The Lindsay Clancy murder trial may be headed straight for a mistrial after jurors told the judge twice that they remain deadlocked, according to a legal analyst who says the case appears to have reached the “end of the road.”
The jury resumed deliberations Thursday for a sixth day after Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan issued one final instruction Wednesday afternoon in an effort to break the impasse.
The instruction, commonly known as a “dynamite charge,” is typically used as a last-ditch attempt to push a deadlocked jury toward a unanimous verdict.
The panel of nine women and three men has spent more than 29 hours deliberating since receiving the case on Aug. 27.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the strangulation deaths of her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan, inside the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023.
CBS News legal contributor Caroline Polisi said Thursday that she believes the case is rapidly approaching a breaking point.
“I think that we’re at the end of the road here,” said CBS News legal contributor Caroline Polisi. “I think it’s very unlikely we’re going to get a verdict. I think most likely the jury is going to come in today, deliberate for a few more hours, really just to appease the judge, then tell them, you know, tell him we’re hopelessly deadlocked. At that point, he really is required to declare a mistrial because anything more pushing them really gets into a coercive verdict, which is highly appealable.”
Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial head into a sixth day of deliberations after telling the judge they remain unable to agree on a unanimous verdict.
The judge has now issued a Tuey-Rodriguez charge, urging jurors to carefully reconsider their positions while making clear… pic.twitter.com/E0Z3E6LGUn
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If that prediction proves correct, prosecutors would then face a major decision over whether to put Clancy through a second murder trial.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has already said he would be prepared to try the case again “next week.”
Polisi said both sides would likely want to know where individual jurors stood before deciding how to handle a potential retrial.
“Prosecutors and defense attorneys are going to want to poll those jurors after this potential mistrial because that will shape their decision whether to move forward, how they frame their case going forward. We might see a completely different theory of this case. If it gets tried a second time,” Polisi said on CBS Mornings Thursday.
The prolonged deadlock is hardly surprising given how sharply divided the public has been over the case, Polisi argued.
“It’s a microcosm, right? It’s not shocking that we’re at a complete deadlock, because look at everybody else out here, where nobody can agree out here. So why would the jury agree?” Polisi said.
Jurors have five possible outcomes available to them: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity.
Reddington has argued that Clancy was not criminally responsible because she was overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis.
Prosecutors have painted a dramatically different picture, arguing that Clancy planned the killings and understood that what she was doing was wrong.
If convicted of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter, Clancy would be sent to prison.
If jurors instead find her not guilty by reason of insanity, she would remain at Tewksbury State Hospital, where her case would be periodically reviewed.
After six days of deliberations and two declarations of deadlock, the pressure is now squarely on the jury to either reach a unanimous decision or send one of Massachusetts‘ most closely watched murder trials back to square one.
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