PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The jury in Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial is back at work Thursday for a sixth day of deliberations after twice telling the judge it cannot agree.
CBS Boston reported Wednesday that the nine women and three men left without a verdict after more than 28 hours of talks. It was the second deadlock note. Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan then read a final “dynamite,” or Tuey-Rodriguez, instruction — Massachusetts language that tells jurors to keep deliberating and weigh whether other views are reasonable. CNN reported that if the panel reports an impasse again, a mistrial is likely.
The jury got the case last Thursday after a long trial with more than 80 witnesses, CBS Boston said.
Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse, is charged in the January 2023 deaths of her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — at the family’s home in Duxbury. She has admitted strangling them, then cutting herself and jumping from a second-story window in a suicide attempt, the Boston Globe has reported. She is paralyzed from the waist down and appears in court in a wheelchair.
The fight is not over whether she killed the children. Jurors must decide if she was criminally responsible. The defense argues postpartum psychosis, bipolar disorder, and heavy medication. Prosecutors say she planned the killings after sending her husband out for takeout and understood what she was doing.
The Globe reported the judge is allowing the jury to consider manslaughter as well as first-degree murder. A first-degree murder conviction in Massachusetts carries life without parole. A finding of no criminal responsibility would send her to a state psychiatric hospital, not prison, with periodic reviews.
Legal analysts told CBS Boston and Newsweek the second deadlock raises the odds of a hung jury, though verdicts still come after a dynamite charge in some cases. A spectator was charged with witness intimidation for filming near the courthouse, CNN reported.
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