By Nate Raymond
Nov 2 (Reuters) – Lindsay Clancy’s lawyers on Monday urged a judge to dismiss the murder charges against her, saying retrying her for killing her three young children at her Massachusetts home in 2023 would run afoul of her constitutional rights.
Defense attorney Martin Weinberg told Judge William Sullivan during a hearing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that he acted prematurely in declaring a mistrial on September 4 after the jury in her initial trial reported that a holdout juror was preventing it from reaching a unanimous verdict.
Notes to the judge from the jury’s foreperson reported that the holdout was not following the judge’s instructions that Clancy could be convicted only if jurors found that prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Some of the jurors in televised interviews after the mistrial was declared said that but for the one holdout juror, they had been prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity. Such a verdict would have resulted in Clancy’s commitment to a state psychiatric hospital, subject to regular court review.
Her lawyers have argued the evidence showed Clancy was in the throes of postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, known in Massachusetts as lack of criminal responsibility.
Clancy, 36, had faced first-degree murder charges over the deaths of her daughter Cora, 5; son Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old son Callan.
Weinberg said that rather than declaring a mistrial, Sullivan should have posed questions to assess whether the single juror was deliberating in good faith. Because the judge did not, any retrial would violate Clancy’s protection under the US Constitution against being tried twice for the same crime, called double jeopardy.
“A citizen charged with a crime, particularly one carrying with it the gravity of the murder charge in this case, should not be subjected to the perils and burdens of a second trial unless there was manifest necessity that made the mistrial declaration an imperative,” Weinberg said.
But Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said the judge handled the jury impasse appropriately, saying the fact that one juror dug in his heels did not mean Sullivan should risk interfering with the deliberations by questioning him.
“It is clear from the record this juror did not refuse to deliberate,” Sprague said. “He refused to agree.”
Sullivan did not immediately rule on the dismissal motion but said he would “get this out as soon as I can.”
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz’s office has yet to publicly detail its plans for a retrial of Clancy.
No one at Clancy’s initial trial disputed that she strangled her three children with exercise bands on January 24, 2023, in the basement of their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-story window in an attempt to end her own life, leaving her paralyzed.
Prosecutors have several options before them, including retrying Clancy on the first-degree murder charges or seeking her conviction on lesser second-degree murder charges, which would give her the option to waive a jury trial and proceed before a judge.
A first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Second-degree murder allows for the possibility of parole.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
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