Lindsay Clancy jurors deadlocked, judge sends them back to try again
· Toronto Sun
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The jury in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy told the judge Tuesday it couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on the fourth day of deliberations.
Judge William Sullivan told the jurors — nine women and three men — to go back and try again.
“I know that this was a long trial,” he said. “I know there were over 80 witnesses, over 300 exhibits. But because of that, I’m going to ask you to go back out, keeping in mind all the instructions that I gave you. To go out and to continue your deliberations at this time.”
Neither the prosecution nor Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, objected to the move.
According to Massachusetts law, the judge can encourage the jury to go back and deliberate, but not more than two times unless the jury consents to it. If the jurors can’t reach a unanimous verdict, the judge can declare a mistrial, meaning the state can prosecute her again with a new jury.
Clancy killed her three small children — five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan — in Massachusetts in 2023. She doesn’t dispute the murders, but her defence has argued that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong.
Judge Sullivan told the jurors they will consider murder in the first degree, but can consider murder in the second degree.
“If you find the defendant guilty of murder you shall decide the degree of murder,” he said, adding the defendant may have the required intent to prove first-degree murder even if she suffered from mental illness.
Possible outcomes
The jury can convict her of first- or second-degree murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter. They could also acquit her by way of insanity and lack of criminal responsibility, in which case, the court decides whether or not she should be released or committed to a psychiatric facility, likely the latter.
If Clancy is convicted of first-degree murder, she could go to jail for life without parole.
Similar cases
Other such cases have ended in insanity verdicts. In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in Texas. He defence said she suffered from postpartum psychosis and believed murdering her children would save them from hell. She was convicted of murder, but that conviction got overturned and in a retrial, Yates was found not guilty by way of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital.