PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial went home without a verdict Wednesday following a fifth day of deliberations and twice saying they can’t agree whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three young children.
The jury will return again Thursday morning. The judge told them to keep deliberating Wednesday when they said for a second straight day that they were at an impasse — a sign there’s a growing chance of a hung jury and the trial ending without a resolution.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023. 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.
“I know it’s been a long day,” Judge William Sullivan said, “so at this point, what I’m going to do is, first off thank you for your time and commitment to this case. I’m going to ask you to come back tomorrow morning."
Clancy stared at the jury with no expression when Sullivan earlier in the day explained to the courtroom that the jurors were at a standstill.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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Judge tells the jury to keep trying for a verdict
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, whether another jury would be “more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it than you are.”
Elyse Hershon, a Boston criminal defense attorney and legal analyst, said, “The next time they say they are deadlocked or unagreed — that is usually the mistrial call.”
What happens if there’s a mistrial
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.
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.
If jurors 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.
What happened on the day of the killings
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, and had bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth.
The prosecution argues she deliberately sent her then-husband on errands to get him out of the house that day, and prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt. Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his ex-wife, whom he views as ill rather than evil.
Massachusetts woman is charged with filming the jury
Dawn Light, 56, was arraigned on an intimidation charge Wednesday at the same courthouse as Clancy's trial in Plymouth, south of Boston. Authorities say she filmed jurors leaving the courthouse a day earlier.
Light, a retired nurse and Clancy supporter, told reporters she was there: “To see Lindsay. And I did see her. She was getting picked up by the van.” Her lawyer Jennifer White called it a “misunderstanding.”
A not-guilty plea was entered on Light's behalf and she was ordered to stay away from the court, jurors and witnesses.
The arrest prompted the judge to ask each juror Wednesday if they saw anything that would affect their impartiality, Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington told The Associated Press. The judge also opened the day's proceedings with a warning not to film, follow, contact or tamper with jurors.
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This story has been updated to correct that Clancy’s attorney clarified that the judge asked jurors about their impartiality, not the woman’s arrest.
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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.
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