The jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial. Clancy is accused of killing her three children: 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan.
A Massachusetts judge said Friday that he would declare a mistrial after the jury in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial failed for a third time to reach a verdict. Clancy is accused of strangling her three young children to death in 2023.
In a dramatic turn inside the courtroom, Clancy’s attorney asked to appeal the judge’s decision to a higher court. Judge William Sullivan granted the defense one hour to pursue the appeal.
Sullivan announced his decision Friday morning after jurors sent the court a note indicating that they remained deadlocked.
“I’m going to declare a mistrial,” Sullivan told the court.
Following the jury’s third deadlock, both prosecutors and defense attorneys were allowed to argue their positions on whether the case should proceed.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington strongly opposed declaring a mistrial and requested an emergency appeal of Sullivan’s decision. However, the judge appeared reluctant to bring the jury back on Saturday for additional deliberations, even if Reddington succeeds in his appeal.
Sullivan told Reddington he had one hour to file an emergency stay before the court would bring the jurors back and dismiss them.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old. The jury remained deadlocked after a nearly six-week trial and seven days of deliberation.
Jurors were tasked with determining whether Clancy was criminally responsible for her children’s deaths or whether she should be found not guilty by reason of a lack of criminal responsibility due to mental illness.
Sullivan received the jury’s first deadlock note Tuesday, on the fourth day of deliberations. He dismissed the jurors for the day after instructing them to continue working toward a unanimous verdict.
The jury sent a second note Wednesday, stating that it was “still unable to come to a unanimous decision.” Sullivan then gave the jurors what are known as Tury-Rodriguez instructions, urging them to make one final effort to reach a verdict and emphasizing the importance of continued deliberations.
Under Massachusetts law, a judge may instruct a jury to continue deliberating twice unless the jurors agree to continue on their own. If the jury remains unable to reach a unanimous verdict after a third deadlock, the judge may declare a mistrial, which Sullivan did Friday.
Clancy’s defense argued that she was not criminally responsible for the Jan. 24, 2023, deaths because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe psychiatric condition that can disrupt a new mother’s perception of reality. The condition is considered a psychiatric emergency and is distinct from the more common and generally less severe postpartum depression.
Her attorneys argued that Clancy’s mental health had deteriorated significantly in the months leading up to the killings. Despite repeated efforts to seek psychiatric care, including a call to a suicide hotline, they said she was never properly diagnosed. Instead, she was prescribed a series of medications over several months in an effort to treat her symptoms or manage adverse reactions to other medications.
In closing arguments, Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, blamed what he called “the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got” for the devastating shift from a happy family life to the deaths of her children.
Reddington argued that prosecutors were attempting to influence the jury by portraying Clancy as obsessed with control while minimizing the severity of her suicide attempt, which left her paralyzed from the waist down.
He also reinforced Clancy’s account that she heard a male voice instructing her to kill her children, a claim prosecutors sought to challenge throughout the trial. Clancy told a hospital chaplain about the alleged voice and later mentioned it to her then-husband during a phone call that was heard by a forensic psychologist.
Reddington further highlighted testimony from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick, who concluded that Clancy was experiencing psychosis at the time of the killings.
“This young lady is not guilty of killing her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect,” Reddington told the court.
Prosecutors, however, argued that Clancy was fully aware of her actions at the time of the killings and had deliberately planned them. While acknowledging that she was experiencing serious mental health struggles, prosecutors maintained that she manipulated her doctors and treatment and was not experiencing psychosis when the children were killed.
They argued that Clancy intentionally sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out to pick up dinner and make a trip to CVS on the evening of the killings. Prosecutors said she researched how long the trip would take and even called the store to confirm that a particular medication was in stock, allowing her to create enough time to carry out the killings.
Prosecutors said Clancy then methodically killed her children one by one before attempting suicide by jumping from a second-story bedroom window.
Her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, testified that he returned home that evening to find “blood everywhere.”
Patrick said he found Clancy bleeding on the ground outside the family’s home. Inside the basement, he discovered the children unresponsive, with exercise bands around their necks.
The trial has drawn attention to issues surrounding maternal mental health care. But in her closing argument, Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors that the case was not about the mental health system or how it treats women.
Sprague acknowledged that Clancy had mental health issues and had experienced depression. However, she argued that her lack of improvement was not the result of inadequate care from her medical providers.
Sprague said that in the months before the killings, Clancy told family members she was getting better while telling psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts that she was still depressed. Prosecutors argued that Clancy did not disclose the full extent of her symptoms during her sessions with Tufts.
According to Sprague, Clancy “denied having a suicide plan, denied wanting to hurt anyone else, denied voices” and “showed no signs of psychosis” during those appointments.
Sprague also reviewed the events surrounding the killings, telling jurors that Clancy used exercise bands to strangle her children. She described the killings as an “extreme atrocity and cruelty.”
“Those kids were her protective factor,” Sprague said. “Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery. And so she had to remove the protective factor. … It was a choice.”
The trial was livestreamed and received widespread attention across the country. Supporters of Clancy gathered outside the courthouse, while the case also generated discussion, speculation, and conspiracy theories on social media.
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