Lindsay Clancy jurors begin fifth day after judge sends deadlocked panel back to seek unanimous verdict
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts — Jurors deciding whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible when she killed her three young children returned Wednesday for a fifth day of deliberations, confronting the same question that left them formally deadlocked a day earlier and moved one of Massachusetts' most closely watched murder trials closer to the possibility of a mistrial. The panel of nine women and three men was due back at Plymouth Superior Court at 9 a.m. after Judge William Sullivan declined Tuesday to end deliberations and instead instructed jurors to continue reviewing the evidence.
The jury's Tuesday note was brief but consequential: after many hours of deliberations, jurors said they were unable to reach a unanimous decision. Sullivan acknowledged that the nearly six-week trial had involved more than 80 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits and asked the panel to return to the jury room while keeping his previous legal instructions in mind. Jurors deliberated for roughly another five hours before asking to leave around 3:30 p.m. and resume Wednesday.
The deadlock does not yet mean the case has produced a hung jury or mistrial. Massachusetts procedure gives Sullivan another significant tool if jurors again report that they cannot agree: the Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, sometimes called a “dynamite charge.” The instruction encourages jurors to reconsider their positions, listen carefully to opposing views and make another conscientious attempt to reach unanimity without surrendering an honestly held judgment merely to produce a verdict. Sullivan had not issued that formal instruction when he sent the jury back Tuesday.
That distinction makes Wednesday potentially pivotal. If the panel again announces an impasse, Sullivan could consult prosecutors and defense lawyers and deliver the Tuey-Rodriguez charge before ordering another round of deliberations. If jurors remain unable to agree after that process, the prospect of Sullivan declaring a mistrial becomes substantially more immediate. A mistrial would not amount to an acquittal and would generally leave prosecutors able to retry Clancy because no final verdict had been reached.
The difficulty facing jurors is unusual because the central factual question is largely undisputed. Clancy, 36, does not deny killing her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — at the family's Duxbury home on January 24, 2023. The former labor-and-delivery nurse has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, with her attorneys arguing that severe postpartum psychosis left her unable to meet Massachusetts' legal standard for criminal responsibility when she strangled the children.
Prosecutors have offered a sharply different interpretation. They contend Clancy was depressed and suicidal but remained capable of understanding what she was doing and distinguishing right from wrong. The prosecution has pointed to her actions before and after the killings as evidence of planning and awareness, while the defense has relied heavily on psychiatric testimony, her treatment history and its contention that she experienced a command hallucination telling her to kill the children and herself.
That leaves the jury considering far more than a binary choice between first-degree murder and acquittal. Jurors may consider first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter, as well as a finding that Clancy was not guilty because she lacked criminal responsibility. A first-degree murder conviction would carry life imprisonment without parole. If the lack-of-criminal-responsibility defense succeeds, Clancy would not necessarily simply walk free: Massachusetts prosecutors can seek psychiatric commitment, with a judge determining whether continued mental illness and dangerousness justify confinement and later periodic reviews.
Wednesday's deliberations also opened under heightened courthouse security after a woman was arrested Tuesday outside Plymouth Superior Court and accused of filming jurors. The Associated Press reported that Judge Sullivan individually questioned jurors about the incident before deliberations resumed. Authorities charged the woman, identified as retired nurse Dawn Light, with jury intimidation; she has said she intended to photograph Clancy rather than jurors. The episode adds a separate concern for the court: protecting the panel from outside influence while it tries to resolve an already emotionally charged case.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has resisted interpreting Tuesday's note as favorable to either side. Entering court Wednesday, he described the jurors as exceptionally hardworking and said they would have to see how the day developed. That caution is justified: the court has disclosed neither the numerical split among jurors nor which verdict or legal issue is preventing unanimity. Any claim that the panel is leaning toward conviction, acquittal or the insanity defense would therefore be speculation.
The most important development is consequently not that the Clancy trial has ended in a hung jury — it has not. It is that 12 jurors have now formally acknowledged that unanimity has become difficult after weeks of competing psychiatric testimony and more than 23 hours of deliberation. Wednesday tests whether additional discussion can bridge that divide. If it cannot, Sullivan's formal deadlock instruction could become the final major procedural attempt to produce a verdict before the court must confront the possibility of trying the entire case again.