PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Addressing a throng of media outside the court after Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury Friday, Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said no immediate decision has been made on whether the Commonwealth will retry the Duxbury woman accused of murdering her three children.
Prosecutors must now decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges, or try to negotiate a plea deal after Judge William Sullivan ruled a mistrial after seven days of deliberation.
“I’m gonna be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time. In the context of an official court proceeding. So you’re not getting an answer on that question today,” Cruz said. “Today, however, I want to just say I appreciate the hard work of the jury in this case. The jury obviously worked incredibly hard, stayed with that case for six and a half days.”
Cruz redirected focus onto the three children killed, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan.
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“This was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies,” Cruz said.
The deliberations took a dramatic turn late in the week when Judge Sullivan said he was going to declare a mistrial Friday before suddenly changing course and giving defense attorney Kevin Reddington a chance to appeal to the highest court in Massachusetts. The emergency appeal was quickly denied.
Prosecutors said Clancy acted deliberately when she strangled her kids on Jan. 24, 2023, before trying to take her own life. They pointed to how she contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family, and questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt.
Over 21 days of testimony, jurors heard how Clancy’s mental health had collapsed after Callan’s birth.
Deeply anxious about a planned return to work, unable to sleep and experiencing what she described as a disturbing brain fog, Clancy sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders, who prescribed multiple psychiatric medications.
However, outside court Friday, Cruz was adamant the commonwealth’s pursuit of a verdict was justified.
“The investigation of these heinous killings, however, did not establish that they were caused by such suppression, and based upon that assessment, it was determined that the charges of first-degree murder were warranted and appropriate in these circumstances,” Cruz said.
Clancy’s family members testified that she expressed concern about her mental health decline. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, described her as a “very nurturing, very loving mother” who was “begging for help.
In early January, she checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital for more intensive treatment, but her stay was short. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged, leaving their bodies in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window immediately after and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors conceded that Clancy had severe mental illness, but insisted she was able to understand and control her actions. They emphasized that although she claimed to have heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children, she never disclosed hearing voices to her mental health providers before the killings.
Cruz had a simple response when asked about the potential difficulties in seating a second jury in a potential retrial.
“You know, we’ll do what we always do. You know, we will go through the court system and we will do it”
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