Lindsay Clancy is headed back to Tewksbury Hospital after a deadlocked jury forced a mistrial in her triple-murder case.
Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, confirmed Friday that the 36-year-old will return to the state-run psychiatric facility where she had been held before trial. The move came just hours after the state’s Supreme Court denied his emergency appeal to keep jurors deliberating.
Clancy’s life at Tewksbury Hospital was laid bare during testimony by Dr. Avram Mack, a psychiatrist who interviewed her there before taking the stand on Aug. 21. Mack, who formerly worked at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware, described a woman largely withdrawn from the world around her.
“Mostly, she described, she stays in bed or on her own,” Mack told the courtroom. He noted that Clancy “didn’t think she described interacting with patients very much,” though she did work with one therapist and occasionally engaged with staff.
The psychiatrist painted a stark portrait of her daily struggles. Clancy, left partially paralyzed after throwing herself from a second-story window following the killings, uses a wheelchair and worked with a physical therapist at the facility. But Mack testified she “wasn’t very interested” in that therapy. She also showed little appetite for the hospital food, though visitors brought outside meals and drinks “on a not infrequent basis.”
Her personal care had deteriorated as well. “Showering is embarrassing. It requires staff to help her, and that’s one way in which she would rather not,” Mack said. He added that her disinterest stemmed from “both components” — the indignity of assistance and a broader “lack of interest” in self-care.
Mack testified that Clancy “described feeling depressed, which she termed situational depression.” She also expressed what he characterized as “feeling miserable, not wanting to be alive.”
The mistrial came after a male juror refused to budge, leaving the panel split 11-1 despite three separate orders from the judge to continue deliberations. The holdout prevented a verdict on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for strangling her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — in the basement of their Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023.
Clancy’s defense centered on postpartum psychosis and an overprescribed cocktail of psychiatric medications. After the killings, she slit her wrists and throat before leaping from the window.
Mack’s testimony day came with its own drama — he resigned from Nemours Children’s Health that same day and later sparred heatedly with Reddington on the stand.
With the mistrial declared, prosecutors now face three options: retry Clancy on the same first-degree murder charges, offer a plea deal on lesser charges, or dismiss the case entirely. Boston defense attorney Brad Bailey, a former prosecutor not involved in the case, predicted Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz will pursue a retrial.
“I do anticipate that Tim Cruz will choose to retry the case, not only because, in his opinion, he has to stand up for the three deceased children, but also because the case hasn’t been resolved,” Bailey said.
Bailey suggested prosecutors might float a plea to second-degree murder or manslaughter, but immediately dismissed the likelihood of Reddington accepting: “I can’t imagine Kevin Reddington would accept that or take it.”
If Cruz does forge ahead, Bailey expects both sides to sharpen their strategies. The prosecution will likely seek stronger expert witnesses with direct experience treating postpartum psychosis, while the defense will work to better educate jurors that psychosis patients can cycle between lucidity and breaks from reality.
The 11-1 split favoring acquittal might give some prosecutors pause, but Bailey doubted Cruz would drop the case unless he became convinced a retrial was unwinnable. “If the state decides it doesn’t want to retry, it would do what we call a nolle prosequi in the case, which is a move to dismiss the indictments on their own,” he explained.
Bailey projected the path forward: “I think we’re gonna be looking at a trial down the line, which is gonna be Murder One, and much of the process and proceedings are gonna be the same,” He added a note of skepticism about changed outcomes: “And I would be surprised if he gets any different result, and certainly it’s potentially possible that the defense could get the result they’re looking for.”
Clancy’s attorneys could petition for bail, though Bailey predicted she will likely remain at Tewksbury Hospital under existing conditions while awaiting a new trial.