Judge ends Lindsay Clancy trial for the day as jury foreperson says they’re deadlocked over 1 juror

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The deadlocked jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial went home without a verdict Thursday in a dramatic sixth day of deliberations. Her defense lawyer told the judge that the panel’s foreperson said in a note that a single juror won’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt and was holding up a verdict.

The jury will return Friday to see if they can reach a decision on whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three children.

Before sending the jury home on Thursday, the judge refused the defense’s request to remove one of the jurors following heated discussions among the parties.

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 5, 3 and 8 months.

Clancy’s livestreamed trial has generated intense interest, with reporters and spectators packing the courtroom. The case has also sparked deep public divisions over her culpability and the issues around maternal mental health after childbirth.

Trial takes a dramatic turn

Judge William Sullivan, after receiving the jury’s note, brought in each juror individually and questioned them in private. The judge then reread his instructions on reasonable doubt before sending them back to continue deliberating on a verdict.

That prompted an angry objection from Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, who demanded that one juror be removed. Sullivan declined. This was the first time the jury indicated possible tension or acrimony in the deliberation room.

Throughout the trial, Clancy has received letters of support “from all over the world,” Reddington said Thursday. “It’s just amazing. She reads them all.”

Jury twice said they were at an impasse

Sullivan explained to the courtroom on Wednesday that jurors were again at an impasse — a sign there’s a growing chance of a hung jury and the trial ending without a resolution.

Sullivan told the jurors not to abandon their own convictions just to reach a verdict, but urged them to seriously consider opposing views and reassess their positions if appropriate.

No one knows, he said, that another jury would be “more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it than you are.”

Clancy could go on trial again

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.

The evidence against Clancy

Jurors have heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how Clancy’s mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital.

Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she killed the children.

Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his now ex-wife, whom he views as ill rather than evil.

Clancy strangled the children with exercise bands in their home’s basement, then jumped from a second-floor window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down. Her lawyers say she heard a voice telling her to kill the children so she could end her own life.

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.

Willingham writes for the Associated Press.