Jury resumes deliberations in Lindsay Clancy murder trial

Plymouth, United States. Jurors in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy are due to begin a sixth day of deliberations on Thursday after twice telling the court they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Jury instructions

The 12 jurors are expected to reconvene in Plymouth, Massachusetts, after Judge William Sullivan issued special instructions on Wednesday encouraging them to reconsider their positions and seek a unanimous decision.

The instructions, sometimes referred to as a “dynamite charge”, followed a note from jurors stating: “After much deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision.” The jury sent a similar note on Tuesday.

If the jury fails to reach a verdict and Sullivan declares a mistrial, prosecutors will have to decide whether to retry the case, which has involved more than 80 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits.

Charges and possible outcomes

Clancy, 36, faces life imprisonment without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If she is found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, or insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

She has admitted strangling her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan, with exercise bands in the basement of the family home in Duxbury, a Boston suburb, on January 24, 2023.

Clancy then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-storey window in an attempt to end her life, leaving her paralysed.

Arguments at trial

During the six-week trial, defence attorney Kevin Reddington argued that Clancy was experiencing a psychotic episode when she killed the children, attributing it to postpartum psychosis.

Family members, including Clancy’s former husband Patrick, testified that she had struggled with her mental health in the months after the birth of her third child. They said she repeatedly sought treatment from healthcare providers, who prescribed her numerous medications.

Prosecutors do not dispute that Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, had mental health problems. They argued, however, that she understood the wrongfulness of killing her children and intentionally chose to do so because she had decided to kill herself and believed they would suffer without her.