Lindsay Clancy Case: Mistrial Declared Following Six Days of Jury Deliberations

A Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the triple-murder trial of Lindsay Clancy after jurors remained deadlocked following six days of deliberations.Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan halted proceedings after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court cleared the way, denying an emergency defense appeal aimed at blocking the mistrial declaration. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had launched the last-minute bid after accusing a lone holdout juror of refusing to follow instructions regarding reasonable doubt.”I believe that this is a situation where there is a clear and present danger that this individual, for some reason… is taking a position that’s intractable, regardless of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Reddington argued during the emergency motion.Judge Sullivan had previously rejected defense requests to remove the holdout juror or poll the panel on lesser offenses like manslaughter. “I don’t feel it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations,” Sullivan stated from the bench, declining to intervene in internal jury disputes.The mistrial abruptly caps a six-week trial featuring testimony from more than 80 witnesses and over 300 evidentiary exhibits. Prosecutors argued that Clancy, 36, acted with calculated premeditation on January 24, 2023, when she strangled her three children—5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan—in their Duxbury home before jumping from a second-story window.The defense maintained an insanity defense, arguing severe postpartum psychosis and a regimen of prescription psychiatric medications completely stripped Clancy of criminal responsibility during the tragedy.Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague backed the court’s handling of the deadlocked panel. The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office now faces the decision of whether to schedule a retrial on the first-degree murder charges.