Female jurors broke down in court Friday after a lone male holdout blocked the panel’s eleven other members from clearing Lindsay Clancy by reason of insanity, causing a mistrial.
Judge William Sullivan declared the deadlock after the jury of nine women and three men split 11-1 for acquittal across seven days and more than 36 hours of deliberations. Clancy, 36, acknowledged strangling Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, at the family’s Duxbury home in 2023 but said postpartum psychosis left her unable to appreciate what she was doing.
A CNN producer inside the courtroom described several female jurors coming undone as Sullivan addressed the panel, informing them he had declared a mistrial.
“There was one female juror that was nodding her head no,” the network reported. “Another female juror was clenching her hands into fists. One female juror would not even open her eyes.”
The foreperson had told the court that the holdout “has made statements acknowledging doubt, but refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states.”
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington unloaded on the holdout outside the courthouse, casting the man as the villain of the trial.
“They know that they were robbed by one man for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors,” Reddington told reporters. He thanked the panel “minus one,” said he hoped the holdout could “sleep well at night,” and claimed, “I won the case.”
Reddington’s emergency appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court accused the holdout of being “biased” against people with “debilitating mental illness.” Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt declined to intervene.
Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague had urged Sullivan to send jurors back without further instruction, arguing the deadlock reflected ordinary deliberation.
“What we have here is a note that indicates a disagreement about how to weigh the evidence,” Sprague said. “And that’s deliberation.”
Breitbart’s John Nolte wrote that Clancy is “guilty as hell,” arguing her calm phone call with her husband mid-killing proved she knew the acts were wrong. President Donald Trump called the case “a horrible tragedy” and said he assumed there would be another trial.
The mistrial capped a televised five-week trial that drew more than 80 witnesses and dozens of pink-clad supporters to the Plymouth courthouse. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz must now decide whether to retry Clancy.
“I’ll be making that decision shortly,” Cruz said.
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