A Plymouth County judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy child-murder case after seven days of deliberation and three deadlock notes, and after Massachusetts' highest court rejected a last-ditch defense bid to salvage a verdict.
Judge William Sullivan announced his decision on Sept. 4 after the jury sent a final note saying "with a heavy heart" it could not reach a unanimous verdict. The trial, which stretched nearly six weeks, centered on whether Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse accused of strangling her three young children in January 2023, acted out of psychosis or premeditation. A single holdout juror, NBC News reported, prevented the panel from agreeing on any of the three first-degree murder charges.
The mistrial leaves Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz with a decision that will define the next chapter of one of the most closely watched criminal cases in recent years: retry Clancy on the original charges, pursue lesser counts, or walk away. Cruz told reporters after the ruling that "no decisions will be made today," but added that the case "was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies," AP News reported.
Deliberations began after closing arguments and quickly turned difficult. On the fourth day, Sullivan received the first deadlock note. He sent the jury back and asked them to keep working toward a verdict.
The second note came the following day. Sullivan responded with what Massachusetts law calls Tuey-Rodriguez instructions, a formal charge that tells jurors it is "desirable" they reach a verdict and asks them to give deliberations one last chance. Under state law, a judge can only ask a deadlocked jury to continue twice. If the panel reports a third impasse, the judge may declare a mistrial.
That third note arrived on Sept. 4. Sullivan informed the attorneys and announced he intended to end the trial. But defense attorney Kevin Reddington was not ready to accept the outcome. He asked for time to appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, arguing the holdout juror should be removed from the panel rather than allow a mistrial.
Sullivan gave Reddington one hour. It stretched to two before Reddington's associate, Dana Goldblatt, appeared via Zoom before SJC Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt. Goldblatt argued the holdout was refusing to "follow what the law states." Wendlandt denied the stay without public explanation.
NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos said Reddington had a "very low probability" of winning that appeal but noted it was the defense attorney's job to try "absolutely everything" to avoid a mistrial. With the SJC door closed, Sullivan declared the case over, for now.
The competing narratives at trial could not have been further apart. Prosecutors, led by Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, argued Clancy planned the killings of five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan on the evening of Jan. 24, 2023. Sprague told jurors Clancy sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out for dinner and to a CVS pharmacy that night, and that she looked up how long the trip would take and called the store to confirm a medication was in stock.
The Washington Examiner reported that prosecutors used digital forensics, including phone activity, heart-rate data, and stair-climbing records, to build a timeline they said contradicted the psychosis defense. Sprague argued Clancy used exercise bands to strangle each child, characterizing the killings as acts of "extreme atrocity and cruelty."
In her closing, Sprague pointed to Clancy's sessions with treating psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts. Clancy, Sprague said, "denied having a suicide plan, denied wanting to hurt anyone else, denied voices" and "showed no signs of psychosis." The prosecutor framed the children themselves as the obstacle Clancy needed to remove:
"Those kids were her protective factor. Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery. And so she had to remove the protective factor.... It was a choice."
Sprague also pushed back on the defense's central metaphor. Prosecution testimony described the details of that evening in graphic terms, and Sprague told jurors directly during closings that "a puppet can't do those things. Those are decisions and choices and actions that she's controlling."
Reddington's defense rested on a claim that Clancy suffered from severe postpartum psychosis, a rare condition linked to stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes after childbirth, and that she bore no criminal responsibility for the deaths. He blamed her psychiatric care, telling jurors the killings were caused by "the d*** medicine and the lousy medical care that she got."
The defense pointed to over a dozen medications prescribed to Clancy in a short timespan and to deteriorating journal entries as evidence her mental state had collapsed. Reddington also doubled down on Clancy's account that she heard a male voice compelling her to kill her children, a claim she reportedly made to a hospital chaplain and to Patrick Clancy after the killings.
Defense forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified that Clancy was psychotic at the time. He compared her to a puppet, telling jurors "it was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings." Reddington argued in closings that the prosecution had manipulated the jury.
"This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect."
Sprague conceded Clancy had severe mental-health problems but drew a hard line: the trial, she told jurors, was not about the mental-health system or how it treats women. It was about whether Clancy understood and controlled her actions on the night she killed her children. The prosecution's position was that she did.
Patrick Clancy's testimony provided the most harrowing account of the evening. He returned home from the errands his wife had sent him on and found "blood everywhere." Lindsay Clancy was bleeding on the ground outside the home, she had thrown herself from a second-story bedroom window. Patrick Clancy found the three children in the basement, unresponsive, with exercise bands around their necks.
A 911 call played for jurors captured Patrick Clancy saying, "She killed the kids," the New York Post reported. Lindsay Clancy survived the fall but was paralyzed from the waist down. She pleaded not guilty to all three first-degree murder charges.
The case drew enormous public attention, locally, nationally, and internationally. Hundreds gathered outside the courthouse during the trial in solidarity. That attention also created security problems. Fox News reported that an individual was arrested and charged for allegedly secretly video-recording jurors as they left the courthouse.
Sullivan responded by impounding juror names for 14 days after the mistrial. He wrote that the justice system owes jurors "the highest degree of vigilance for their personal safety." A woman charged in the recording incident walked free after arraignment.
With the mistrial declared, Sullivan set the next hearing for Sept. 29, a date the judge and prosecutors pushed back over Reddington's objection. Reddington said he wanted to return to the courtroom as soon as possible. The New York Post reported Clancy will remain at Tewksbury Hospital pending any retrial, which could come as early as fall.
Cruz now faces a choice with real consequences. He can retry Clancy on the original first-degree murder charges, pursue lesser counts, or decline to prosecute further. The jury's inability to convict, or acquit, after more than 38 hours of deliberation and a prolonged fight over the holdout juror suggests neither side's case was airtight in the eyes of twelve citizens.
Sullivan, for his part, praised both sides after dismissing the jury:
"I wanted to compliment all three counsel. A trial like this is so hard, so difficult, and so I just kind of wanted to thank the three of you for your efforts in regards to this."
Courtesy from the bench is fine. But three dead children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, still have no verdict attached to their names. The system owes them more than a compliment and a new court date.
