Judge William Sullivan sent jurors home for the day shortly before 4 p.m. Monday without a verdict.
updated on August 31, 2026 | 5:08 PM
5 minutes to read
Livestream via Law & Crime.
Sign up to receive alerts when the Lindsay Clancy murder trial verdict is in: email alerts, Apple app, or Android app.
This story may contain content readers find disturbing. For help with postpartum mood disorders, text or call 1-833-TLC-MAMA for the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call 988 or go to https://988lifeline.org/ to chat online.
4 p.m. update: Lindsay Clancy jurors dismissed Monday afternoon without a verdict
Jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s trial closed out another full day of deliberations Monday without reaching a verdict, having weighed the evidence for nearly 17 hours over three days.
Judge William Sullivan sent jurors home shortly before 4 p.m., reminding them to avoid discussing, reading about, or researching the case on their own time.
“Just stay the course, all right?” Sullivan added.
Deliberations will resume Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Fielding questions from reporters outside the courthouse, defense attorney Kevin Reddington pointed out the deliberating jurors have several weeks of testimony and 300 exhibits to contend with.
“They’re working hard,” he said. “They’ve been incredibly hard-working, paying attention through the whole trial.”
Addressing Clancy’s mental state throughout jury deliberations, Reddington added, “I just try to keep her spirits up. I talk to her and distract her. You know, it’s tough.”
He also said he was not expecting the international spotlight on Clancy’s case.
“I think it’s the social implications of it,” Reddington said, trying to explain the media sensation. “I think it strikes a chord with many, many people. It strikes a chord with, I think, obviously women. Because it’s atrocious, I’ve learned, the medical care [women receive] and the psychiatric care, using that term loosely.”
He added: “I’m glad for the social implications of it. I wish it were over for Lindsay.”
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had sharp words for legal commentator Nancy Grace and Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday, slamming the pair for their remarks on Lindsay Clancy’s case.
Speaking on her “Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,” the eponymous true crime host used air quotes and a heavy dose of sarcasm as she cast doubt on Clancy’s defense and suggested the young Duxbury mother planned to kill her three children. Grace and Hannity also spoke unfavorably about Clancy while discussing the case on Fox News.
“A ‘loving mom,’ Lindsay Clancy, Googles ‘ways to kill’ then murders her three tots dead in the basement with her own exercise bands,” Grace alleged on “Crime Stories,” per video from Court TV.
In 2023, early on in the case, investigators filed search warrant affidavits alleging Clancy “used her cellular telephone and her journal to document her mental state and her feelings about her children, in addition to keeping track of her medications, and researching ways to kill.”
But when Clancy’s internet history came to light earlier this month during her trial, her searches appeared to be focused more on potential methods of suicide. According to Reddington, those searches included “where is the carotid artery,” “how to slit your throat to die,” and “can you turn airbags off on Kia Sorento” — the type of car Clancy drove.
“This weekend has been horrific with the coverage,” he told reporters outside the courthouse Monday morning, according to video from WBZ. “And by that I mean Mr. Hannity with his men, discussing every little inch of Lindsay’s symptoms and criticizing. Nancy Grace — to coin a phrase, ‘the queen of mean’ — who misrepresents facts.”
Reddington also challenged Grace to show where Clancy “ever Googled ‘how to kill.’”
“And these things hurt; these things hurt people,” he continued. “If you’re going to be a journalist, do it right.”
Reddington punctuated his remarks by name-dropping veteran crime reporters Bob Ward of Boston 25 News and Shelley Murphy of The Boston Globe, both of whom have been covering Clancy’s trial.
After breaking for the weekend with no verdict in sight, jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial are set to head back into deliberations Monday morning.
The 12 deliberating jurors — nine women and three men — have been in talks for about 10 hours over two days following closing arguments last Thursday. In their final pitches to jurors, the defense and prosecution laid out dueling narratives about what drove Clancy to strangle her three children on Jan. 24, 2023.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued Clancy was a devoted mother to 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan before she was caught in the throes of postpartum mental illness. Blaming “the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got” after giving birth to her third child, he alleged Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time and heard a voice in her head demanding she kill the children and herself.
He pointed out that Clancy, now 36, has never denied strangling her children, even as she has raised what is colloquially known as an insanity defense.
“She never ran from anything,” Reddington asserted.
While prosecutors acknowledged Clancy was struggling with her mental health in the months leading up to the killings, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague alleged that by January 2023, Clancy was suicidal and no longer wanted to keep trying to get better. Her children, however, “were keeping her from ending her misery,” Sprague suggested. “And so she had to remove the protective factor. And I’m not saying she was happy about it; I’m saying that it was what she had to do to end her misery. But it was a choice.”
Clancy is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, though jurors may also consider lesser-included offenses of second-degree murder or manslaughter if they feel prosecutors fell short of proving all the first-degree elements beyond a reasonable doubt.
If her insanity defense prevails and Clancy is found not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, she wouldn’t necessarily go free as she would in the event of an acquittal. As Judge William Sullivan told jurors last Thursday, prosecutors in those scenarios can — and often do — petition the court to have the individual committed to a mental health facility. A judge may do so if they feel the person is still mentally ill and poses a risk to themselves or others, but they can also revisit that decision during periodic reviews.
Lindsay Clancy watches jurors as they enter the courtroom in the morning to start their second day of deliberations Friday. – Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger, Pool
Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Lindsay Clancy murder case since January 2023.
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.