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.
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 on whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three children.
The trial has generated intense interest for more than a month, deeply dividing the public over whether Clancy should be punished in the killings and drawing attention to issues around maternal mental health after childbirth.
The jury has twice told Judge William Sullivan that it was unable to agree on a verdict. On Thursday, Sullivan brought in each juror individually and questioned them in private. The judge then reread his instructions, telling them proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean proof beyond all possible doubt.
He reminded jurors that the burden of proof is on the prosecution before sending them back to continue deliberating.
Judge won’t question juror again over reasonable doubt
The jury went back to work Friday, but only after the judge rejected a request from Clancy’s attorney to again individually question the juror who was the subject of the note about reasonable doubt instructions.
“Reading that note carefully and strictly,” Sullivan said, “that note does not indicate this is a person who refuses to follow the law.”
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, on Thursday asked Sullivan to dismiss the juror from the case, arguing the person had refused to follow the judge’s instructions. Prosecutors objected, and Sullivan declined to remove the juror.
“I don’t feel it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations,” the judge said Thursday. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to say, ‘I agree with one juror or the 11.’ I have asked if they are able to follow my instructions. They swore earlier that they could.”
At one point and for the first time in the trial, Clancy was brought to join a sidebar conversation with the judge. Paralyzed from the waist down after her suicide attempt, Clancy uses a wheelchair, which Reddington pushed to the front of the courtroom.
“She has a right to know what’s going on,” he later told reporters.
Lindsay Clancy has never denied killing her children
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023 before trying to take her own life. Her attorney argues that postpartum psychosis led to her actions, while prosecutors say she knew what she was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages five, three and eight months.
The prosecution argues she deliberately sent her then husband on errands to get him out of the house, and prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt.
A hung jury would result in a mistrial
If the jury ultimately can’t agree on a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges or try to negotiate a plea deal with her lawyer.
If the jury decides Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions, it could convict her of either murder or manslaughter. If she is acquitted, a judge could still order her confined to a mental health facility if an evaluation determines that she poses a danger to the public.
