The jury in the Lindsay Clancy triple-murder case is officially hung, and on Friday the judge put declaring a mistrial on hold for one hour to allow the defense team to seek to boot the one holdout juror from the jury.
This was the third time the jury told Judge William Sullivan it could not agree on a unanimous verdict, even after 36 hours of deliberation over seven tense days.
According to various news reports, 11 jurors have apparently agreed on an acquittal, with one male juror refusing to agree.
“The deadlocked jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial started a seventh day of deliberations Friday, a day after the jury’s foreperson told the judge a single juror won’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt,” reports the far-left Associated Press. “The extraordinary disclosure made in the form of a note delivered to the judge offered the clearest glimpse yet of what may be keeping jurors from reaching a verdict[.]”
Prosecutors argued that Clancy’s admitted 2023 killing of her three small children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — was committed by Lindsay Clancy in an act of premeditation when she knew right from wrong.
Clancy’s defense team did not deny she killed the children. Instead, they have argued that she could not be held “criminally responsible” due to a severe mental illness brought on by a combination of postpartum depression, overmedication, and bipolar disorder.
Had Clancy been found guilty, she would have faced life in prison without any chance of parole. If she had been found not guilty due to mental illness, she would have been sent to a mental rehabilitation center and released after being designated as cured.
This one-hour stay could last even longer if a judge says he will hear the defense’s motion to dismiss a juror over the weekend or into next week.
Dismissing a juror who refuses to give the verdict the defense wants would be considered a very serious move and maybe even set a troubling precedent where either side — defense or prosecution — can seemingly game the jury system. Because jurors are everyday citizens with no skin in the game of our legal system and have to live forever with their verdict, the jury system is one of the least corruptible parts of that legal system.
What does the defense think it can do — boot this one juror and replace him with another juror who might go his way?
Do the other 11 jurors have to remain and re-enter deliberations to get this new juror up to speed?
Anywhere, here are my thoughts on all of this: Lindsay Clancy is guilty as hell.
More to come…
