Lindsay Clancy, prosecutors, defense lawyers, the judge and millions watching on are back where they started after her five-week trial over the murder of her three children ended in a mistrial. America’s saddest case has ceased for the moment, but the legal wrangling is not over, and a second trial could now be on the horizon, prolonging and repeating an agonizing spectacle that has gripped America and the world. The trial lurched to its conclusion on Friday as jurors in Massachusetts failed to come to a unanimous verdict.
A lone male juror holdout appeared to be preventing a conclusion to the case. That meant the trial ended as it had begun: with no legal certainty about what was in Clancy’s mind when on 24 January 2023 she killed five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, and later cut her wrists and jumped from a bedroom window, sustaining injuries that paralyzed her. Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, did not deny the killings but pleaded not guilty to the murders.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington blamed postpartum psychosis coupled with overmedication. Prosecutors said she knew what she was doing. The jury deliberated for six days and over 30 hours, coming back three times in total in a deadlock.
The jury foreperson said in a note to the judge on Thursday that a single juror had expressed reasonable doubt but would “not follow the law”. The mistrial finally came after a nail-biting delay when the judge allowed Clancy’s defense to petition the Massachusetts supreme court to replace the outlying juror with an alternate. Massachusetts justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt took the matter under advisement and soon after issued a decision not to intervene in the proceedings, forcing Judge William Sullivan to declare a mistrial.
Reddington stared at the ground and let out a sigh as the judge made the ruling. At the back of the courtroom, largely occupied by supporters, people could be seen wiping away tears. Reddington said he would file a motion for a directed finding of not guilty within days – a ruling that Sullivan could make on grounds that the prosecution failed to present enough evidence to prove the case.
A status hearing is set for 29 September when a new trail date could be set. Before Cruz’s most recent re-election, in 2022, he took aim at progressive district attorneys, saying they have been causing “anarchy and chaos” across the US. But he did not rule out the possibility of a plea deal.
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