The mistrial in the case of Lindsay Clancy, the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother who killed her three children, sets up the possibility of another trial in a matter that has sown division and drawn attention to postpartum mental health.
Clancy admitted to killing her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, by strangling them at home in 2023. And the jury was asked to decide whether she should be held legally responsible for her actions.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time, a position prosecutors strongly disputed.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday after jurors told him three times over seven days of deliberation that they could not reach a verdict.
Before the mistrial was declared, Reddington made a last-minute appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to intervene because, he said, a sole juror was violating the judge’s instructions on reasonable doubt, the standard of proof needed for a criminal conviction.
The law states that if a juror has real doubt based on reason, the juror must acquit the defendant. The court denied the motion.
Will there be another trial?
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not yet said whether he will seek another trial.
Prosecutors whose cases have ended with deadlocked juries often review how their trial unfolded and decide not to seek a new trial if they determine they are unlikely to win a conviction the second time around.
Massachusetts has some recent experience with a high-profile case, a deadlocked jury and a second trial. In 2024, a jury deadlocked in the case of Karen Read, who was accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, two years earlier. Prosecutors tried her again last year, and she was acquitted.
Margaret McLean, a former Massachusetts prosecutor and the host of “The Margaret McLean Show,” a legal analysis show on YouTube, said Cruz has a reputation for being tough on crime, as do the courts in Plymouth, leading her to believe prosecutors will retry the case on three counts of first-degree murder.
David Rossman, a professor of law emeritus at Boston University and a longtime criminal defense attorney, said it was unlikely Cruz would change the charges facing Clancy.
“This is a prosecutor who for Massachusetts is relatively conservative, and it, to the public, would seem to be an admission of having erred originally if the prosecutor did not try to charge her again,” Rossman said. “I’d be surprised if he backs off.”
Prosecutors could also offer a plea deal to Clancy or decide not to retry the case. The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The judge set a hearing for next steps to be argued on Sept. 29.
What happens to Lindsay Clancy now?
Clancy will remain at Tewksbury Hospital, the state-run medical and psychiatric center where she resided before and during the trial, her lawyer said. In the event of a mistrial, a defendant typically returns to pretrial conditions, Rossman said.
Clancy receives mental health treatment at Tewksbury and care for paralysis. She was paralyzed when she tried to kill herself by jumping from a second-story window of her home after the killings.
What happens to the jury that was dismissed?
The nine women and three men on the jury and six alternate jurors were dismissed after the mistrial was declared Friday.
Prosecutors sometimes speak with jurors involved in a deadlocked case as they try to determine whether to refile charges. In the Clancy case, prosecutors will be able to contact the jurors after notifying her defense, Rossman said.
Jurors are not required to speak with anyone once a trial is over, according to the Massachusetts Trial Juror’s Handbook, and they are no longer prohibited from talking about the trial.
The handbook tells jurors to “avoid revealing the names of other jurors, how any juror voted, or anything discussed during jury deliberations.”
If Clancy is tried again, a new jury would be selected to hear the case the second time.
What happened Friday before a mistrial was declared?
Court proceedings devolved into chaos Friday after Reddington appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
The jury foreperson had sent a note to Sullivan on Thursday indicating that there was a lone juror who expressed doubt about whether Clancy was liable but declined to return a verdict of not guilty.
Sullivan affirmed with each juror their ability to carry out the law and declined to remove the juror, as Reddington had requested.
That uncertainty spilled into Friday, which began with Reddington again demanding the juror be questioned or dismissed. Sullivan declined to do so.
The jury deliberated briefly before notifying the court for a third time that it was deadlocked.
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