The Lindsay Clancy murder trial teetered on the brink of a mistrial Friday after jurors reported for the third time that they could not reach a unanimous verdict.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan informed attorneys that he planned to declare a mistrial following the latest note from the deadlocked panel.
But defense attorney Kevin Reddington made a last-ditch bid to keep the case alive, asking for time to file an emergency motion with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court seeking to block the mistrial declaration.
Sullivan granted the request and gave Reddington one hour to appeal to the state’s highest court before making the mistrial official.
The dramatic development came after 12 jurors spent more than 36 hours deliberating across seven days. They heard testimony from 85 witnesses before receiving the case.
The panel previously told Sullivan twice that it was unable to agree on a verdict. Both times, the judge ordered jurors to continue deliberating.
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Prosecutors have not said whether they would put Clancy on trial again if the proceedings formally end in a mistrial.
Clancy admitted to killing her three young children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan, inside the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023.
Her attorneys did not dispute that she committed the killings. Instead, the defense argued that Clancy was not criminally responsible because she had been overmedicated and was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.
Signs of a deep jury divide emerged Thursday when the foreperson sent Sullivan a note alleging that one holdout juror was refusing to follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. The message appeared to show an 11-1 split as deliberations dragged toward a potential collapse.
Reddington urged Sullivan to address the dispute, but the jury returned Friday morning with yet another declaration that it remained hopelessly deadlocked. The judge then moved toward ending the closely watched Clancy trial without a verdict, only to pause the process for the defense’s emergency appeal.
