Jury deadlocked for a sixth day in trial of Massachusetts mother who killed her three children

A jury weighing whether Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible for strangling her three young children recessed Thursday for a sixth straight day without reaching a verdict, after reporting twice during the day that it was deadlocked. Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan sent jurors home and told them to return Friday at 9 a.m., when he said he would address them directly.

The panel has now deliberated roughly 36 hours since closing arguments concluded on Aug. 27 in the triple-murder trial of the 36-year-old former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, who does not dispute that she killed 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan in the family's home on Jan. 24, 2023. Her lawyers argue she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity; prosecutors from the office of Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz maintain she understood what she was doing and should be convicted of murder.

The numbers

The trial, held in the Brockton criminal session of Plymouth Superior Court, stretched over roughly five weeks of testimony beginning with opening statements on July 27. Prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses, including Clancy's former husband, Patrick Clancy, who testified as the state's first witness; the defense called about ten witnesses in response. Clancy faces three counts of first-degree murder, one for each child, a charge that under Massachusetts law carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if the jury convicts her outright.

If instead the jury finds her not guilty by reason of mental illness, she would not go free. Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 123, Section 16, a defendant acquitted on those grounds is committed for observation and can then be confined indefinitely to a secure psychiatric facility, subject to periodic hearings on whether she still poses a danger. A third possible outcome — a mistrial declared after a jury that cannot agree — would leave prosecutors to decide whether to retry the case from the beginning.

How the case reached a jury

Clancy called 911 on the evening of Jan. 24, 2023, after strangling her three children with exercise bands inside the family's Duxbury home while Patrick Clancy was out picking up takeout food, according to testimony and court filings. After the killings, she cut her own wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt; she survived but was left paralyzed from the waist down. She was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder in early 2023 and has been held, largely at a secure hospital unit, in the years since as the case moved toward trial.

At trial, defense attorney Kevin Reddington built his case around postpartum psychosis, a rare but severe psychiatric condition that the National Institute of Mental Health describes as a psychiatric emergency marked by delusions, hallucinations, mania and confusion following childbirth, and which the defense says left Clancy unable to understand that what she was doing was wrong. Prosecutors countered with testimony aimed at establishing that Clancy retained awareness of her actions, including evidence about her state of mind in the hours before and after the killings. Jurors began deliberating on Aug. 27, broke for the weekend without a verdict, and by Tuesday, Sept. 1 — their fourth day — reported they could not agree. Judge Sullivan responded with what is known in Massachusetts as a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, a version of the so-called Allen charge used nationally, urging jurors to keep testing their views against one another's before giving up. A fifth day of deliberations on Wednesday ended the same way.

The prolonged deadlock has kept the case in painful suspense for a family already shattered by the deaths, for the Duxbury community where the killings occurred, and for the jurors themselves, who have spent six days confined to a small room grappling with one of the most emotionally difficult questions a criminal jury can face. It has also drawn attention well beyond Massachusetts, in part because the case has become a reference point in the broader debate over how the criminal justice system should treat parents who commit violence against their children amid severe postpartum mental illness — an issue mental health advocates and lawmakers in several states have cited in pushing for specialized legal standards.

"The fact that they have not said that they're done is very, very heartening," defense attorney Kevin Reddington said of the jury's continued deliberations.

Reaction and what people are saying

The deadlock produced visible tension in the courtroom this week. Reddington told Judge Sullivan on Thursday that a single juror was refusing to follow instructions on the standard of reasonable doubt and asked that the juror be removed, according to reporting from the Boston Globe's live coverage of the proceedings. Judge Sullivan declined to intervene, telling the courtroom, "I don't feel it is proper for me to side with one side or the other in deliberations," before reminding jurors they were "required to follow my instructions on the law as I gave them," according to an account carried by ABC News. District Attorney Cruz's office has offered little public comment beyond confirming it is awaiting the jury's decision, while Reddington has repeatedly framed the lengthy deliberations as a sign jurors are taking the insanity defense seriously rather than dismissing it outright.

Legal analysts following the trial, cited in WBUR's coverage from the Plymouth courthouse, have noted that Massachusetts juries are given wide latitude to keep deliberating before a mistrial is declared, and that lengthy deliberations in cases turning on a defendant's mental state are not unusual given the complexity of expert psychiatric testimony jurors must weigh.

What happens next

Judge Sullivan told jurors he would speak with them again when they reconvene Friday morning, without specifying what he intends to say. Massachusetts judges typically have three options if deliberations continue without resolution: keep sending jurors back to deliberate, issue an additional instruction urging continued effort, or ultimately declare a mistrial if the panel reports it is irreconcilably deadlocked. A mistrial would not end the case; prosecutors would then decide whether to seek a new trial with a different jury. CNN's live coverage of the trial noted that both sides have publicly braced for the possibility that deliberations could stretch into a seventh day or beyond, given the number and severity of the charges the jury must resolve separately for each of the three children.