Three jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial spoke out publicly for the first time, describing the tense deliberations that ended in a mistrial and the frustration they felt with the lone holdout who prevented the panel from reaching a unanimous verdict.
In an interview with NBC Boston, one juror described the holdout as “very arrogant,” adding he repeatedly dismissed information presented by other jurors, including nurses on the jury who discussed Clancy’s medications and toxicology results.
The jury foreperson said the holdout at one point acknowledged having reasonable doubt after the panel watched a video interview.
“He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms. I was so excited,” the foreperson said of the lone holdout. “Then he said, ‘But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.’”
A third juror explained “rogue” might not be the right word to describe the holdout, but said he largely refused to engage with the rest of the panel as they reviewed evidence and repeatedly went over Judge William Sullivan’s instructions on reasonable doubt.
“He would not interact with us and try to understand,” the juror said, adding that the holdout had difficulty moving past the fact that Clancy had killed her children.
The accounts offer a new window into deliberations that led Sullivan to declare a mistrial Friday after jurors reported three separate times that they were deadlocked. The panel ultimately split 11 to 1, the three jurors confirmed to NBC Boston.
The day before the mistrial was declared, the foreperson told Sullivan in a note that one juror was refusing to follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington sought to have the juror removed, but Sullivan declined, saying it would be inappropriate for him to side with one juror or the other 11.
The trial centered on Clancy’s state of mind at the time she strangled her three young children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands in the basement of her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. Clancy does not deny killing her children and has given detailed accounts of how she carried them out to expert witnesses who testified at the trial and in a civil lawsuit she filed against some of her medical providers.
But Reddington argued she was suffering postpartum psychosis at the time — a rare psychiatric emergency that can affect women after childbirth — and urged the jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity, which would commit her to a state-run psychiatric institution and give her the opportunity to be reviewed for release in the future.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued that Clancy intentionally chose to kill her children, pointing to the fact that she sent her then-husband out for errands before carrying out the killings. They sought a triple first-degree murder conviction, which would send her to prison for life without the opportunity for parole. The jury also had the options of convicting her of second-degree murder, which would lead to a life sentence in prison with the possibility of parole, or manslaughter, which carries up to a 20-year sentence per count.
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz will decide whether to bring the case again and under which charges. Outside the Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Cruz said he would not offer an immediate decision on a retrial, adding, “This was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies.” A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.
During an interview Tuesday with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Reddington asked President Donald Trump to pardon Clancy, even though the president does not have the authority to issue pardons on state charges. In a later interview with a local reporter from CBS Boston affiliate WBZ, Reddington said he knew Trump could not issue a pardon in the case but hoped he could pressure Cruz, a Republican, to drop the charges.
But that also seems unlikely, given that key MAGA allies — including the president’s own son, Donald Trump Jr. — have insisted that Clancy should be held criminally responsible as the case became a political football in the culture wars, as MS NOW reported.
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