Single juror blocking verdict in Lindsay Clancy murder trial

A single juror in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial is preventing the jury from reaching a unanimous verdict, her lawyer has said in court.

Warning: This story contains details that may be distressing for some readers.

The judge declined on Thursday, local time, to remove the juror as deliberations stretched into a sixth day over whether to convict the Massachusetts woman of killing her three young children.

The jury sent a note to Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that prompted him to re-instruct jurors on what would constitute "reasonable doubt". The note was not read aloud in court.

After the jury was sent back to continue deliberating, defence attorney Kevin Reddington moved to have a holdout juror removed.

He said the note from the jury's foreperson indicated "there's one juror who refuses to listen to the law that you've given him or her on reasonable doubt".

"I suggest respectfully that the soft instruction that you gave them saying, at the sidebar, 'can you listen to the law as I instruct you, does not focus on the issue' — the question is not sufficient enough, it does not allow any foundation for a motion to remove the juror who refuses to accept your instructions on the law on a reasonable doubt," he said, as reported by the BBC.

"If we come back In a half an hour with a mistrial because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court, that's a shame, that's a real shame.

"And that's why I object to the court's ruling, I request that we have further inquiry — my motion is to remove this juror that refuses to listen to your instruction on reasonable doubt."

Judge Sullivan declined to remove the juror before sending the jury home for the day.

"I don't feel that it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations. I don't feel it's appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or the 11," Judge Sullivan said.

The jury sent the judge a note a day earlier that said: "After much deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision."

They sent a similar note on Tuesday. But on both days, the judge instructed them to continue deliberating.

If the jury does not reach a verdict and Judge Sullivan declares a mistrial, prosecutors would need to decide whether to retry the case, which has included more than 80 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits.

Asked during a lunch break about his thoughts on the state of the deliberations, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told reporters outside the courthouse that "we'll hang on and find out".

On the question of whether prosecutors in his office would retry the case if it ended in a mistrial, Mr Cruz said only: "I'll talk when this is all over."

Mental health struggles

Ms Clancy, 36, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder.

If found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, or reason of insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

She has admitted to killing her three children on January 24, 2023, in the basement of their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury.

Her attempt to take her own life afterwards left her paralysed.

During the six-week trial, Mr Reddington sought to convince jurors that Ms Clancy was in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan.

Testimony from family members, including Ms Clancy's now ex-husband, Patrick, showed how she had struggled with her mental health in the months after the birth of her third child, repeatedly seeking treatment from healthcare providers who prescribed her a myriad of drugs.

Prosecutors do not dispute that Ms Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been dealing with mental health issues.

But they argued she was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of killing her children and intentionally chose to do so anyway, opting to kill them because she had decided to kill herself and was convinced they would suffer without her.