A Plymouth jury wrestling with whether to convict Lindsay Clancy of murdering her three young children was sent home for the night yesterday after informing the judge—again—that it cannot reach a unanimous verdict.
Deliberations are set to resume today.
Judge William Sullivan, presiding in Plymouth, Massachusetts, responded by giving the panel special guidance aimed at breaking the impasse—an instruction sometimes called a “dynamite charge.” The case is now in its sixth week, and jurors concluded their fifth day of deliberations yesterday.
“After much deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision,” the jury wrote in a note that Judge Sullivan read aloud in court.
Jurors delivered a similar message on Tuesday. As he did then, Judge Sullivan directed them to continue weighing the case, but this time he issued a last-resort directive known in Massachusetts as a “Tuey-Rodriguez charge.”
“Our constitution and laws provide that in a criminal case the principal way for deciding questions of fact is the verdict of a jury,” Judge Sullivan told the jurors.
Even with that instruction, the panel ended the day without a verdict. Should jurors remain unable to agree and Judge Sullivan declare a mistrial, prosecutors would have to decide whether to try the case again—an undertaking that would revisit a proceeding built on more than 80 witnesses and over 300 exhibits.
The core act itself is not in dispute: Ms Clancy, 36, strangled her three children to death in 2023 with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s home in Duxbury, a Boston suburb. She then tried to take her own life and is now paralysed.
Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has urged jurors to find her not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, also known as reason of insanity. He portrayed Ms Clancy as a devoted mother suffering a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, on 24 January, 2023.
The televised proceedings have also reopened a wider national conversation—one that has simmered for years—about postpartum mental health care in the US and how courts handle cases involving mothers who kill their children.
Before jurors entered the courtroom yesterday, Judge Sullivan cautioned spectators that statutes and a court order prohibit interference with witnesses or jurors.
He delivered the warning after Dawn Light, of Sutton, Massachusetts, was arrested outside the courthouse on Tuesday after jurors were dismissed, accused of attempting to record video of jury members. At Ms Light’s arraignment yesterday, a lawyer said she was only trying to take a picture of Ms Clancy.
Ms Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If jurors find her not guilty by reason of insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
