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THE JUDGE PRESIDING over the trial of Lindsay said he doesn’t feel he has “any choice” but to declare a mistrial on day seven of jury deliberations.
“The jury did not ask to be sent back, which would be a possibility if they had requested to be sent back to them, but under the statute and the case law, I don’t feel I have any choice but to declare mistrial,” Judge William Sullivan told the court.
He then put his decision on hold to allow the defence to appeal the decision, giving one hour to allow Clancy’s lawyer to file an appeal with a higher court.
The dramatic developments came after the jury sent a note to the judge Friday morning saying that it was with a “heavy heart” that they were unable to reach a verdict in the case, which has cast a spotlight on maternal mental health.
To reach a verdict, all 12 jurors must be in agreement.
The jury has been deadlocked 11-1 and yesterday her defence counsel sought to have the single juror removed saying that the foreperson of the jury indicated in a note that the holdout juror ”made statements acknowledging doubt but refuses to apply it.”
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Clancy (36) stood accused of murdering her three children in the basement of her Massachusetts home in January 2023.
She does not deny strangling five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis – excusing her from criminal responsibility.
Her five-week trial, which was televised and featured more than 80 witnesses, has sparked debate in the United States over maternal mental health.
On Thursday, her defence accused a single holdout juror of blocking a verdict in the high-profile trial.
Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s main lawyer, told the court that there is “one juror who refuses to listen to the law that you’ve given him or her on reasonable doubt.”
He requested that the juror be removed from the 12-member panel, but Judge William Sullivan refused and instead sent them back to continue deliberating today.
evin Reddington, defense attorney for Lindsay Clancy, walks through reporters and television cameras while arriving at Plymouth County Superior Court. AP Photo / Charles Krupa
AP Photo / Charles Krupa / Charles Krupa
To reach a verdict, all 12 jurors must be in agreement.
On Wednesday, Sullivan issued the jurors a last-resort, so-called “dynamite charge” that encouraged them to keep discussing in a bid to break the impasse and avoid a mistrial.
Clancy pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, saying she heard a voice ordering her to kill her children. Her lawyers say this was caused by postpartum psychosis.
After the killings at her family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts in January 2023, she jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt that left her paralysed from the waist down.
The former nurse faced life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty of first-degree murder.
Jurors could also have found Clancy guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, or not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility – a verdict that would have seen Clancy sent to a psychiatric facility.