The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended Friday in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked, but not before her lawyer spent an hour trying to get one juror thrown off the panel.
Judge William Sullivan moved to declare the mistrial at about 11:25 a.m., after the jury sent its third note saying it could not agree. “It is with a heavy heart that we report, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to,” the note read. The panel of nine women and three men had deliberated more than 38 hours across seven days, following five weeks of testimony.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked Sullivan to hold off. He argued that a lone holdout juror, whose existence emerged in court Thursday, was refusing to follow the law, and cited First Circuit precedent that a judge can remove a deliberating juror for good cause. Sullivan gave him one hour to petition a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for an emergency stay.
The jury waited in the jury room without being told why. Reddington got the appeal filed but struggled to reach a justice to review it, according to a source who spoke to Boston 25 News. At around 2:15 p.m., Sullivan announced the SJC had denied the request and lifted the temporary stay. Reddington tried once more to be heard on the juror and was denied. The mistrial was declared in front of the jury.
Clancy had pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in the January 2023 deaths of her children Cora, Dawson and Callan, all under five, who were found strangled in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home. Reddington argued through the trial that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible. Prosecutors Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham argued she was.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz would not say Friday whether he will retry her. “Children were murdered, and it’s our job to seek justice,” he said outside court. He called online treatment of his two prosecutors disgusting, noting both are mothers, and said criminals are being treated as victims while victims are invisible.
Sullivan set September 29 for the next hearing, when Reddington will argue a Rule 25 motion for a required finding of not guilty — a claim that the evidence was legally insufficient to convict. Defense attorneys quoted by ABC News said the other likely path is plea negotiations on reduced charges, though prosecutors may not want to lessen them.
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