Lindsay Clancy’s fate unresolved as mistrial leaves her case in the court of public opinion – for now

By Nicki Brown, CNN

Plymouth, Massachusetts (CNN) — After five grueling weeks of testimony and 38 hours of painstaking deliberations, the jury deciding the fate of Lindsay Clancy – the Massachusetts mother who argued she should not be held criminally responsible for fatally strangling her three children – sent the judge what would be their final note:

“It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to.”

Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington fought until the bitter end to prevent a hung jury, making a last-ditch appeal to a higher court after Judge William Sullivan gave him one hour. But the defense attorney’s move only postponed the inevitable: a mistrial.

After a dayslong deadlock, a single holdout juror among the panel’s nine women and three men prevented them from reaching a unanimous verdict, an apt conclusion for a complicated and heartbreaking trial that deeply divided the public and sparked a national reckoning on postpartum depression, anxiety and psychosis.

It’s an unsatisfying conclusion both for Clancy’s fervent, pink-wearing supporters, who believe she suffered from postpartum psychosis and was victimized by a healthcare system that often overlooks maternal mental health, and for those who believe the former labor and delivery nurse should be held legally responsible for killing her children – Cora, 5; Dawson 3; and Callan, 8 months.

“This is going on and on and on – this is ridiculous,” Gail Corbett, a Clancy supporter, said outside the courthouse Friday. “This is just so sad. Now we have to go through this all again.”

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz on Friday had yet to decide if his office will retry the case, which he said was always focused on “getting justice for those three little babies.”

“I appreciate the fact that there are strong feelings and opinions tied to this case,” Cruz said as Clancy supporters heckled him from the crowd of reporters and spectators outside the courthouse. “However, our job is to set aside our feelings and focus solely on the facts.”

But the possibility of enduring the arduous process all over again is daunting: In a statement, an attorney for Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick Clancy said, “The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful – for Patrick, for his family, and for all us.”

The defendant’s supporters felt similarly.

“I’m very disappointed, and sad for her that she has to go through this again,” Teri MacLeod said Friday to her two friends, who all waited hours that morning for a coveted seat in the gallery.

“And (Reddington) has to do all this work all over again,” Sandy Lucca, her friend from Bourne, added. “He tried so hard.”

However, Reddington – who emerged as a feminist folk hero in the eyes of Clancy’s backers – projected confidence Friday, believing the jury’s 11-1 split favored his client. Asked if he would do anything different in a retrial, he responded:

“Why would I? I won the case.”

The trial of Lindsay Clancy

The prosecution called more than 70 witnesses during its case in chief as it tried to prove she deliberately murdered her children – that she still understood right from wrong and could conform her actions to the law even while struggling with her mental health.

Clancy’s friends and family testified she was a loving mother and dedicated nurse who spent months wrestling with her mental health after giving birth to her third child in May 2022. Patrick Clancy, the prosecution’s first witness, spent two days on the stand describing her downward spiral despite her efforts to seek psychiatric treatment.

In the months before the killings, multiple medical providers gave Clancy various prescriptions that were frequently changed at her request to address her anxiety, insomnia and a growing list of reported side effects. Prosecutors argued Clancy’s repeated adjustments in her care evidenced her attempts to seek a “quick and easy fix” for her mental health.

As Clancy’s mental state further deteriorated in December 2022, she reported suicidal ideation to her providers but never mentioned wanting to harm her children – though her mother and former husband testified she told them about such “intrusive thoughts” that month.

Clancy seemed to improve after her discharge from a locked-ward facility in early January 2023, according to her loved ones, and those who interacted with her shortly before the killings said they noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Indeed, Patrick Clancy described January 24, 2023, as one of his ex-wife’s “best days,” testifying she built a snowman with the children that morning – an illustration, in prosecutors’ telling, that Clancy was lucid hours before the killings.

Prosecutors pointed to several deliberate choices Clancy made that afternoon, which they said demonstrated premeditation and an ability to control her actions: Before sending her then-husband on errands, she mapped the distance to a restaurant then asked him to make an additional stop at a pharmacy.

When he left the family home to pick up dinner and visit the pharmacy, she strangled the children with exercise resistance bands, cut her wrists and neck, and jumped from a second-story window, leaving her partially paralyzed.

Reddington blamed his client’s worsening mental state on “lousy medical care” and alleged her providers failed to thoroughly research her symptoms and medical history. He called witnesses who said Clancy told them after the killings she had heard a male voice instructing her to kill the children and herself, which defense experts described as a “command hallucination” that was evidence of psychosis.

The trial’s latter phase featured a classic “battle of the experts,” with testimony largely focused on Clancy’s psychological symptoms and mental health evaluations, since the question of her culpability hinged on whether she met the requirements to be held legally responsible.

“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” said Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist called by the defense who is a high-profile expert on filicide.

The prosecution’s experts disagreed, saying Clancy’s description of the voice was atypical of auditory hallucinations. The Commonwealth offered the jury its own theory as to her motive: Clancy wanted to end her life but couldn’t bring herself to do so because of her children.

“Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery, and so she had to remove the protective factor,” assistant district attorney Jennifer Sprague said in her closing argument. “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.”

“She left them, discarded on the basement floor like broken toys because she was done playing the game,” the prosecutor told jurors shortly before they began deliberating. “You know to a moral certainty she is guilty.”

The holdout

The crowds of journalists and spectators became increasingly restless throughout the days of deliberations, testing the patience of staff at the Plymouth trial courthouse, a pristine legal complex surrounded by quiet fields and farmland.

Dozens of people packed the hallway outside the courtroom, squeezing shoulder-to-shoulder on a handful of metal benches or sitting on bunched-up jackets on the tiled floor as they anxiously awaited news of a verdict.

Many spent the hours of downtime chatting about the case; others read books or idly gazed out the lofty courthouse windows. But everyone, no matter how they passed the time, reflexively snapped to attention when the courtroom’s wooden doors opened, a Pavlovian response in anticipation of an update from courthouse staff.

Anticipation surged Thursday, the sixth day of deliberations, when the parties held an animated and seemingly tense conversation at the judge’s bench, where the rest of the courtroom could not hear their discussion.

The gallery watched with rapt attention as Reddington gestured wildly, slammed his hand down and threw a stack of papers onto the bench. He then stalked over to Clancy – who uses a wheelchair after her suicide attempt – and wheeled her up to the bench, right beside prosecutors.

The jurors then filed in one by one, standing an arm’s length from the defendant as they were sworn in and spoke with the judge. When he later instructed the panel to continue deliberating, there were exasperated sighs from several people in the gallery who likely expected a verdict or mistrial after days of stalled deliberations.

The parties later revealed what the private discussions were about: The jury had sent a note indicating they were split 11 to 1, alleging the lone holdout would not follow the law on reasonable doubt.

Reddington verbally sparred with the judge as he pushed for the panel to continue deliberating.

‘He’s fighting until the end’

But on Friday, after the jury’s final note declared their impasse unbreakable, Sullivan firmly stated he would not send them back to the deliberation room.

“I don’t feel I have any choice but to declare a mistrial,” the judge said, prompting gasps in the courtroom.

For the next few minutes, the courtroom was silent, the gallery seemingly resigned to the conclusion and gravely awaiting the jury’s entrance so the judge could formally declare the mistrial. Clancy’s father, seated in the second row directly behind his daughter, leaned forward and bowed his head. Reddington sat pensive, drumming his fingers on the defense table.

But at the last moment, the defense attorney sprung up from his chair to argue a Hail Mary in a final effort to avert a mistrial, prompting a court officer to hold out his hand to signal the jurors should not yet enter the courtroom.

“What I’m asking for is time to file a single justice appeal for this travesty,” Reddington said.

Sullivan agreed to give him an hour.

As the courtroom cleared, a jumble of spectators and journalists chattered about the whiplash. Clancy’s supporters were divided, some holding out hope the Commonwealth’s highest court would intervene and others coming to accept what would end up being the inescapable conclusion.

“This is crazy, isn’t it?” one woman said to another in the hallway. “He’s fighting until the end.”

At a hastily scheduled virtual hearing a couple hours later, the parties presented their arguments to an appellate judge, who further heightened the suspense when she did not immediately issue a ruling.

But when Sullivan returned to the bench soon after, he told the courtroom the appellate judge had denied Reddington’s request, dashing the defense’s last hope and drawing the protracted trial to a close.

The 12 deadlocked jurors appeared tense as they entered the courtroom for the final time. Some glanced around nervously; one woman clenched her fists.

As Sullivan declared the mistrial, another female juror closed her eyes, nodded slowly and bowed her head.

“Each one of you knew how long the case was going to go. You knew how difficult the case was going to be to listen to facts-wise, but still, you braced for that duty,” the judge told them, expressing his gratitude for their weeks of work.

“I understood that you all gave everything you could, and probably more than you thought you could, and so, on behalf of myself, I just want to thank you so much,” he said. “You should be proud for what you did.”

One female juror shook her head. None of the jurors turned to look at Clancy as they exited the courtroom.

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