Jurors weighing whether to convict Lindsay Clancy of murder for killing her three young children at her Massachusetts home in 2023 were dismissed for the evening yesterday after telling the judge for a second time that they were deadlocked.
Deliberations were set to resume on Thursday.
Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts yesterday delivered special instructions, sometimes referred to as a “dynamite charge,” to encourage the 12 jurors to re-examine their positions and try to reach a unanimous decision. The trial is in its sixth week and ended its fifth day of deliberations.
“After much deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision,” the jury said in a note that Judge Sullivan read in court.
The jury sent a similar note on Tuesday. Just as on Tuesday, the judge instructed them to continue deliberating, but this time by delivering a last-resort instruction known in Massachusetts as a “Tuey-Rodriguez charge”.
“Our constitution and laws provide that in a criminal case the principal way for deciding questions of fact is the verdict of a jury,” Judge Sullivan told the jurors.
Despite those instructions, jurors ended yesterday without reaching a verdict. If the jury does not reach a verdict and Sullivan declares a mistrial, prosecutors would need to decide whether to retry the case, which has featured over 80 witnesses and over 300 exhibits.
No one disputes that Ms Clancy, aged 36, strangled her three children to death in 2023 with exercise bands in the basement of her home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-storey window in an attempt to end her own life that left her paralysed.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought to convince jurors throughout the trial that she should be found not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, or reason of insanity. He argued she was a loving mother who had been in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan on 24 January, 2023.
The televised trial has revived long-simmering debates about how postpartum mental health in women is treated in the US and how the country’s legal system addresses cases when mothers kill their children.
Yesterday, before bringing in the jury, Judge Sullivan warned everyone watching the trial that statutes and a court order forbid people from interfering with witnesses or jurors.
He issued the warning after Dawn Light of Sutton, Massachusetts, was arrested outside the courthouse on Tuesday following the jurors’ dismissal and accused of trying to record a video of jury members. A lawyer for Ms Light during her arraignment yesterday said she had only been seeking to take a picture of Ms Clancy.
Ms Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.