Nick Dargie, 25, predicts a retrial of Lindsay Clancy would end in acquittal by reason of insanity.
The former juror, one of three men on the 12-member panel, spoke in an interview broadcast Thursday morning on “GMA” with Aaron Katersky. Dargie had initially been reluctant to come forward but felt compelled to explain what he witnessed during deliberations in the high-stakes Massachusetts murder trial.
“I think if they tried the trial again the way they did, I think nine times out of 10 a jury would come back with not guilty by reason of insanity,” Dargie said. “Not a doubt in my mind.”
The jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict after a week of deliberations, resulting in a mistrial declared by Judge William Sullivan on Friday. The panel of nine women and three men had been weighing whether to convict Clancy, 36, of first-degree murder for strangling her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, on Jan. 24, 2023.
The deadlock centered on a single holdout juror. The panel penned a note to Judge Sullivan on Thursday warning they were deadlocked and stating that “one juror refuses to listen to the law.”
Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington attempted to leverage this development to convince the judge the lone holdout should be dismissed, but Sullivan declined to do so and officially declared the mistrial.
Dargie found the prosecution’s case “inconsistent” and believed experts called by the defense team were “more believable.”
He was also moved by the testimony of Patrick Clancy’s mother, Susan, who spoke on behalf of her former daughter-in-law’s defense at the trial.
“Lindsay was struggling — we were all concerned,” Susan Clancy told the courtroom.
The district attorney who brought first-degree murder charges against Clancy is now weighing whether to go to trial again, negotiate a plea deal, downgrade the charges, or drop them altogether. Dargie’s assessment suggests any retrial conducted similarly would face steep odds with a new jury.
The case has drawn national attention for its examination of postpartum mental health, with Clancy’s defense team arguing she was suffering from severe psychiatric distress when she killed her three children in their Duxbury home.
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