By Nate Raymond, Maria Alejandra Cardona and Luc Cohen
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts, Sept 4 (Reuters) – A judge said on Friday he must declare a mistrial after the jury remained deadlocked in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy for killing her three young children, a tragedy her attorney said occurred while she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
Judge William Sullivan’s decision came after jurors sent a note indicating that they had been unable to reach a verdict, the third such note they sent this week. The 12 jurors in Plymouth, Massachusetts, have been deliberating for seven days.
The nearly six-week-long televised trial revived longstanding debate about how postpartum mental health in women is treated in the U.S., and how the country’s legal system addresses cases when mothers kill their children.
No one disputed that Clancy, 36, strangled her three children with exercise bands in January 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 take her own life that left her paralyzed.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, sought throughout the trial to convince jurors she should be found not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, or reason of insanity, arguing she was a loving mother in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.
Sullivan said at 11:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT) he would hold off on formally declaring a mistrial for an hour to give Reddington a chance to file an emergency appeal so jurors could keep deliberating.
Prosecutors said they backed the mistrial declaration, which would enable them to decide whether to try the case again.
Earlier on Friday, Sullivan rejected a defense request to remove a juror that he said was preventing the jury from returning a not guilty verdict.
Sullivan cited a note the jury foreperson sent on behalf of 11 jurors indicating that one of them had acknowledged doubt but refused to apply it to the verdict.
Jurors can only find Clancy guilty of first-degree murder if the prosecution proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
PROSECUTORS SAID CLANCY PLANNED KILLINGS
Prosecutors did not dispute that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been dealing with mental health issues. But they argued she was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of killing her children and intentionally chose to do so anyway.
They presented testimony from a psychologist who, after examining Clancy, concluded that she had planned to take her own life and chose to kill her children because “she was convinced that they would suffer without her.”
Prosecutors focused on evidence showing how shortly before the killings, she sent her husband to pick up a food order and go to a pharmacy after mapping on her phone the time it would take for him to return home.
The trial drew comparisons to the case of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. After an appeals court overturned her initial murder conviction, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. Her lawyers had said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis.
CLANCY STRUGGLED WITH MENTAL HEALTH, HUSBAND SAYS
Testimony from family members, including Clancy’s now ex-husband, Patrick, detailed how she had struggled with her mental health in the months following the birth of her third child, repeatedly seeking treatment from healthcare providers who prescribed a myriad of drugs.
Patrick Clancy testified that his wife had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital weeks earlier but showed no signs she planned to hurt herself or her kids in the days that followed. She had a “normal” demeanor when he left to pick up dinner, he said.
He spoke on the phone briefly with his wife while at the pharmacy. Upon his return, he discovered her lying on the ground in the backyard with cuts on her wrists and neck. She told him she had tried to kill herself.
He said he asked where the children were, and she said they were in the basement. After he called 911 and first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy said he ran to the basement and discovered them with exercise bands tied around their necks.
Several witnesses, including Patrick Clancy, testified that later, while Lindsay Clancy was at a hospital, she spoke about having heard a man’s voice tell her that if she did not act, she would lose her chance.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Maria Alejandra Cardona in Plymouth, Massachusetts; additional reporting and writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by David Bario, Rod Nickel and Barbara Lewis)
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