One Juror, Three Dead Children, No Verdict: Clancy Trial Collapses

There are still three small names at the center of this case, and no verdict to put beside them. Cora was 5, Dawson was 3, Callan was 8 months old when they were strangled with exercise resistance bands in the family home in Duxbury on January 24, 2023. ^{4 24} Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window, surviving with paralysis that now puts her in a wheelchair and holds her without bail at Tewksbury Hospital. ^{24 27} Everything since — five weeks of testimony, more than 80 witnesses, a week of deliberation — has circled that one winter morning without settling what it meant in law.

Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse, did not deny the killings. ^{4 24} The entire trial in Plymouth Superior Court turned instead on a single question: whether postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible for what she did. ^{4 6} Prosecutors argued she acted deliberately and knowingly, and that she sent her husband out to pick up medicine and dinner specifically to leave herself alone with the children. ^{24 27} The defense argued a severe postpartum illness made her unable to understand the wrongfulness of her actions. ^{11 24} Five weeks and more than 80 witnesses never resolved her state of mind in the moment, and that unresolved line between psychosis and criminal intent is what hung the jury. ^{6 7}

On Friday, September 4, 2026, Judge William F. Sullivan declared a mistrial after the jury said it could not reach a unanimous verdict, discharging the panel around 2:22 p.m. ^{4 27} The deliberations had run about seven days and roughly 36 to 40 hours, on top of a trial that lasted about five weeks. ^{21 24} The Boston Globe counted 84 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits. ^{21 24} The deliberating jury was nine women and three men, with six alternates, and Massachusetts requires a unanimous criminal verdict to convict or acquit. ^{24 18}

The deadlock that ended the trial came as a fight over one juror. ^{2 8} After two earlier impasse notes, the foreperson sent a new note on Thursday, September 3, saying a single juror acknowledged doubt but was refusing to apply the court's instruction on reasonable doubt to a verdict. ^{2 8} Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told the judge that a lone juror had, in effect, gone rogue and was refusing to follow the law, and he asked that the juror be replaced with an alternate. ^{8 17} He publicly described the panel as split 11-to-1, with eleven jurors favoring acquittal and one blocking a verdict — a split the court itself did not confirm. ^{29 11}

Judge Sullivan questioned the juror and declined to remove him, saying it was not proper to remove a juror on that record and that he would not side with one side or the other of the deliberations. ^{8 25} Sullivan gave the defense about an hour to carry the fight to a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. ^{25 26} Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt, hearing the emergency request by Zoom, denied the stay. ^{8 26} The defense asked Sullivan to give the Tuey-Rodriguez dynamite charge again on Friday — the standard instruction that tells jurors they are as competent as any future panel, to keep deliberating with open minds, and not to surrender an honestly held belief simply to reach unanimity — and he refused. ^{16 25} Sullivan then read the jury's final note in court before discharging the panel. ^{4 27}

The prosecution's first witness was her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, who had filed for divorce in 2024. ^{24 27} He described her decline after Callan's birth and the intrusive thoughts she disclosed, and what he called one of her best days right before the killings. ^{27 24} The 911 call was played for the jury: he found her in the yard after the jump, she told him she had tried to kill herself, then said the children were in the basement. ^{27 24} He also testified that she told him she heard a man's voice warning that if she did not act "now" she would "lose her chance." ^{24 27} He has said he forgives her and believes mental illness was responsible. ^{24 7}

Parallel to the criminal case runs a civil fight over the care that preceded it. ²⁴ In January 2026, Lindsay and Patrick Clancy filed wrongful-death and malpractice suits in Norfolk Superior Court against healthcare providers — among them Dr. Jennifer Tufts, nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta, Aster Mental Health and South Shore Health — alleging misdiagnosis, uncoordinated polypharmacy and poor monitoring over roughly four months. ²⁴ Court and news accounts cite more than a dozen psychiatric medications and more than 30 prescriptions from September 2022 to January 2023, including Zoloft, Ativan, trazodone, Prozac, Ambien, Remeron, Klonopin, Seroquel, Valium and Lamictal. ²⁴ Those civil cases were still pending as of late August 2026. ²⁴

The mistrial leaves the criminal case unresolved and pours the decision into the district attorney's hands. ^{21 31} Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said he would decide "shortly" whether to retry, emphasizing that the first-degree murder charges were "warranted" and that the case was about getting justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan — and he disclosed threats against his prosecutors. ^{21 31} His options are to retry Clancy on first-degree murder before a new jury, reduce the charges, seek a plea, or drop the case. ²⁴ Analysts generally expect a retrial, given Cruz's record, but the defense's claim of an 11-to-1 acquittal split, the cost of a second trial and the strain on the family all weigh against it. ^{21 24} Sullivan scheduled a status conference for September 29 and spoke of trying the case "sooner rather than later," possibly in the fall. ^{21 25} Reddington called the mistrial a "travesty" and said his client "deserved an acquittal." ^{21 24} Patrick Clancy's lawyer said reliving the case in another trial would be "extraordinarily painful." ²⁴

For many observers the deadlock was unsurprising. ^{6 7} The facts of what happened were largely agreed upon; the legal line between psychosis and criminal intent was not. ^{6 7} To her supporters, this is a story of failed postpartum care and overmedication. ⁷ To the prosecution and the district attorney, it is the murder of three children, and they reject treating a hung jury as proof of innocence. ^{21 7} The trial ended without an answer on criminal responsibility, and whether there is a second trial now sits with Timothy Cruz and a September 29 status conference. ^{21 25}