The jury deciding Lindsay Clancy’s fate has said it is unable to reach a unanimous verdict, but that does not mean deliberations are over. After more than 17 hours of deliberations over four days, jurors sent a note to Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan on Tuesday saying they had been unable to reach a unanimous decision. Rather than immediately declare a mistrial, Sullivan instructed jurors to continue deliberating.
The jury’s deadlock comes after a trial that lasted roughly six weeks and included testimony from more than 80 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits. The central question is whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children in January 2023, with her defense arguing that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and prosecutors arguing that she deliberately carried out the killings. There is no rule saying that a Massachusetts jury must reach a verdict after a certain number of hours or days.
A jury can continue deliberating as long as the judge believes further deliberations could potentially produce a unanimous verdict. That is why Tuesday's announcement of a deadlock did not immediately end the case. Sullivan sent the jurors back to continue working through the evidence and the legal instructions.
Eventually, however, if it becomes clear that the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict, the judge can declare a mistrial based on a hung jury. That would end the trial without a verdict on the unresolved charges and could open the door to a retrial. There is also no indication that the jury's current 17 to 18 hours of deliberation is unusually long for a case of this complexity.
If the Clancy jury continues for days or even weeks, it would still be nowhere near the longest jury deliberation ever recorded. Guinness World Records lists a 1992 California civil case as the record-holder, with jurors deliberating for about 4 1/2 months. The case involved Shirley and Jason McClure, who sued Long Beach officials alleging housing bias, and ultimately the jury awarded $20 million to Shirley McClure and $2.5 million to her son.
A more relevant comparison for Clancy is the McMartin Preschool trial, one of the most famous lengthy criminal trials in American history. After nearly three years of trial proceedings, from July 1987 to July 1990, the jury deliberated for about nine weeks and acquitted Peggy McMartin Buckey and cleared Ray Buckey on 52 of 65 counts but deadlocked on 13 counts against him. That means a nine-week criminal jury deliberation has precedent, although it would be extraordinary for the Clancy jury to approach that length.
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