A judge in Plymouth, Massachusetts declared a mistrial Friday in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether the mother was criminally responsible for killing her three young children.
The mistrial came on the seventh day of deliberations, leaving the case unresolved. Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan announced the decision after the jury sent a note saying they were unable to come to a unanimous decision after nearly 40 hours of deliberations.
The 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse showed no emotion as the judge announced the mistrial, nor did the jury or her family, according to the courtroom. Prosecutors must now decide whether to retry Clancy, drop the charges, or seek a plea agreement. Sullivan set a date of Sept. 29 to determine next steps.
Defense seeks review from Massachusetts high court
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, is asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to effectively force the judge to allow the jury to continue deliberating. The deliberations took a dramatic turn late in the week when Sullivan said he was going to declare a mistrial Friday before changing course and giving her defense attorney a chance to appeal to the highest court in Massachusetts. That emergency appeal was quickly denied.
Prosecution and defense accounts of the killings
Prosecutors said Clancy acted deliberately when she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan Clancy with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023. They said she contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.
Reddington never disputed that Clancy killed the children but argued she should not be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
Mental health testimony at the trial
Over 21 days of testimony, jurors heard how Clancy’s mental health had collapsed after Callan’s birth. Deeply anxious about a planned return to work, unable to sleep, and experiencing what she described as a disturbing brain fog, Clancy sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders, who prescribed multiple psychiatric medications.
Family members testified that Clancy expressed concern about her mental health decline. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, described her as a “very nurturing, very loving mother” who was “begging for help.”
In early January 2023, Clancy checked herself into a psychiatric hospital for more intensive treatment, but her stay was short. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged, leaving their bodies in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window immediately after and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors conceded that Clancy had severe mental illness, but insisted she was able to understand and control her actions. They emphasized that although she claimed to have heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children, she never disclosed hearing voices to her mental health providers before the killings.
Battle of forensic experts
In its latter stages, the trial became a battle of medical experts. Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist hired by prosecutors to evaluate Clancy, testified that he didn’t believe her story about having heard voices. He said he didn’t believe she had acute psychosis when she killed the children, but rather took their lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself.
Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defense, said that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” and was not in control of her actions.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” said Resnick, who spent hours interviewing Clancy after the killings. He said she was also likely experiencing bipolar disorder.
Statements from the children’s father
At the start of the trial, Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his children. Prosecutors played a seven-minute 911 call in which he could be heard finding the bodies. In interviews, he has said he has forgiven her and believes her actions were the result of mental illness.
He released the following statement through his attorney Friday:
“Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance. The loss of Patrick’s children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful — for Patrick, for his family, and for all us.”
What a mistrial means in a Massachusetts criminal case
A mistrial is a formal declaration by a trial judge that the proceeding has ended without a verdict, most commonly because a jury cannot reach the unanimity required for a conviction or acquittal. In Massachusetts, a defendant in a murder case cannot be convicted without a unanimous jury verdict. When a mistrial is declared due to a hung jury, prosecutors generally have three options: retry the case, dismiss the charges, or pursue a plea agreement with the defendant. The decision rests with the district attorney’s office, and any subsequent trial would proceed before a new jury.
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