A judge has declared a mistrial in the high-profile case of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three children, after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
Gatekeepers News reports that Judge William Sullivan announced the decision on Friday but temporarily stayed the mistrial ruling for one hour to allow Clancy’s lawyer to appeal to a higher court.
The jury had been deadlocked 11-1, with the majority reportedly leaning towards finding the 36-year-old not guilty by reason of insanity.
The development followed a note sent to the judge by the jury on Friday morning, saying it was with a “heavy heart” that members were unable to reach a verdict.
Clancy does not deny strangling her children — Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months — but has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings.
She told investigators she heard a voice ordering her to kill her children. Her lawyers have argued that the condition made her unable to understand or control her actions.
Under Massachusetts law, all 12 jurors must agree on a verdict. When a jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge may declare a mistrial, after which prosecutors can decide whether to retry the case with a new jury.
Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s lawyer, had repeatedly asked Sullivan to replace the holdout juror with one of the alternate jurors, but the judge declined.
The five-week televised trial featured testimony from more than 80 witnesses and brought renewed attention to maternal mental health and postpartum psychosis.
Experts say postpartum psychosis is a rare but serious condition that affects about one to two women in every 1,000 births.
Prosecutors rejected Clancy’s insanity defence, arguing that she had carefully planned the killings and understood the consequences of her actions.
Psychiatrists, people close to Clancy and her estranged husband all testified about her fragile mental health during the trial.
‘Lousy Medical Care’
Dozens of women dressed in pink gathered outside the court in Plymouth to show their support for Clancy and draw attention to wider issues surrounding women’s health.
During closing arguments, Reddington said Clancy had repeatedly sought help before the killings but received “lousy medical care” from the doctors she consulted.
The killings occurred at the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. Clancy later jumped from a second-storey window in an apparent suicide attempt, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.
If convicted of first-degree murder, she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury could also have found her guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter, or determined that she was not criminally responsible — a verdict that would result in her confinement to a psychiatric facility.
The case has drawn comparisons with that of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.
Yates was initially convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity at a 2006 retrial and subsequently committed to a psychiatric hospital.
