddington a one-hour window to make what amounted to a last-minute effort to stop the mistrial and appeal the ruling before it became official.
With no verdict in sight after a trial that stretched nearly five weeks and featured testimony from about 85 witnesses, Sullivan said the court had little choice but to move toward ending the case without a resolution.
Jurors first signaled they were stuck on the fourth day of deliberations, after spending nearly 18 hours weighing the evidence. At that point, Sullivan instructed them to continue their discussions.
The following day, after nearly 28 total hours of deliberations, the jury sent another note saying it could not reach unanimity. Sullivan then delivered the Tuey-Rodriguez charge, a Massachusetts instruction urging deadlocked jurors to make another good-faith attempt to reach a verdict.
One day later, on Thursday, jurors sent another note to the judge.
Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington revealed that the mysterious jury note that prompted the judge to question the jurors one by one at sidebar was from the foreperson, claiming a single juror “refuses to follow the law” on the judge’s instruction about reasonable doubt. The defense attorney lost his bid to have the panelist tossed from the jury.
Friday morning, Reddington argued for the holdout juror to be questioned individually by the judge, revealed the individual was a man and accused him of lying. But Sullivan shot down the request and sent the jurors back for more deliberations.
If declared, the mistrial decision does not grant the former nurse automatic freedom — instead, she will remain in custody at Tewksbury Hospital while the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office decides where to take the closely watched case next.
Prosecutors’ options include putting Clancy on trial a second time, trying to negotiate a plea deal or dropping the charges altogether.
Reddington previously indicated if the case were retried, Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz could opt to downgrade the charges to second-degree murder.
The hypothetical scenario would allow Clancy to choose a judge rather than a jury to oversee her retrial — an option not afforded to her with first-degree murder charges, Reddington said.
Reddington has repeatedly opined that Cruz would insist the case be tried a second time.
The decision comes after jurors heard dueling accounts of the mom’s state of mind when she fatally strangled Cora, 5; Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan using exercise bands before trying to take her own life on Jan. 24, 2023.
Reddington argued that Clancy was in the throes of postpartum psychosis, worsened by a myriad of prescription medications, and had hallucinated a man’s voice inside her head instructing her to kill the children and herself.
Prosecutors countered that she was in her right mind and had carefully planned the killings, including getting her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, to pick up medication at CVS and takeout from a local restaurant so that she could be alone with the children in their Duxbury home.
On Friday, the jury made its only request for evidence, asking to see the knife Lindsay Clancy used in her suicide attempt and her prescription pill bottles.
Had the jury unanimously agreed with Lindsay Clancy’s insanity defense, the former nurse would have remained committed at a state psychiatric facility indefinitely – and only ever been freed if doctors determined she was no longer a danger to herself or others.
But if they sided with the prosecution and convicted Lindsay Clancy of first-degree murder, she would have faced a mandatory life sentence behind bars with no chance of parole under Massachusetts law.
Both sides rested their cases after a total of 21 days of testimony, which began with Patrick Clancy taking the stand as the first witness last month.
Patrick Clancy — who has since moved to New York City and remarried infertility specialist Rachel Danis — told jurors that Lindsay Clancy repeatedly sought help for her worsening mental state in the months leading to the killings.
She began seeing a psychiatrist, called a suicide hotline twice, checked herself into a mental institution for five days and sought help from two perinatal clinics – but still, she “kept getting worse and worse,” Patrick Clancy testified, and said Lindsay Clancy had even opened up to him about having thoughts of harming the kids.
Lindsay Clancy’s “big spiral” was further fueled, according to Patrick Clancy and Reddington, by at least 13 psychiatric medications prescribed to her by five separate providers from November 2022 up until a day before the murders, including drugs for anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and anti-psychotic meds.
Patrick Clancy hauntingly recalled returning to the family’s home to find Lindsay Clancy in the backyard with slits on her wrists and throat after plunging from a second-story window — before racing inside and discovering his three children dead in the basement.
“She killed the kids,” the father could be heard screaming during the 911 call played for jurors.
Lindsay Clancy, who attended the trial in a wheelchair after becoming paralyzed from the waist down, repeatedly broke down in tears during harrowing testimony.
She was seen sobbing as the 911 call played, jurors were shown family photos and video from happier times, while the children’s pajamas and the exercise bands she used to strangle them were presented in court, and while a medical examiner testified about the autopsy she performed on baby Callan.
Other family members, including Lindsay Clancy’s ex-mother-in-law, mother and sister, testified about her historically joyful and capable personality devolving after Callan’s birth, when she was struggling with crippling insomnia, depression and anxiety about going back to work after her maternity leave ended.
But prosecutors maintained that Lindsay Clancy’s behavior showed planning rather than psychosis, and claimed that she “manipulated” the healthcare providers who treated her.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s trial for allegedly murdering her three children:
“Lindsay made a calculated decision. She was a woman who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted. It was getting harder and harder for her to control and when she saw the opportunity to escape, she made the selfish choice to take it,” Plymouth County prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said during opening statements.
“She chose to manipulate her providers, seeking out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious. And when she didn’t get what she expected, she chose the alternate route.”
Eventually, “She made a choice, a deliberate and intentional decision, that she did not want to try anymore. And because no one could take care of her kids the way she wanted them to, she had to take them with her too,” Buckingham told jurors.
Testimony also revealed that the mom had made a series of disturbing Google searches – including “How to slit throat to die” — in the days and weeks leading up to the killings.
Psychologists called to testify, meanwhile, shared contradicting evaluations about Lindsay Clancy’s mental state and hallucinations.
Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick — a defense witness — claimed the command voice forced Lindsay Clancy into the killings and that she could not be held criminally responsible for what she did that day.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone was pulling the strings,” he said.
He claimed she had a “distorted” belief that she was doing the kids “a favor” by taking them with her when she killed herself.
But three rebuttal prosecution experts all said Lindsay Clancy’s behavior demonstrated she knew what she was doing was wrong.
Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a prosecution expert and forensic psychiatrist, testified there were “inconsistencies” in Lindsay Clancy’s account of when the voice kicked in and differences between her and Patrick Clancy’s accounts of the sequence of events that day – raising questions about whether she was telling the truth.
The doctor claimed Lindsay Clancy was “methodical, quite controlled and organized” during the crimes.
The case put a national spotlight on issues surrounding mental illness and postpartum experiences among mothers, with many Lindsay Clancy supporters – the majority of whom are women – even showing up to court wearing pink T-shirts and arguing that she should not be found criminally liable for the murders.
Other demonstrators advocated for Lindsay Clancy to be found guilty, and showed up to court with signs demanding justice for “the only innocents: Cora, Dawson and Callan.”
