PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy and the father of their three children killed inside their Duxbury home in 2023, is speaking out after the high-profile murder trial ended in a mistrial Friday.
In a brief statement provided to Boston 25 through his legal team, Patrick Clancy indicated he hoped to avoid a retrial.
“Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance. The loss of Patrick’s children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful -- for Patrick, for his family, and for all us,” the statement reads.
Patrick Clancy was the prosecution’s first witness after opening arguments, taking the stand in late July.
He has said in interviews that he forgives his wife, whom he viewed as ill, not evil. He has since moved to New York City and remarried.
During the trial, Patrick Clancy testified about the horrific events of the day of the killings and Lindsay Clancy’s mental health deteriorating. He left the courtroom as prosecutors played his emotional 911 call.
“She killed the kids!” he was recorded yelling.
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.
Judge Sullivan Friday morning ruled that he was going to declare a mistrial after the jurors returned with a third note, explaining that they still could not come to a consensus.
Reddington then went back and forth with Judge Sullivan before the judge allowed the defense attorney an hour to get a SJC justice to intervene.
“What I’m asking for is time to file a single-justice appeal for this travesty,” Reddington said.
A SJC hearing took place at 1:30 p.m. Friday but the state’s top court in Massachusetts refused to stand in judge Sullivan’s way of declaring a mistrial.
Friday’s dramatic outcome follows a stunning day in court Thursday after the jury’s foreperson told the judge that a single juror wouldn’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt.
Reddington pleaded for the judge to question the juror and pushed for the judge to replace the potential holdout juror with an alternate, but Judge Sullivan said a juror may be discharged only for reasons personal to that juror.
District Attorney Tim Cruz can now retry Clancy for the alleged murder of her three kids. Parties in court discussed a potential retrial occurring as soon as this fall but Cruz was noncommittal to a specific timeline outside court Friday.
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