The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy has ended in a hung jury after jurors failed to agree whether the Massachusetts mother was criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial at Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, 4 September, after the 12-member jury remained deadlocked on its seventh day of deliberations. He then granted Clancy’s defence team an hour to seek an emergency stay before the ruling could be formally completed in front of the jurors.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said he intended to petition Massachusetts’ highest court over the judge’s refusal to remove a juror whom the jury foreperson had accused of not following instructions on reasonable doubt.
The jury, made up of nine women and three men, had deliberated for about 36 hours. It had already told Judge Sullivan twice that it could not reach a unanimous decision before the foreperson’s note on Thursday revealed an apparent dispute involving a single juror.
Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked after mental health trial
Judge Sullivan questioned jurors individually on Thursday before reminding them that they were required to follow the law as he had explained it. He later issued a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, the Massachusetts equivalent of a so-called dynamite charge, urging them to continue considering their positions.
On Friday, the judge declined to dismiss the juror at the centre of the dispute. The defence argued that the juror had acknowledged doubts about the prosecution case but refused to apply them when deciding whether Clancy should be acquitted.
Reddington described the situation as a “clear and present danger” and asked for time to appeal to a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The judge allowed the request before the jury was brought back into court.
The mistrial leaves Clancy facing the same first-degree murder charges over the deaths of her children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, who was eight months old.
Prosecutors said Clancy planned the killings and understood that her actions were wrong. They argued that she strangled the children at the family’s home in Duxbury in January 2023 while her husband briefly went out to collect dinner, before attempting to take her own life by jumping from a second-storey window.
Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse, has not denied killing the children. Her lawyers argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a severe psychiatric condition that left her unable to understand or control her actions.
The five-week trial heard from more than 80 witnesses, including Clancy’s former husband, relatives and psychiatric experts who offered sharply conflicting assessments of her mental state at the time of the killings.
If the mistrial stands, prosecutors will have to decide whether to pursue a second trial. The case would return to the pre-trial stage, with a new jury required if the prosecution chooses to proceed.
