Devlin said it convinced her Clancy was in a deep depression, wanted to kill herself and “in that moment her delusion was, her kids would be better off if she had to be gone, then they had to be gone.”
After watching the video, one of three men on the jury said it made him “step back” from his position that Clancy was guilty of first-degree murder and “at that point he said he didn’t think it was premeditated,” Devlin said during the interview Thursday with the Globe.
Yet, later, according to Devlin, that same juror was the sole holdout against acquittal as the jury voted 11-1 to find Clancy not guilty based on a lack of criminal responsibility, accepting the defense’s claim she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan declared a mistrial on Sept. 4 after jurors repeatedly sent him notes indicating they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
“It was heartbreaking; it was painful,” said Devlin, 65, who works for a defense contractor. She said it is hard to shake the feeling the jury had failed by not reaching a verdict after weighing horrific evidence and Clancy’s desperate effort to get help for postpartum depression and anxiety.
Clancy, 36, has admitted she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan in the basement of their Duxbury home after sending her husband, Patrick, out to pick up medication and takeout dinner. She then slashed her neck and wrists and jumped out a second-story window in a failed attempt at suicide. She is paralyzed from the waist down and appeared in court each day in a wheelchair.
Clancy pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, asserting she should not be held criminally responsible because she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis and heard a male voice in her head telling her to kill herself and the children.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, presented evidence that Clancy desperately sought help for depression, anxiety and insomnia after the birth of her third child and accused medical providers of prescribing medications that made her worse and led to a psychotic break.
Prosecutors argued Clancy was given appropriate medical care, and failed to disclose all of her symptoms to those who treated her. They asserted that she was depressed, exhausted and chose to kill herself and her children because “it was what she had to do to end her misery.”
Devlin, among several jurors to speak publicly about the case in interviews with news media, disclosed that some are now facing a backlash on social media and a barrage of threats for saying they were poised to acquit Clancy based on insanity.
“Three children were murdered; nobody has forgotten that,” said Devlin, noting jurors weighed every bit of evidence while trying to reach a verdict.
“I don’t even know what all the threats are,” said Devlin, adding that some of her fellow jurors are frightened. “I know that there’s enough of them that people are afraid to keep talking about the thing we really want to talk about, which is the mental health system and how Lindsay was failed by it.”
She said the prosecution and defense both did their jobs, and that she believed the evidence showed that Clancy was failed by the medical system.
“I’m faulting the medical industry in general and mental health specifically,” Devlin said. “When someone continues to ask for help and shows signs of getting worse and worse,” then there should be a way to help them.
Devlin said jurors were compassionate and diligent and included two nurses, a special education teacher, a chef, a military veteran, and people with retail and business experience.
Ultimately, she said 11 jurors agreed that, based on Massachusetts law, the prosecution had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was not mentally ill and able to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions or obey the law.
Devlin said she believed a verdict of not guilty based on a lack of criminal responsibility, more commonly known as insanity, would have been just. It would have meant Clancy would be committed to a state psychiatric hospital, where she would be evaluated periodically to determine if she could be released to the community without posing a danger. That decision would be made by a judge.
A not guilty by reason of insanity verdict would give “some kind of justice to these three children, that their mother gets the help that she was desperately crying out for,” Devlin said. “And maybe it kicks off more of a conversation about what it is even to have postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis and what mothers go through every single time they give birth.”
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz has yet to announce whether he will seek a retrial of Clancy on first-degree murder charges. If he brings a lesser charge of second-degree murder, she would have the ability to waive her right to a jury trial and let a judge decide her case.
“I think that it will be very difficult to get 12 people to agree that she’s guilty of any level of murder,” Devlin said. “The defense’s case was very, very strong and we didn’t get to 11 to 1 easily, but we did get to 11 to 1 and I think that says a lot.”
Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph.