Lindsay Clancy trial ends without a verdict for a sixth day after drama
in the courtroom
[September 04, 2026]
By LEAH WILLINGHAM and MIKE CASEY
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — The deadlocked jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial
went home without a verdict Thursday in a dramatic sixth day of
deliberations, after the jury’s foreperson sent the judge a note saying
a single juror won’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable
doubt.
Details of the jury room conflict weren’t revealed by the judge and only
briefly discussed in open court, but they raised the possibility that a
single holdout was standing in the way of a verdict on whether the
Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three
children.
The jury will return Friday to see if it can reach a decision. Before
sending the jury home, the judge refused the defense’s request to remove
one of the jurors following heated discussions among the parties.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny
strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023 before
trying to take her own life. Her attorney argues that postpartum
psychosis led to her actions, while prosecutors say she knew what she
was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and
8 months.
Clancy’s livestreamed trial has generated intense interest, with
reporters and spectators packing the courtroom. The case has also
sparked deep public divisions over her culpability and the issues around
maternal mental health after childbirth.
Lindsay Clancy trial takes a new twist
While the jury has twice sent the judge notes saying it couldn’t agree
on a verdict, this is the first time it has indicated possible tension
or acrimony in the deliberation room.
Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington said in court that the jury
foreperson sent another note Thursday complaining to the judge that one
juror was refusing to listen to the law on reasonable doubt.
Judge William Sullivan, after receiving the jury’s note, brought in each
juror individually and questioned them in private. The judge then reread
his instructions on reasonable doubt before sending them back to
continue deliberating. Reddington told the judge he should have
dismissed the juror from the case.
“If we come back here in a half-hour with a mistrial because of a juror
that has just spurned the instructions of this court, it’s a shame —
it’s a real shame,” Reddington said, referring to a possible deadlocked
jury.
Reddington said afterward outside the courthouse that the juror would be
questioned by the judge Friday. “There’s a person who has doubt but will
not listen to the judge’s instructions,” he told reporters.
Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said in court that she believed Sullivan's
instruction was appropriate and no further action was necessary.
Sullivan said removing a deliberating juror is a sensitive undertaking.
"I don’t feel it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of
the deliberations,” the judge said. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate for
me to say, ‘I agree with one juror or the 11.’ I have asked if they are
able to follow my instructions. They swore earlier that they could.”
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Defense attorney Kevin Reddington talks with Lindsay Clancy after a
jury question during her trial in Plymouth, Mass., on Thursday,
Sept. 3, 2026. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
At one point and for the first time in the trial, Clancy was brought
to join a sidebar conversation with the judge. Paralyzed from the
waist down after her suicide attempt, Clancy uses a wheelchair,
which Reddington himself pushed to the front of the courtroom.
“She has a right to know what’s going on,” he later told reporters.
Lindsay Clancy's jury twice said it was at an impasse
Signs there was a growing chance of a hung jury and the trial ending
without a resolution surfaced on Wednesday when Sullivan explained
to the courtroom that jurors were stuck for a second time.
Sullivan told the jurors not to abandon their own convictions just
to reach a verdict, but urged them to seriously consider opposing
views and reassess their positions if appropriate.
Lindsay Clancy could go on trial again
If the jury ultimately can’t agree on a verdict, the judge could
declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to
put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges or try to negotiate a
plea deal with her lawyer.
If the jury decides Clancy was criminally responsible for her
actions, it could convict her of either murder or manslaughter. If
she is acquitted, a judge could still order her confined to a mental
health facility if an evaluation determines that she poses a danger
to the public.
Throughout the trial, Clancy has received letters of support “from
all over the world,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington said
Thursday. “It’s just amazing. She reads them all.”
The evidence against Lindsay Clancy
Jurors have heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how
Clancy’s mental health declined in the months before the killings
and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay
in a psychiatric hospital.
Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached
sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she
killed the children.
Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his now
ex-wife, whom he views as ill rather than evil.
Clancy strangled the children with exercise bands in their home’s
basement, then cut herself and jumped from a second-floor window.
Her lawyers say she heard a voice telling her to kill the children
so she could end her own life.
The prosecution argues she deliberately sent her then-husband on
errands to get him out of the house, and prosecutors have questioned
the seriousness of her suicide attempt.
___
Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit, Dave Collins in
Hartford, Connecticut, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
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