MISTRIAL: The Lindsay Clancy Jury Deadlocks 11-1 for Acquittal After Seven Days, and the SJC Refuses to Step In

0:03 Calaroga Shark Media. This is Daily Crime and Justice from Calaroga Shark Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher, and this is a special bulletin. At about 11 o'clock Friday morning, after seven days and nearly 40 hours locked in a room, the jury in the Lindsay Clancy case sent Judge William Sullivan a note. It read, It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to. Those last six words are the ones that ended it. Will not be able to. Not cannot today. Not need more time. Will not.

0:44 Sullivan said that under the statute and the case law, he did not feel he had any choice but to declare a mistrial. And then something happened that veteran Massachusetts lawyers are calling unusual. He put his own ruling on hold and gave Kevin Reddington one hour to run to the state's highest court and try to stop it. 12 jurors sat in a room down the hall for that hour. Nobody told them why they were waiting. The Supreme Judicial Court refused to intervene. And at about 2.30 Friday afternoon, William Sullivan brought that jury back into his courtroom, declared them deadlocked, declared a mistrial, and let them go home. Jury notes indicate those nine women and three men were split 11 to 1 in favor of acquitting Lindsay Clancy.

1:29 Here is everything that happened and what it means. Start Thursday afternoon because that is when this cracked open. The foreperson sent Sullivan a note saying one of the 12 was not following the law on reasonable doubt. Sullivan had Lindsey Clancy wheeled up to the bench, which had not happened once in five weeks of trial, and then brought each juror in individually to be asked whether they could follow his instructions. Every one of them said yes. He re-instructed the panel and sent them back. Then a second note arrived late Thursday, and this one was more specific. According to Sullivan, it said the holdout juror has acknowledged doubt but refuses to apply it to the verdict. Read that sentence twice, because both sides did. Friday morning at 9 before the jury was brought in, the lawyers fought about what it meant, and it got ugly. Kevin Reddington told the court the note clearly and unequivocally indicates the panel is 11 to 1, and that this person will not apply reasonable doubt to the evidence and return a not guilty verdict. He said the juror, whom he referred to as a man, had made a false statement under oath to the court. He went further than that. He said he would go so far as to say the juror lied under oath. And he asked again that the man be removed. Jennifer Sprague opposed it, and her argument was disciplined. She said the note indicates a disagreement among jurors about how to weigh the evidence, and that there

3:01 is no indication the juror is intentionally trying to mislead or lie to the court. She noted there had been no suggestion of how the majority was leaning. She asked that they simply be sent back. Sullivan refused to question the juror at all. He said he saw no need for an inquiry of that particular juror and that the note does not indicate a person who has refused to follow the law. He said he would remind the whole jury to follow his instructions whether they like it or not. Reddington pushed him to read it forcefully, and Sullivan said... What do you want me to do? Get a brass band? I'm not an actor. That line is going to outlive this trial. And underneath the snark is the whole legal problem in one sentence. Because look, I'm going to be honest with you about what was actually being asked there.

3:50 A judge can remove a juror who commits misconduct. Drinking, researching the case at home, talking to reporters, refusing to deliberate at all. A judge can remove a juror who flatly announces they will not apply the law. A judge cannot. Remove a juror for reaching a conclusion the other 11 do not like. That is not a technicality. That is the entire architecture of a 12-person jury. If a judge can pull the one person standing in the way of a verdict, then you no longer have a unanimity requirement. You have a vote with a referee. And here is what makes this case so hard. A juror who has honestly applied reasonable doubt and landed somewhere the other 11 have not looks. From outside that room, exactly like a juror who is refusing to follow the law. There is no test that separates them. There never has been. The note said he acknowledged doubt but would not apply it.

4:49 Reddington heard a man admitting he was ignoring the law. Sprague heard 11 frustrated people describing an argument they were losing. Sullivan looked at the same words and said, it does not show a refusal to follow the law. All three of those readings are available from that one sentence. That is why judges do not do what Reddington was asking. Now, about the split, and I want to be careful here. Reporting indicates the jury was 11 to 1 in favor of acquitting Lindsay Clancy. That comes from the jury's own notes as characterized in open court, and it is Reddington who put the number on the record. Sprague pointed out there had been no indication of how the majority was leaning.

5:31 But if it is accurate, and it appears to be, then it means something significant that is going to get flattened into nothing by the end of the weekend. It means 11 citizens of Plymouth County, after 21 days of testimony, 84 witnesses, 6 psychiatric experts, and 300 exhibits, were prepared to say the Commonwealth had not proved that Lindsay Clancy could stop herself. Not that she did not kill her children. Nobody disputed that. That the state did not carry its burden on whether she was criminally responsible when she did. That is not the same as a jury that was about to convict. It is very nearly the opposite. When we come back, the note, the mistrial, and the one hour that followed. Sullivan sent them back Friday morning with a reminder to follow the law whether they liked it or not.

6:33 About two hours later, the note came. It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to. Prosecutors said that language required a mistrial. Reddington asked that they be sent back one more time. He asked Sullivan to poll the jury individually, citing what happened in the Karen Reed mistrial. Prosecutors objected and said this situation was different. He asked Sullivan to survey the jurors on whether they could reach agreement on a lesser charge, second-degree murder or manslaughter, before pulling the plug. Sullivan denied all of it. He said under the statute and the case law, he did not feel he had any choice.

7:16 And that is legally correct. In 2020, the United States Supreme Court confirmed that verdicts in serious criminal cases must be unanimous. Twelve people or nothing. When twelve people tell a judge four separate times across four days that they cannot get there, and then write that they will not be able to, the judge's options run out. Sullivan had already. Used the Tui Rodriguez charge, the dynamite instruction, on Wednesday. Massachusetts allows two. He had one left, and it would not have mattered. Then came the part nobody expected. Before the jury could be brought in to hear the mistrial declared, Reddington asked the court to pause. He wanted to file what is called a Chapter 211, Section 3 petition, an emergency appeal to a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, arguing there are structural problems in this case created by the failure to remove that juror. He told the court there was a clear and present danger, in his words, that this individual was taking a position that was intractable for reasons nobody knew, regardless of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. At 11.30, Sullivan gave him one hour. Now, I want to explain how unusual that is, because the coverage is treating it as a technicality and it is not.

8:35 A single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court handles emergency petitions on a rotating basis, one of the seven justices at a time, for exactly these situations, Fast-moving criminal matters where somebody's liberty is on the line. Friday's single justice was Justice Dalila Wendland. Lawyers do sometimes run to a single justice to try to overturn a trial judge on the eve of a trial. What is not common is a trial judge announcing a mistrial and then holding his own order so the losing side can go over his head about it. That is Sullivan protecting the record. He knows this case is going to be picked apart for years. He is not going to be the judge who slammed a door shut before somebody could file. The bar, though, was brutal. To overturn him, that court would have had to find clear and egregious error by the trial judge, looking at the entire record of these deliberations, including four separate notes from 12 people all saying the same thing.

9:33 And while the lawyers filed, 12 jurors sat in a room and waited without being told why. Lindsay Clancy was taken out of the courtroom almost immediately. Her family filed out silent and solemn. Outside, about 30 members of the public spilled into the hallway, loud and disorganized enough that a court officer had to herd them backward down the corridor, shouting at them to keep walking until he said, stop. A woman who had traveled from Worcester to sit through this trial said it was a shame that there is no winning here and that she had to give the jury credit for how hard they had worked. She was right on all three counts. The Supreme Judicial Court denied the petition. Sullivan announced it in open court and said he intended to bring the jury in. Reddington tried one last time, He asked for a hearing on what he called a good faith issue with the holdout, arguing the man was not holding out in good faith over the facts or the law, but was refusing to apply the law after having acknowledged doubt. Sullivan denied it, citing the reasoning he had already given that morning. Then he brought the jury in, said he was declaring them deadlocked, declared a mistrial, and discharged them.

10:43 38 hours, 7 days, 9 women, 3 men. Done. And then he said something to them that I want you to hear because after a week of lawyers arguing about whether one of these people was a liar, the judge who watched all 12 of them for six weeks had a different assessment. He told them that every one of them knew going in how long this case would run and how hard it would be to sit and listen to. That they braced for that duty anyway. He said he understood how hard everybody had worked. And then he told them he understood that they gave everything they could and probably more than they thought they could. That is the last word on this jury and. It should be. 12 strangers gave six weeks of their lives to the hardest question a courtroom can ask. And they could not get there. And the judge told them they had nothing to apologize for. So what happens now? A mistrial is not an acquittal and it is not a conviction. It is not a finding of anything at all. Double Jeopardy does not bar a retrial after a hung jury, so Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has three options. He can retry it. That means starting over from jury selection.

11:53 21 days of testimony again. 84 witnesses again. Patrick Clancy back on a stand describing what he found in his basement again. That 911 recording played in a courtroom again. And both sides now know exactly what the other one has. He can offer a plea. A Boston defense attorney and former prosecutor not involved in the case put it plainly this week. Anytime the threat of a retrial with first-degree murder hanging over a client comes back into play, defense lawyers will at minimum explore whether there is interest in a resolution, or he can decline to retry it at all. That happens more than people think, and for two reasons. Sometimes prosecutors conclude they will get the same result the second time. And these cases are enormously expensive, particularly when both sides are paying for competing psychiatric experts. An 11 to 1 split for acquittal weighs on every one of those calculations. Whatever he decides, Lindsay Clancy is not going anywhere.

12:52 She has been held at Tewksbury Hospital for more than three years, on suicide watch, and she stays there while this is sorted out. She is paralyzed. She will be for the rest of her life. And one more thing that is going to matter enormously in whatever comes next. Both Lindsay and Patrick Clancy have separate civil lawsuits pending against several of her medical providers, alleging she was over-medicated while being treated for postpartum mental health problems. Those cases were always going to be shaped by whatever a criminal jury said about her mental state. A criminal jury just said nothing at all. And I want to end where this show always ends. Cora Clancy was five years old and in kindergarten. Dawson Clancy was three.

13:36 Callan Clancy was eight months old and had been alive for less than a year. They died on January 24th, 2023. It has been three years and seven months. Twelve people spent seven days trying to decide what the law says about their mother and could not do it. And now there is a real chance this whole thing starts again from an empty jury box. There is no version of this where those three children get anything. Not justice, not closure, not a resolution. The best available outcome for them was always that adults would look at it carefully, and today 12 adults looked at it as carefully as anybody could and still could not agree. Cora, Dawson, Callen, someone has to say their names. That's this special bulletin for Friday, September 4th. We will have the full picture on Monday, including whatever the district attorney signals about a retrial. If this was useful, send it to one person who has been following this case. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment because I want your.

14:39 Read on the holdout. 11 people were ready to acquit and one was not. Is that one person a failure of the system or the reason we have one? I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better. A few notes on sourcing and timing. This bulletin was recorded Friday afternoon after the mistrial was declared. Events in this case moved quickly all day and may have moved again after we recorded. As of recording, the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office had not announced whether it will seek a new trial. On the 11-1 split, the contents of jury notes were described in open court, and the characterization of the panel as split 11-1 in favor of acquittal was placed on the record by defense attorney Kevin Reddington and reported.

15:24 By outlets covering the proceedings. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague stated in court that there had been no suggestion of how the. Majority of jurors was leaning. Jury deliberations are secret, no juror has spoken publicly, and the court has not confirmed a numerical split. Treat that number as reported rather than established. The assertion that a juror lied under oath is defense attorney Kevin Reddington's characterization, made in open court. Judge Sullivan expressly rejected it, stating the note did not indicate a juror who refused to follow the law. And Assistant District Attorney Sprague stated there was no indication the juror was attempting to mislead the court.

16:05 No finding of misconduct has been made against any juror. A mistrial is not a verdict of any kind. Lindsay Clancy has not been convicted of anything and has not been acquitted of anything. She pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, and the Commonwealth carried the burden throughout. Retrial after a hung jury does not violate double jeopardy protections. Outlets have counted deliberation time differently, ranging from roughly 37 to nearly 40 hours across seven days, and have described the trial as running five or six weeks depending on whether jury selection is included. We have used approximations rather than adopting one outlet's count. This episode discusses child deaths, suicide, and postpartum mental illness.

16:49 If you are struggling, you can call or. Text 988 in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For postpartum mental health specifically, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is available by call or text at 1-833-TLC-MAMA. Postpartum psychosis is rare, it is a medical emergency, and it is treatable when it is caught. The overwhelming majority of people who experience postpartum mental illness never harm anyone. Bye.