PLYMOUTH, Mass. – Lindsay Clancy’s grueling murder trial came to an end Friday when the judge officially declared it a mistrial – despite her lawyer’s desperate 11th-hour bid to block the outcome.
It came just hours after Plymouth Judge William Sullivan insisted he didn’t “have any choice but to declare a mistrial” following a third deadlock note this morning from the jury.
Follow The Post’s live updates on the Lindsay Clancy trial
“It is with a heavy heart that we will not be able to come to a unanimous decision,” Sullivan said, reading the panel’s third note this week indicating their impasse.
But Clancy’s criminal defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked the judge to hold off making the call so he could file an emergency appeal to block the decision.
Sullivan reluctantly gave the lawyer just one hour for the Hail Mary legal maneuver – but Reddington was ultimately unsuccessful.
The mistrial doesn’t mean Clancy gets to go free — she will instead remain at Tewksbury Hospital, where she has been held for the past three years until her new trial — which Sullivan announced could be as soon as this fall.
Prosecutors must also still officially decide whether to try the case a second time, negotiate a plea deal with Clancy or drop the charges altogether.
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz at a press conference Friday said, “no decisions will be made today,” on how his office would proceed with the case.
But the DA insisted the case was about Clancy’s “cruel, calculated killings of three innocents” and about “getting justice for those three little babies.”
The jurors were hopelessly deadlocked on whether to convict the 36-year-old mother of fatally strangling her kids, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, on Jan. 24, 2023.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial:
- Lindsay Clancy murder trial officially ends in mistrial after lawyer’s Hail Mary appeal denied
- Lindsay Clancy verdict watch live updates: Defense granted just 1 hour to stop mistrial after courtroom erupts into chaos
- Lindsay Clancy defense confirms holdout juror is male — as judge erupts on lawyer in wild courtroom outburst
- Lindsay Clancy wants appeal court to force trial judge to boot holdout juror or question him
- Lindsay Clancy’s ex Patrick, his new wife hold hands as murder trial grips the nation
Reddington argued at trial that Clancy shouldn’t be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and hallucinated a voice telling her to carry out the killings and to kill herself.
It was revealed by Reddington that one male holdout juror was stopping the group from reaching a unanimous verdict.
By the time the mistrial was officially declared, the panel had exhaustively deliberated for over 38 hours total, spread across seven days.
The 12-person jury – composed of three men and nine women – sent out two prior notes on Tuesday and Wednesday telling Sullivan they were at an impasse. Both times the judge told them to keep at it, invoking a “Tuey-Rodriguez” charge following the second notice.
Just one day later, on Thursday, the female foreperson wrote a note claiming there was just one holdout juror who Reddington said “refuses to listen to the law” on reasonable doubt.
Start your day with all you need to know
Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.
Thanks for signing up!
Sullivan then questioned each juror one by one, asking if they could follow his instructions, which they all said they could. He then brought out the dozen jurors as a group and reread the portion of his instructions on reasonable doubt.
But Friday morning, Reddington pleaded with Sullivan to take aside that one holdout juror and grill him.
The defense attorney claimed the juror lied to Sullivan when he said he could follow the judge’s rules on the law.
The jury heard five weeks of testimony including from Clancy’s then-husband, Patrick Clancy, who described how Lindsay Clancy’s mental health declined in the four months before the killings.
Patrick — who has since relocated to New York City and remarried an infertility specialist — told the jurors about how Clancy relentlessly sought help from doctors to address her crippling insomnia, anxiety, depression and thoughts of killing herself and harming her kids from September 2022 through January 2023.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, was prescribed 13 powerful psychiatric medications during that time, which Reddington argued exacerbated her spiraling mental state.
Clancy regularly met with a psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Tufts, who also testified and endured blistering cross-examination by Reddington.
Clancy further sought help from two perinatal clinics and she even checked herself into a mental institution for five days, just weeks before the killings. She also called a suicide hotline two times.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
