Lindsay Clancy Jury Told to Make One Last Attempt Before Mistrial Declared
The jury deciding Lindsay Clancy's murder trial has been told to make one final attempt at a unanimous verdict after deadlocking for a second straight day, putting the five-week Massachusetts case on the brink of a mistrial.
Judge William Sullivan issued the so-called Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, often called the "dynamite charge," on Wednesday, September 2, after jurors reported for the second time that they could not agree. The instruction is the court's last procedural step before a hung jury can be declared.
What the "Last Chance" Instruction Means
Jurors first signaled they were stuck on Tuesday, sending Judge Sullivan a note that read, "After many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision," according to CBS Boston. He sent them home for the night rather than declaring a mistrial, telling them to resume the next morning.
When the panel of nine women and three men reported the same impasse again on Wednesday, Sullivan moved to the Tuey-Rodriguez charge, a standard Massachusetts instruction that essentially tells jurors they are the best-positioned group to decide the case and urges them to keep trying before deliberations are abandoned. If the jury deadlocks a third time, the judge is expected to declare a mistrial.
More Than 27 Hours of Deliberation
By Wednesday afternoon, the jury had spent more than 27 hours across five days weighing testimony from more than 80 witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence gathered over the trial's five-plus weeks. Before sending jurors back to continue deliberating, Sullivan also questioned each of them individually under oath about possible exposure to outside or prejudicial information, following the arrest of a woman accused of recording jurors during the trial.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told reporters the continued deliberations were "very, very heartening," he said, adding that jurors appeared to be "working very hard" and had shown a willingness to keep engaging with the case rather than give up.
The Case Against Clancy
Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, faces three counts of first-degree murder in the January 24, 2023, deaths of her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, who were strangled in the family's Duxbury home. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, and her defense has long argued she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis and had been overmedicated by her mental health providers, leaving her unable to distinguish right from wrong. Prosecutors have countered that Clancy understood what she was doing and carried out the killings deliberately, pointing to evidence they say shows she planned the attack in advance.
If the jury cannot reach a unanimous decision on criminal responsibility, a mistrial would send the case back to its pretrial status, with Clancy remaining held at a psychiatric hospital while prosecutors decide whether to pursue a retrial, offer a plea deal, or, less likely, decline to proceed again. A conviction could carry a life sentence, while a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility would likely result in continued psychiatric confinement rather than release.
The case has drawn national attention throughout the trial, both for the horror of the crime and for the questions it raises about how the justice system handles severe postpartum mental illness. Jurors are expected to resume deliberations as the court awaits word on whether they can reach the verdict prosecutors and the defense have spent more than a month arguing over.
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