A judge moved to declare a mistrial in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial after the jury deadlocked, but her lawyer won a frantic one-hour window to fight the ruling at Massachusetts’ highest court.
Judge William Sullivan announced the impasse Friday morning, reading the panel’s third note from nine women and three men who could not agree on three counts of first-degree murder against Clancy, 36. “It is with a heavy heart that we will not be able to come to unanimous decision,” Sullivan said, relaying their message. Without a verdict — and after a nearly five-week trial with roughly 85 witnesses — the judge told the court he had “any choice but to declare a mistrial.”
Sullivan had asked for the jury to be brought in to formally dismiss them when defense attorney Kevin Reddington intervened. The lawyer requested an emergency stay to block the mistrial, and Sullivan reluctantly granted him exactly one hour to rush his appeal to the state’s highest appeals court.
The jury first signaled trouble on the fourth day of deliberations after nearly 18 hours. Sullivan ordered them to continue. They sent a second note the next day after almost 28 total hours, prompting the judge to read the Tuey-Rodriguez charge urging further deliberation. A third note arrived Thursday, and Friday morning Reddington revealed its contents: the foreperson claimed a single male juror “refuses to follow the law” on reasonable doubt instructions. Reddington lost his bid to remove that panelist and then accused the man of lying, but Sullivan denied his request for individual questioning and sent jurors back to deliberate more.
If the mistrial stands, Clancy will not walk free. She will remain in custody at Tewksbury Hospital while Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz decides whether to retry the case, negotiate a plea, or drop charges entirely. Reddington has suggested Cruz could downgrade to second-degree murder in a retrial, which would let Clancy choose a bench trial instead of a jury — an option unavailable on first-degree charges. The attorney has repeatedly predicted Cruz would insist on a second trial.
The deadlock came after 21 days of testimony beginning with Patrick Clancy, the defendant’s ex-husband, on the stand last month. Patrick Clancy, who has since relocated to New York City and remarried infertility specialist Rachel Danis, testified that Lindsay Clancy had sought escalating help for her deteriorating mental state. She saw a psychiatrist, called a suicide hotline twice, spent five days in a mental institution, and visited two perinatal clinics — yet “kept getting worse and worse,” he said. She had even confided thoughts of harming the children.
Both Patrick Clancy and Reddington attributed her “big spiral” to at least 13 psychiatric medications prescribed by five separate providers from November 2022 until a day before the killings, covering anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and anti-psychotics. Patrick Clancy described returning home to find Lindsay Clancy in the backyard with slits on her wrists and throat after jumping from a second-story window, then discovering his three children dead in the basement. “She killed the kids,” he could be heard screaming on the 911 call played for jurors.
On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy fatally strangled Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan with exercise bands before her suicide attempt. She attended the trial in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, and repeatedly broke down during testimony — sobbing at the 911 call, family photos and videos, the children’s pajamas, the exercise bands, and the medical examiner’s autopsy account for baby Callan. Family members including her ex-mother-in-law, mother, and sister described her historically joyful personality collapsing after Callan’s birth, consumed by insomnia, depression, and anxiety about returning to work.
Reddington argued Clancy suffered postpartum psychosis worsened by medication, hallucinating a man’s voice commanding her to kill the children and herself. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a renowned psychiatrist for the defense, testified the voice made her “almost like she was a puppet and someone was pulling the strings.” He claimed she held a “distorted” belief she was doing the kids “a favor” by taking them with her.
Prosecutors countered that Clancy planned methodically. Plymouth County prosecutor Shanan Buckingham told jurors during opening statements that “Lindsay made a calculated decision. She was a woman who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted,” Buckingham added: “She chose to manipulate her providers, seeking out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious. And when she didn’t get what she expected, she chose the alternate route.” The prosecutor continued that Clancy made “a deliberate and intentional decision, that she did not want to try anymore. And because no one could take care of her kids the way she wanted them to, she had to take them with her too.”
Evidence included disturbing Google searches such as “How to slit throat to die.” Three prosecution rebuttal experts, including forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Saathoff, contradicted Resnick’s evaluation. Saathoff cited “inconsistencies” in Clancy’s timeline and differences with Patrick Clancy’s account, questioning her truthfulness. He characterized her conduct as “methodical, quite controlled and organized.” The jury’s sole evidence request came Aug. 28, when they asked to see the suicide-attempt knife and her prescription pill bottles.
The case drew national attention to postpartum mental illness, with supporters — mostly women in pink T-shirts — arguing against criminal liability, while other demonstrators carried signs demanding justice for “the only innocents: Cora, Dawson and Callan.”
Clancy’s only paths forward if convicted were stark: a first-degree murder verdict meant mandatory life without parole, while a successful insanity defense would commit her indefinitely to a state psychiatric facility with release only if doctors cleared her as no longer dangerous.