A jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial after seven days of deliberations.
The Plymouth Superior Court trial, which ran nearly five weeks and featured testimony from roughly 85 witnesses, ended Friday in a mistrial. Judge William Sullivan made the call after the 12-member jury, nine women and three men, told him they were hopelessly divided and could not agree.
Clancy, 36, admitted to strangling her three children with exercise bands inside the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts home on January 24, 2023. The victims were Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, just 8 months old. After killing the children, Clancy attempted to take her own life.
The core dispute at trial was not what happened, but whether Clancy was criminally responsible for it.
As originally reported, jurors first signaled they were deadlocked on day four of deliberations, having deliberated for close to 18 hours. Sullivan ordered them to keep trying. The next day, after nearly 28 hours total, they again reported they could not agree. Sullivan then issued a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, a last-resort legal charge used in Massachusetts courts to push a deadlocked jury to take another hard look at the evidence.
The standoff grew more tense Thursday when defense attorney Kevin Reddington alleged the jury foreperson had accused a fellow juror of refusing to properly apply the reasonable doubt standard. Reddington asked Sullivan to remove that juror. Sullivan said no.
Friday morning brought more of the same. Reddington again pushed to have the holdout juror, identified as a man, questioned individually. He accused the juror of lying. Sullivan again refused, sent the panel back to deliberate, and the result was still no verdict.
Sullivan declared the mistrial shortly after.
The outcome does not mean Clancy walks free. She remains in custody at Tewksbury Hospital while the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office weighs its next move. Prosecutors have three options. They can retry Clancy, negotiate a plea agreement, or drop the charges entirely.
No decision on that path forward has been announced.
