A Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in Lindsay Clancy's triple-murder case after seven days of jury deliberation failed to produce a unanimous verdict, and the state's highest court refused a last-ditch defense bid to remove a holdout juror.
Judge William Sullivan announced the mistrial Friday in Plymouth County after the jury sent its third deadlock note, writing "with a heavy heart" that it could not agree. The collapse came at the end of a nearly six-week trial that forced jurors to sit through wrenching testimony about the strangling deaths of three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, at the hands of their own mother on Jan. 24, 2023.
The case now falls to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz, who must decide whether to retry Clancy on first-degree murder charges, pursue lesser charges, negotiate a plea, or drop the case entirely. Cruz gave no immediate answer. A next-steps hearing is set for Sept. 29.
The jury began deliberating after weeks of testimony and NBC News reported it sent its first deadlock note on the fourth day. Sullivan dismissed the jurors that day and asked them to keep working. The next day, a second note arrived: the panel was "still unable to come to a unanimous decision."
Sullivan then read the jury what Massachusetts courts call Tuey-Rodriguez instructions, a formal direction that essentially asks jurors to give deliberations one last chance and tells them a verdict is "desirable." Under state law, a judge can ask a deadlocked jury to continue only twice. If a third deadlock follows, the judge may declare a mistrial.
Friday's third note made the outcome unavoidable. The New York Post reported the jury had logged more than 38 hours of deliberation across seven days, with a single male holdout juror blocking a unanimous verdict.
That detail, one juror, reportedly unconvinced that Clancy was psychotic at the time of the killings, drove the defense's final gambit.
Rather than accept the mistrial, defense attorney Kevin Reddington announced he would take the fight to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Sullivan gave him one hour. It stretched into two before defense associate Dana Goldblatt appeared via Zoom before SJC Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt.
Goldblatt argued the holdout juror was refusing to "follow what the law states." The Washington Examiner reported that Reddington sought a court order directing Sullivan to conduct a voir dire, a formal questioning, of the holdout to determine whether there was cause to remove that juror from the panel.
Justice Wendlandt denied the request. NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos said Reddington had a "very low probability" of winning the appeal but that it was his job to try "absolutely everything" to avoid a mistrial. The jury had already deadlocked twice before Friday's final note sealed the outcome.
With the appeal dead, Sullivan dismissed the jurors and thanked the attorneys on both sides.
"I wanted to compliment all three counsel. A trial like this is so hard, so difficult, and so I just kind of wanted to to thank the three of you for your efforts in regards to this."
Reddington pushed to return to court quickly. Sullivan set the hearing for Sept. 29.
The central question at trial was whether Clancy acted deliberately or was driven by postpartum psychosis, a severe psychiatric condition that the defense said robbed her of the ability to distinguish right from wrong. The answer determined everything: a guilty verdict meant life in prison; a finding of not criminal responsibility meant treatment, not punishment.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told the jury in closing arguments that the killings were a choice, not a symptom. She walked jurors through the prosecution's reconstruction of the evening: Clancy intentionally sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out to pick up dinner and stop at a CVS store. She looked up how long the trip would take. She called the store to confirm a medication was in stock, buying herself time alone with the children.
Sprague cast the children themselves as the obstacle Clancy needed to remove before she could end her own life. In a case built around competing psychiatric frameworks, similar postpartum psychosis defenses have succeeded in other courtrooms, but the prosecution here insisted the facts pointed the other way.
Sprague told the jury:
"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 pointed to Clancy's sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Tufts. In those sessions, Sprague said, Clancy "denied having a suicide plan, denied wanting to hurt anyone else, denied voices" and "showed no signs of psychosis." Clancy told family members she was getting better, but told Dr. Tufts she was depressed, and did not tell Tufts the full story.
The prosecution's framing was blunt. Sprague called the killings acts of "extreme atrocity and cruelty." Fox News reported that DA Cruz reinforced that position after the mistrial, telling reporters the evidence showed Clancy "was in control of her actions" when she killed her children.
Cruz did not mince words about the stakes.
"Insensitive is killing three children. Insensitive is ignoring those facts."
The defense built its case on a different version of the same woman. Reddington told jurors Clancy had been a happy mother who mentally deteriorated in the months before the killings. She made repeated efforts to seek psychiatric help, called the suicide hotline, and was prescribed multiple medications. None of it worked.
Reddington blamed what he called "the d*** medicine and the lousy medical care that she got" for the trajectory from a functioning family to a crime scene. He told the jury Clancy heard a male voice compelling her to kill her children, a claim she reportedly made to a hospital chaplain and repeated to Patrick Clancy over the phone, as heard by a forensic psychologist.
Defense expert Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist, concluded Clancy was psychotic at the time of the murders. Reddington leaned on that testimony hard.
"This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect."
The postpartum psychosis defense has gained traction in American courts in recent years, and the Clancy trial became a flashpoint for the broader debate over how the justice system should handle mothers who kill their children while allegedly in the grip of severe mental illness.
Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's then-husband, testified about the evening of Jan. 24, 2023. He returned home from the errands his wife had sent him on and found "blood everywhere." Clancy was bleeding on the ground outside their home, having thrown herself from a second-story bedroom window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The children were in the basement, unresponsive, with exercise bands around their necks. All three, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, were dead.
The trial drew intense public attention. Hundreds gathered outside the courthouse in solidarity during the proceedings. The livestreamed case also sparked controversy over media conduct, with one journalist losing her credentials after inappropriate on-camera behavior during the trial.
The mistrial leaves the case in limbo. AP News reported that Cruz said there would be no immediate decision about a second trial. Clancy remains held at Tewksbury Hospital. The New York Post reported she could face a retrial as early as this fall.
Cruz framed his obligation in plain terms after the mistrial: "This was and has always been about getting justice for those beautiful babies."
Whether he pursues first-degree murder again, downgrades the charges, or accepts a plea will shape how the system answers a question the jury could not: Was Lindsay Clancy a woman destroyed by a disease no one treated properly, or a mother who planned and carried out the deliberate killing of her own children?
Three children are dead. One juror's doubt does not change that. If the system owes anyone a second chance at a verdict, it owes it to Cora, Dawson, and Callan.
