PLYMOUTH, Mass. – The high-profile Lindsay Clancy murder trial is one step closer to a potential mistrial after the judge issued a last-resort order when jurors announced for a second time that they were deadlocked.
The jurors – nine women and three men – sent a note Wednesday that they were still at an impasse about whether to convict the postpartum mom of first-degree murder for strangling her three young kids.
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Plymouth Judge William Sullivan responded by reading the so-called “Tuey-Rodriguez” charge, nicknamed the “Dynamite Charge” by local jurists, strongly encouraging them to keep working to try to reach a consensus.
Similar instructions — like the Allen charge — are standard for judges to give to juries when they are deadlocked.
Before the jury was brought into the courtroom, Clancy and her criminal defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, whispered together at the defense table.
Sullivan entered the room and called the lawyers on both sides to sidebar before speaking with them and handing them pieces of paper.
Reddington then returned to the defense table, put his hand on his face and rubbed his eyes, appearing anxious.
Jurors first told the judge they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in a note Tuesday, but Sullivan told them to keep at it.
They then continued the decision-making process for another 10 hours Tuesday and Wednesday — before sending out the second note after deliberating for a total of roughly 28 hours.
“After much deliberation we are still unable to come to unanimous decision,” Sullivan said Wednesday afternoon, reading their note.
Sullivan then read the Tuey-Rodriguez instruction and sent them back to continue deliberations.
At issue is whether the 36-year-old Duxbury mom should be held criminally responsible for killing Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan on Jan. 24, 2023, before she tried to take her own life.
Clancy wants a jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity based on her claim she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and hallucinated a voice telling her to carry out the heinous acts.
Prosecutors say she wasn’t in psychosis at the time, claiming that she carefully planned and executed the crimes.
Both sides rested their cases after a total of 21 days of testimony, which began with Lindsay Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, taking the stand as the first witness last month.
Patrick Clancy — who has since moved to New York City and remarried infertility specialist Rachel Danis — told jurors that Lindsay Clancy repeatedly sought help for her worsening mental state in the months leading to the killings.
She began seeing a psychiatrist, called a suicide hotline twice, checked herself into a mental institution for five days and sought help from two perinatal clinics – but still, she “kept getting worse and worse,” Patrick Clancy testified, and said Lindsay Clancy had even opened up to him about having thoughts of harming the kids.
Lindsay Clancy’s “big spiral” was further fueled, according to Patrick Clancy and Reddington, by at least 13 psychiatric medications prescribed to her by five separate providers from November 2022 up until a day before the murders, including drugs for anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and anti-psychotic meds.
Patrick Clancy hauntingly recalled returning to the family’s home to find Lindsay Clancy in the backyard with slits on her wrists and throat after plunging from a second-story window — before racing inside and discovering his three children dead in the basement.
“She killed the kids,” the father could be heard screaming during the 911 call played for jurors.
Lindsay Clancy, who attended the trial in a wheelchair after becoming paralyzed from the waist down, repeatedly broke down in tears during the harrowing testimony.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
