Lindsay Clancy Trial Ends In Mistrial After Defense’s Hail Mary Attempt

Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday in the triple-murder trial of Lindsay Clancy after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict and after an unprecedented move from Clancy’s defense.

The nine-woman, three-man jury told Sullivan for the third time that they were deadlocked and unable to reach a unanimous decision after around 38 hours of deliberations.

“With a heavy heart we report we cannot come to a unanimous decision,” the jurors wrote in a note.

Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington then made a last-ditch effort before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court after the judge prepared to declare a mistrial. Sullivan gave Reddington one hour to file an emergency stay before bringing the jury back into the courtroom to officially declare a mistrial.

In his appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Reddington pushed for the removal of a lone holdout juror, arguing that the juror is “biased” against those with “debilitating mental illness.”

The high court rejected Reddington’s emergency appeal.

Earlier on Friday, tensions flared in the courtroom when the judge denied Clancy’s defense attorney a request to remove the lone juror accused of holding up a verdict, sparking a fiery exchange over the judge’s reasonable doubt instructions.

On Thursday, a holdout juror was singled out after the foreperson sent Sullivan a note alleging that one juror was refusing to follow the judge’s instructions on reasonable doubt. The surprise note sent the courtroom into a scramble and sparked a heated sidebar involving Sullivan, the defense, and the prosecution. Reporters inside the courthouse described Clancy’s attorney as visibly angry and frustrated.

The most serious charges Clancy faced were three counts of first-degree murder, each carrying a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She is expected to remain in custody at Tewksbury State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, while prosecutors decide whether to retry her before a new jury, pursue a plea agreement, or decline to prosecute the case again.

The jury first said they were deadlocked on Tuesday after four days of deliberations, sending Judge Sullivan a note saying they were “unable to come to a unanimous decision.” The judge instructed them to continue deliberating, but the jury returned Wednesday still unable to reach a verdict after more than 27 hours of deliberations. Sullivan then issued a final “Tuey-Rodriguez” or “dynamite” instruction on Wednesday, urging jurors to reconsider their positions and make every effort to reach a unanimous verdict before the mistrial was ultimately declared. Yet, on Friday, they again said they were deadlocked.

Clancy killed the young children by strangling them with exercise bands while inside the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, after she sent her then-husband Patrick Clancy to pick up takeout food and medication on January 24, 2023. Clancy then attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window after cutting both her wrists. All three children died, and Clancy was left paralyzed from the waist down.

The mother never denied killing her three children but pleaded not guilty, resting on what’s commonly referred to as the insanity defense. Clancy’s team argued that she was a loving mother but suffered from postpartum psychosis and was given “lousy” medical care. The defense argued that when she killed the children, she was suffering from psychosis and therefore not criminally responsible for the murders. Under Massachusetts law, a person can be found not criminally responsible if a mental disease or defect left them without the substantial capacity to understand the wrongfulness of their conduct or to conform their conduct to the law.

The state argued that Clancy methodically planned the killings and was criminally responsible for her actions, rejecting the defense’s claim that she was in a psychotic state that left her unable to understand the wrongfulness of what she was doing. The state said in closing arguments that Clancy gave up on trying to get better and decided to kill herself and also decided she was going to take her children with her. They said Clancy made a number of decisions leading up to the murders that show this was planned, like sending her husband Patrick out for two errands and looking up the time it would take for him to retrieve the takeout order.  Clancy wasn’t suffering psychosis and was aware of her actions and knew right and wrong, the state argued.

The case became a lightening rod across the country, with some women online rallying to support Clancy due to the defense’s injections of postpartum mental issues. A fundraiser set up for Clancy’s family brought in more than $1 million.

The trial also sparked debate about a culture that consumes tragedy and crime as entertainment. Notably, a healthy number of people online, mostly women, spun up conspiracies completely exonerating Clancy from the crimes, something Clancy never did herself. One conspiracy even claimed Patrick murdered the children and then somehow framed Clancy so well that she believed she had done it.

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