The Lindsay Clancy trial appears to be heading toward a mistrial, a former Manhattan prosecutor told Newsweek, after the jury told the judge for a second time that it remains deadlocked and unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Gary Galperin, an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who spent four decades as a prosecutor, told Newsweek that the repeated deadlock is a sign the case may be approaching an impasse—but cautioned that a unanimous verdict remains possible. Rither Alabre, a former prosecutor and partner in Blank Rome's White Collar Defense & Investigations Group, said the judge has already given the jury Tuey-Rodriguez instructions, which are intended to encourage continued deliberations without coercing jurors into reaching a verdict.
The jury has been deliberating since August 27 following a trial that lasted weeks and included dozens of witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. Jurors first told Judge William Sullivan they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on Tuesday. The judge instructed them to continue deliberating.
On Wednesday, the jury again reported that it could not agree. Sullivan again sent the jurors back to deliberate. At the heart of the trial is a difficult question of criminal responsibility: whether Clancy, who has admitted strangling her children, understood the wrongfulness of her actions or was so severely impaired by mental illness that she should not be held criminally responsible.
Clancy is charged with killing her children—5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan—in January 2023. Her defense does not dispute that she killed them. Instead, her attorneys have argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and other severe psychiatric problems and had lost touch with reality.
Clancy subsequently attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window and was left paralyzed from the waist down. Prosecutors have presented a dramatically different interpretation. They have argued that Clancy was depressed and mentally unwell but nevertheless understood what she was doing.
Prosecutors have pointed to evidence they say demonstrates planning and awareness, including her actions before the killings and her decision to send her husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house. The prosecution also challenged the defense's account of Clancy's medications and mental state, while cellphone evidence, the 911 call and testimony about her behavior in the period leading up to the killings became important parts of the state's case. The defense, meanwhile, presented evidence of Clancy's deteriorating mental health, psychiatric treatment and increasingly disturbing thoughts in the months before the killings.
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