PLYMOUTH, Mass. – Lindsay Clancy’s homicide trial led to mistrial Friday, with jurors unable to unanimously determine whether or not the Massachusetts mother is criminally accountable for killing her three younger youngsters.
Comply with The Publish’s dwell updates on the Lindsay Clancy trial
The 12-person jury – made up of 9 girls and three males – instructed Choose William Sullivan that they may not agree on whether or not to convict Clancy, 36, of three counts of first-degree homicide.
With out a verdict — and regardless of an almost five-week-long trial that noticed testimony from roughly 85 witnesses — Sullivan declared a mistrial.
The jury first indicated they had been at an deadlock on the fourth day of deliberations after almost 18 hours. However the choose instructed them to maintain at it.
The following day, after nearly 28 whole hours of deliberations, the jury issued one other word, telling Sullivan a unanimous determination couldn’t be reached. The choose then learn the Tuey-Rodriguez cost, instructing them to deliberate some extra.
In the future later, on Thursday, jurors despatched one other word to the choose.
Protection lawyer Kevin Reddington revealed that the mysterious jury word that prompted the choose to query the jurors one after the other at sidebar was from the foreperson, claiming a single juror “refuses to comply with the legislation” on the choose’s instruction about cheap doubt. The protection legal professional misplaced his bid to have the panelist tossed from the jury.
Friday morning, Reddington argued for the holdout juror to be questioned individually by the choose, revealed the person was a person and accused him of mendacity. However Sullivan shot down the request and despatched the jurors again for extra deliberations.
The mistrial determination doesn’t grant the previous nurse automated freedom — as an alternative, she’s going to stay in custody at Tewksbury Hospital whereas the Plymouth County District Legal professional’s Workplace decides the place to take the intently watched case subsequent.
Prosecutors’ choices embrace placing Clancy on trial a second time, making an attempt to barter a plea deal or dropping the costs altogether.
Reddington beforehand indicated if the case had been retried, Plymouth District Legal professional Timothy Cruz might decide to downgrade the costs to second-degree homicide.
The hypothetical situation would permit Clancy to decide on a choose slightly than a jury to supervise her retrial — an choice not afforded to her with first-degree homicide expenses, Reddington mentioned.
Reddington has repeatedly opined that Cruz would insist the case be tried a second time.
The choice comes after jurors heard dueling accounts of the mother’s mind-set when she fatally strangled Cora, 5; Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan utilizing train bands earlier than making an attempt to take her personal life on Jan. 24, 2023.
Reddington argued that Clancy was within the throes of postpartum psychosis, worsened by a myriad of prescription drugs, and had hallucinated a person’s voice inside her head instructing her to kill the kids and herself.
Prosecutors countered that she was in her proper thoughts and had rigorously deliberate the killings, together with getting her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, to choose up remedy at CVS and takeout from a neighborhood restaurant in order that she could possibly be alone with the kids of their Duxbury house.
On Friday, the jury made its solely request for proof, asking to see the knife Lindsay Clancy utilized in her suicide try and her prescription capsule bottles.
Had the jury unanimously agreed with Lindsay Clancy’s madness protection, the previous nurse would have remained dedicated at a state psychiatric facility indefinitely – and solely ever been freed if docs decided she was now not a hazard to herself or others.
But when they sided with the prosecution and convicted Lindsay Clancy of first-degree homicide, she would have confronted a compulsory life sentence behind bars with no probability of parole beneath Massachusetts legislation.
Either side rested their instances after a complete of 21 days of testimony, which started with Patrick Clancy taking the stand as the primary witness final month.
Patrick Clancy — who has since moved to New York Metropolis and remarried infertility specialist Rachel Danis — instructed jurors that Lindsay Clancy repeatedly sought assist for her worsening psychological state within the months resulting in the killings.
She started seeing a psychiatrist, known as a suicide hotline twice, checked herself right into a psychological establishment for 5 days and sought assist from two perinatal clinics – however nonetheless, she “saved getting worse and worse,” Patrick Clancy testified, and mentioned Lindsay Clancy had even opened as much as him about having ideas of harming the youngsters.
Lindsay Clancy’s “large spiral” was additional fueled, in response to Patrick Clancy and Reddington, by at the very least 13 psychiatric drugs prescribed to her by 5 separate suppliers from November 2022 up till a day earlier than the murders, together with medicine for nervousness, melancholy, sleep problems and anti-psychotic meds.
Patrick Clancy hauntingly recalled returning to the household’s house to search out Lindsay Clancy within the yard with slits on her wrists and throat after plunging from a second-story window — earlier than racing inside and discovering his three youngsters lifeless within the basement.
“She killed the youngsters,” the daddy could possibly be heard screaming throughout the 911 name performed for jurors.
Lindsay Clancy, who attended the trial in a wheelchair after changing into paralyzed from the waist down, repeatedly broke down in tears throughout harrowing testimony.
She was seen sobbing because the 911 name performed, jurors had been proven household images and video from happier instances, whereas the kids’s pajamas and the train bands she used to strangle them had been offered in court docket, and whereas a medical expert testified concerning the post-mortem she carried out on child Callan.
Different relations, together with Lindsay Clancy’s ex-mother-in-law, mom and sister, testified about her traditionally joyful and succesful persona devolving after Callan’s beginning, when she was combating crippling insomnia, melancholy and nervousness about going again to work after her maternity depart ended.
However prosecutors maintained that Lindsay Clancy’s habits confirmed planning slightly than psychosis, and claimed that she “manipulated” the healthcare suppliers who handled her.
Right here’s the most recent on Lindsay Clancy’s trial for allegedly murdering her three youngsters:
“Lindsay made a calculated determination. She was a girl who now not favored the life she thought she needed. It was getting tougher and tougher for her to regulate and when she noticed the chance to flee, she made the egocentric option to take it,” Plymouth County prosecutor Shanan Buckingham mentioned throughout opening statements.
“She selected to govern her suppliers, looking for out a fast and straightforward repair when she was feeling depressed and anxious. And when she didn’t get what she anticipated, she selected the alternate route.”
Finally, “She made a selection, a deliberate and intentional determination, that she didn’t wish to strive anymore. And since nobody might care for her children the way in which she needed them to, she needed to take them along with her too,” Buckingham instructed jurors.
Testimony additionally revealed that the mother had made a collection of disturbing Google searches – together with “The way to slit throat to die” — within the days and weeks main as much as the killings.
Psychologists known as to testify, in the meantime, shared contradicting evaluations about Lindsay Clancy’s psychological state and hallucinations.
Famend psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick — a protection witness — claimed the command voice compelled Lindsay Clancy into the killings and that she couldn’t be held criminally accountable for what she did that day.
“It was nearly like she was a puppet and somebody was pulling the strings,” he mentioned.
He claimed she had a “distorted” perception that she was doing the youngsters “a favor” by taking them along with her when she killed herself.
However three rebuttal prosecution specialists all mentioned Lindsay Clancy’s habits demonstrated she knew what she was doing was fallacious.
Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a prosecution knowledgeable and forensic psychiatrist, testified there have been “inconsistencies” in Lindsay Clancy’s account of when the voice kicked in and variations between her and Patrick Clancy’s accounts of the sequence of occasions that day – elevating questions on whether or not she was telling the reality.
The physician claimed Lindsay Clancy was “methodical, fairly managed and arranged” throughout the crimes.
The case put a nationwide highlight on points surrounding psychological sickness and postpartum experiences amongst moms, with many Lindsay Clancy supporters – nearly all of whom are girls – even displaying as much as court docket carrying pink T-shirts and arguing that she shouldn’t be discovered criminally responsible for the murders.
Different demonstrators advocated for Lindsay Clancy to be discovered responsible, and confirmed as much as court docket with indicators demanding justice for “the one innocents: Cora, Dawson and Callan.”
