Jurors in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy are set to resume deliberations Wednesday, a day after telling the judge they couldn't agree on whether she was criminally responsible for killing her three children.
The jury, then in its fourth day of deliberations, sent Judge William Sullivan a note saying it had been unable to reach a unanimous decision, which is required by law for either a conviction or an acquittal.
Sullivan told the jurors to keep trying, a common instruction in criminal trials when juries indicate they are having trouble reaching a verdict.
After deliberating in private for the rest of the day, the jury asked at around 3:30 pm to go home and resume deliberations in the morning.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, doesn't deny strangling her children, but she says postpartum psychosis led to her actions. Prosecutors argue that she knew what she was doing.
The 36-year-old has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
Jurors heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how her mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital. Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she killed the children.
A mistrial will be declared and the case essentially goes back to the same status as before the trial, with the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse charged with murder and held at a psychiatric hospital awaiting resolution of the criminal case.
Clancy will likely go back on trial, but prosecutors have options
Prosecutors will decide whether to try again with a new jury. If they do, the jury selection process will begin again and a new trial will be scheduled.
Prosecutors could also offer a plea deal to Clancy, said Brad Bailey, a Boston defense attorney and former prosecutor who is not involved in the case.
“Any time the threat of a retrial with murder one hanging over the client is re-interjected, defense lawyers will, at the very least, explore whether or not there’s any interest in a resolution,” Bailey said.
Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children at their home south of Boston, but says postpartum psychosis led to her actions. After the killings, her husband found her badly injured in the yard, where she landed after jumping from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors argue she knew what she was doing.
Though less likely, the district attorney’s office could decide to not retry the case.
“Sometimes they decide not to, because of the sense that there may be the same result each time they try it, and because of the expenditures involved in trying the case to begin with, particularly when you have expert witnesses,” he said. “Those are going to be expensive cases.”
Clancy's defense will likely push to drop the charges
Bailey expects her defense attorney to aggressively lobby against another trial, making a case to the district attorney’s office along the lines of: “‘Why are you doing this to this poor woman? She’s still clearly obviously suffering. She’s been punished with her paralysis and, worse than that, the loss of her three children.’”
A conviction could mean life in prison for Clancy, while an acquittal might lead to confinement in a mental health facility.
Karen Read was another high-profile mistrial in Massachusetts
Karen Read was charged in the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend. Jurors in her 2024 trial deadlocked on the fifth day of deliberations, leading to a mistrial.
Prosecutors chose to retry the case, but a different jury last year found Read not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges.
Like Read's case, Clancy's has drawn a divided public reaction.
Clancy's livestreamed trial drew attention to maternal mental health after childbirth and was closely watched by a polarized public. Clancy’s sympathizers saw her as a loving mom who had realized something was badly wrong in the months ahead of the killings and sought help, including checking herself in to a psychiatric hospital. Her detractors said she deserved to be punished for an evil and selfish act.
