A mistrial has officially been declared in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy after the jury said it couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on whether she should be criminally responsible for killing her three young children.
The judge’s ruling on Friday followed the defense’s unsuccessful emergency plea to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to allow jurors to continue deliberating as the judge prepared to declare a mistrial.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington also repeatedly argued, unsuccessfully, that a lone juror be removed following a complaint from the jury’s foreperson that the individual was refusing to follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt.
Judge William Sullivan, after declaring the jury deadlocked, commended the jurors for performing their duty and for “how hard everyone worked in this case.”
“I understood that you all gave everything you could, and probably more than you thought you could,” he told them.
Sullivan said his goal would be to have a potential retrial sometime in the fall. A status hearing on the case was scheduled for Sept. 29, the court heard.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said his office would not make a decision on Friday about retrying the case, while also suggesting that a decision had already been made.
“Children were murdered and it’s our job to seek justice,” he told reporters gathered outside the courthouse.
“This case is not about a healthcare system, or how women are treated in it,” he went on, dismissing the defense’s argument that Clancy was not in control of her actions because she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis.
“I understand that postpartum depression has impacted the lives of countless women and their families and I sympathize with their struggles. The investigation into these heinous killings, however, did not establish that they were caused by such depression,” Cruz said.
Reddington, also addressing the media following Cruz, commended both Clancy and the jurors, whom he said were robbed by a single juror who, he said, was accused by his peers of acknowledging doubt but refusing to apply it to the verdict.
“Where do I begin to thank these jurors, minus one,” Reddington said. “They knew they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors.”
He hailed Clancy as “strong” but said she’s “not good” following the trial’s conclusion.
Clancy had been on trial for the first-degree murder of her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy, in 2023.
After a highly emotional seven-week trial, including seven days of deliberations, the jury said Friday morning that it was unable to agree on whether she should be held criminally responsible for their deaths or be found not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial swept social media and inspired a nationwide discourse of postpartum health.
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A mistrial had been long awaited as the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision for several days.
Twice, Sullivan sent jurors back to deliberations after they said they couldn’t come to a unanimous decision — once on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, after jurors sent the judge a note saying one juror is hung up on the term reasonable doubt, he reminded them that the burden is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy is guilty.
Neither side disputed that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, killed her children.
In around five weeks of testimony, the prosecution also never denied that Clancy had mental health struggles. Instead, prosecutors argued that because she was depressed, she made a plan to kill her children in an effort to end her own “misery.”
The defense, however, argued that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and wasn’t given the help she needed from healthcare providers.
Reddington also cast doubt on the thoroughness of the police’s investigation into the killings, at one point stating that it wasn’t even a “lousy investigation” because there was “no investigation.”
Police didn’t analyze the window screen Clancy jumped from when she attempted suicide after the killings, Reddington said, and didn’t enter a bag full of Clancy’s medication as evidence.
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The trial was full of heart-wrenching moments. Clancy broke down in uncontrollable sobs as medical examiner Barbara Olson testified about the injuries Clancy’s children suffered as a result of her efforts to strangle them. The sobs became so loud and distracting that the judge ordered the court to recess. Afterward, Clancy kept her head down on the table.
Officer Stephen Hall fought back tears during his testimony as he recalled finding the dead children in the basement.
Emotions spilled over to social media. With the trial being televised, viewers quickly became obsessed with the court proceedings and started broadcasting their own theories online. Mothers came forward to share their experiences with postpartum psychosis and depression, and others shared conspiracy theories about the case, including the idea that Clancy’s then-husband was the one who had killed their children.
Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Lindsay Clancy didn’t testify, but her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy — who has since remarried — did.
He spoke about finding his wife on the ground outside their home after she attempted suicide. After she was transported to the hospital and stabilized, he said, she told him that she heard a man’s voice telling her to kill their children.
A few days after the killings, a GoFundMe page for Patrick Clancy stated that he’d forgiven his then-wife.
“I want to ask all of you that you find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay, as I have,” he wrote at the time. “The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone — me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients. The very fibers of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace.”