Lindsay Clancy Jury Remains Deadlocked as Her Attorney Claims 11 Jurors Have Reached a Decision

Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney says he is hoping the murder trial will not end in a mistrial, despite an apparent split among the 12 jurors.

After the jury completed its sixth day of deliberations on Thursday, Sept. 3, without reaching a verdict, attorney Kevin Reddington told reporters that he believes 11 jurors have apparently reached a position while one juror remains opposed.

 

Reddington said the issue centers on a juror he claims is unwilling to follow the judge’s instructions regarding the law.

“There’s a person who has doubt but will not listen to the judge’s instruction,” Reddington told reporters outside the courthouse.

Despite the impasse, Reddington made clear that he does not want the case to end with a mistrial.

“Why would I want a mistrial?” he said. “I kicked the s–t out of their case.”

The attorney did not reveal how the 11 jurors he referenced would vote, so it remains unclear whether they favor conviction, acquittal or a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible.

Reddington said the juror at the center of the dispute has been identified, and the court is expected to examine the situation when proceedings resume Friday morning.

The development came after another tense day inside Plymouth Superior Court, where the jury again struggled to reach a unanimous decision in one of Massachusetts’ most closely followed murder cases.

Earlier Thursday, a note from the jury foreperson prompted a lengthy sidebar discussion involving Judge William Sullivan, the attorneys and Clancy. According to Reddington, the note indicated that one juror “refuses to listen to the law.”

The judge ultimately sent the jurors back to continue deliberating before dismissing them for the evening. They are scheduled to return at 9 a.m. Friday.

Clancy, 36, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2023 deaths of her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

Clancy has not disputed that she killed the children. Prosecutors allege that she strangled them before jumping from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt.

The central question at trial has instead been whether Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions at the time.

Her defense has argued that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis and had been dangerously overmedicated while seeking treatment for her mental health. Reddington has maintained that failures by medical providers contributed to her condition and left her unable to understand the nature and consequences of what she was doing.

Prosecutors have presented a very different account.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague has argued that Clancy was depressed and overwhelmed but was not suffering from psychosis when she killed her children. The prosecution maintains that the killings were deliberate and that Clancy understood what she was doing.

During closing arguments, Sprague described the children as the reason Clancy continued living.

“Those kids were her protective factor,” Sprague said. “Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery.”

According to prosecutors, Clancy therefore made the decision to eliminate that protective factor.

The jury has already informed Judge Sullivan twice that it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. On Wednesday, Sullivan issued a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, commonly known as a “dynamite charge,” urging jurors to continue working toward a unanimous decision while reminding them of their legal responsibilities.

That instruction is often used when a jury appears firmly divided, and its use has placed the case increasingly close to the possibility of a mistrial if the jurors remain unable to agree.

For now, however, deliberations are continuing.

Reddington’s comments suggest that the defense believes the disagreement may be concentrated around a single juror rather than representing an evenly divided panel. But because the jurors’ actual positions have not been publicly disclosed, there is still no official indication of what verdict, if any, the majority is prepared to reach.

The jury is expected back in court Friday morning, when Judge Sullivan may address the dispute involving the juror before determining whether deliberations can continue.