PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial went home with out a verdict Wednesday following a fifth day of deliberations and twice asserting they’ll’t agree whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally accountable for killing her three younger children.
The jury will return all another time Thursday morning. The decide told jurors to withhold deliberating Wednesday after they acknowledged for a 2nd straight day that they were at an impasse — a signal there’s a rising likelihood of a hung jury and the trial ending with out a resolution.
Clancy, a 36-year-aged former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t converse strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023. Her felony official argues that postpartum psychosis led to her actions, while prosecutors converse she knew what she used to be doing when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months.
“I are conscious about it’s been a lengthy day,” Judge William Sullivan acknowledged, “so at this point, what I’m going to construct is, first off thanks to your time and dedication to this case. I’m going to ask you to realize relieve relieve the following day to come morning.”
Clancy stared at the jury with out a expression when Sullivan earlier in the day outlined to the court docket that the jurors were at a standstill.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This epic entails discussion of suicide. While you or someone wants support, the nationwide suicide and disaster lifeline in the U.S. is on hand by calling or texting 988.
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Judge tells the jury to withhold attempting for a verdict
Earlier in the day, the jury despatched the court a enlighten asserting it couldn’t unanimously agree on a verdict, regardless of days of attempting. The jury had despatched a same enlighten Tuesday morning. Neither enlighten printed anything else about how the jury would be split or acknowledged anything else about the tone of deliberations.
Sullivan then gave the jury a first rate instruction most incessantly identified as a “dynamite price” because it is a ways supposed to aid a jury ruin through an impasse.
He told the jurors now not to desert their possess convictions correct to prevail in a verdict, nonetheless entreated them to noticeably support in thoughts opposing views and reassess their positions if acceptable. Nobody is conscious of, he added, whether one other jury would be “more shiny, more impartial or more competent to guage it than you are going to also very neatly be.”
Such directions are in style in lots of states and the U.S. Supreme Courtroom has upheld their constitutionality, nonetheless they’re barred in some states thanks to concerns they might maybe be coercive.
Elyse Hershon, a Boston criminal defense felony official and just correct analyst, acknowledged, “The subsequent time they converse they’re deadlocked or unagreed — that is typically the mistrial call.”
The trial featured split views on Clancy’s psychological neatly being
Clancy’s livestreamed trial has generated intense curiosity, with reporters and spectators packing the court docket. The case has additionally sparked deep public divisions over her culpability and the components spherical maternal psychological neatly being after childbirth.
Clancy strangled her children in her home, then jumped from a 2nd-ground window. She stays anxious from the waist down. Her attorneys converse she heard a convey telling her to shatter the kids so she might maybe probably well also cease her possess lifestyles, and had bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, a uncommon psychological sickness that might maybe probably notice childbirth.
The prosecution argued that Clancy planned to shatter herself thanks to depression, intentionally despatched her then-husband on errands to rep him out of the dwelling that day, and killed the kids because she didn’t favor them to endure after she used to be long past.
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Jurors heard testimony from relations and doctors about how Clancy’s psychological neatly being declined in the months sooner than the killings and how her medicine incorporated treatment, several medications and a rapid cease in a psychiatric scientific institution.
If jurors in the end can’t agree on a verdict, the decide might maybe probably well also verbalize a mistrial. Prosecutors would then must judge whether to place Clancy on trial all another time, tumble the costs or strive to negotiate a plea take care of her attorney.
If the jury decides Clancy used to be criminally accountable for her actions, it might maybe probably also convict her of both abolish or manslaughter. If she is acquitted, a decide might maybe probably well also smooth portray her confined to a psychological neatly being facility if an overview determines that she poses a possibility to the general public.
Protection felony official Kevin Reddington listens as Judge William Sullivan asks the jurors to continue with deliberations in the end of Lindsay Clancy’s abolish trial at Plymouth Superior Courtroom in Plymouth, Mass., Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger by process of AP, Pool)
Massachusetts girl is charged with filming the jury
Crack of first light Mild, 56, used to be arraigned on an intimidation price Wednesday at the the same courthouse as Clancy’s trial in Plymouth, south of Boston. Authorities converse she filmed jurors leaving the courthouse a day earlier.
Mild, a retired nurse and Clancy supporter, told reporters she used to be there: “To observe Lindsay. And I did watch her. She used to be getting picked up by the van.”
Her attorney Jennifer White called it a “misunderstanding.”
A now not-guilty plea used to be entered on Mild’s behalf and she used to be ordered to protect faraway from the court, jurors and witnesses.
The arrest prompted the decide to ask each and each juror Wednesday in the event that they saw anything else that would affect their impartiality, Clancy’s felony official Kevin Reddington told The Associated Press. The decide additionally opened the day’s complaints with a warning that he had issued an portray governing how folks must smooth conduct themselves at the courthouse. That portray barred folks from filming, following, contacting or tampering with jurors.
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This epic has been corrected to point to that Clancy’s felony official clarified that the decide asked jurors about their impartiality, now not the girl’s arrest.
In this photo fervent just a few smartphone Crack of first light Mild is wondered by reporters as she leaves her arraignment the place she used to be charged with intimidation in reference to the Lindsay Clancy’s abolish trial in Plymouth, Mass., Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
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Associated Press creator Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.
