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Posted on 09/04/2026 4:25:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
A jury room fight has burst into the open in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial — and one holdout may now stand between the case and a final verdict.
After six days of deliberations, Clancy’s defense attorney asked the judge to remove a juror accused by the foreperson of refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt.
The judge said no.
That leaves a panel that appears to be split 11-1 headed back for yet another day of deliberations, with a mistrial now looming over one of the most closely watched trials in the country.
The court has not published a formal ballot count. Sullivan’s own reference to one juror and the other 11 nevertheless made the basic divide unusually plain.
Defense Makes a Direct Move Against the Holdout
According to the Associated Press, the jury foreperson sent Judge William Sullivan a note saying one juror would not follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. It was the panel’s third signal of serious trouble after two earlier notes said the jury could not agree.
Sullivan then called jurors up one at a time and questioned them privately about whether they could follow his legal instructions. Afterward, he brought the panel back together, reread the reasonable-doubt standard and the prosecution’s burden of proof, and ordered the jurors to resume deliberating.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington objected after jurors were sent out again. He asked Sullivan to remove the juror, arguing that a panel that had already worked for nearly a week could be pushed into a mistrial because one member had rejected the court’s instruction.
Sullivan refused the motion and kept all 12 jurors on the case. He said removing a juror during deliberations is an extraordinarily sensitive step and that he would not take sides between one member and the other 11 based on a dispute inside the jury room.
That statement strongly suggests an 11-1 divide. It does not, however, establish a publicly confirmed ballot count or tell the public exactly how every juror voted on each possible verdict.
The panel had already told Sullivan twice that it could not reach a unanimous decision. Thursday’s note was different because it raised an accusation about one juror’s willingness to apply the law, turning a private disagreement into an issue the attorneys had to address in open court.
Reddington warned that the unresolved dispute could produce a mistrial. The judge sent the jurors home shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern and ordered them back Friday morning.
Why the Judge Would Not Remove the Juror
CBS News Boston reported that prosecutor Jennifer Sprague backed the judge’s approach, arguing that the private nature of deliberations makes it impossible to determine which jurors are right about the dispute. She said individual assurances from the jurors and a renewed instruction to the full panel were enough.
Local legal analyst Jennifer Roman called it a rare and difficult situation for the court. A judge must make sure jurors follow the law, but singling out one member after complaints from the rest of the panel can look like pressure to abandon a sincerely held vote.
The jury had already declared itself deadlocked twice after beginning deliberations the previous Thursday. Sullivan responded Wednesday with Massachusetts’ last-resort instruction for divided juries, urging jurors to reconsider opposing views without surrendering honest convictions merely to reach a verdict.
They deliberated through Thursday and still came back empty-handed. Court ended shortly after 4 p.m., with a seventh day of deliberations ordered for Friday morning.
The panel includes nine women and three men. Jurors are weighing five possible outcomes: not guilty by reason of insanity, not guilty, first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter.
Every route requires unanimity.
Reddington said after court that he does not want a mistrial and expects the juror dispute to be argued again Friday. If no agreement is possible, prosecutors could eventually face a choice among retrying Clancy, dropping the charges, or pursuing a negotiated resolution.
The Case Behind the Deadlock
At the center of the trial are the deaths of three children: 5-year-old Cora Clancy, 3-year-old Dawson Clancy, and 8-month-old Callan Clancy.
The children were killed in the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.
The defense does not dispute that Clancy killed the children. Instead, Reddington argues that postpartum psychosis and the effects of medication left her unable to understand the wrongfulness of her actions.
Prosecutors have taken the opposite position. They contend that Clancy planned the killings, sent her husband out of the house, and knew right from wrong.
The deadlock is not over whether the children died at their mother’s hands. It is over whether Clancy was criminally responsible at the time and, if so, which offense the evidence proves.
One More Day — Then What?
The jury is scheduled to return Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern for a seventh day of deliberations.
If the split holds, Sullivan could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to retry Clancy, drop the charges, or seek another resolution.
For now, the case remains exactly where it has been for nearly a week: 12 jurors in a room, an unresolved dispute over criminal responsibility, and one vote that could determine whether this trial ends with a verdict at all.
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“For a woman who lost her children, she doesn’t seem all that sad about it.”
Not sure if I read it here or elsewhere, but what if the situation was flipped and she had strangled the family dog to death instead of her own children?
If that were the case, the pink-T-shirted ‘Karens’ there, SUPPORTING her for killing her kids, would ensure she’d never see the light of day again!
As for the, ‘Free Republic Repeal The 19th Amendment Chorus’ I would give up my right to vote if it would MAGA and you MEN would do the right thing 100% of the time. But, America is no longer full of REAL men, so it’s a tough call. Don’t forget - you’ll still have all the ‘Pajama & Soy Boys’ voting AGAINST you! ;)
“Big Red” is the one who needs to be removed. The boy is a baby killer.
The solution might be to find the hold-out juror guilty and have him hanged for his vengeful attitude toward unavoidable female hormonal imbalances.
In this solution, a man is blamed for everything, severely punished and no woman is held accountable, to the delight of feminists everywhere.
You can’t spank your kids. You’re supposed to kill them instead. (”Big Red”) the shyster.
Next time: make sure that the murderer’s supporters don’t lie their way onto the jury.
I’m in NH. So, we hear/watch a lot of the Boston TV stations. I respectfully disagree with you about Karen Read. Those crooked cops killed that guy and tried to pin it on her. One or two of the cops already resigned in disgrace.
She is going to be rich when she gets done suing the crap out of everybody.
I honestly did not follow the case until is was almost over. At first I thought she was guilty. The more I learned, the more I realized the cops were scum bags that killed him.
OK. I stand corrected.
https://www.courttv.com/title/court-tv-live-stream-web/
More discussion from Court TV on the second note.
Defense said that juror is a HE who is opposing the 11.
The women on the jury are hormonal and should be dismissed.
From a mistrial standpoint, it’s not the biggest deal for the prosecution. They can try her again and she will stay incarcerated. If there is a mistrial if doesn’t really help the defense. The defense can’t get a quick resolution and a not guilty verdict would mean she couldn’t be tried again for murder. Because of the other possibilties listed by the judge , a manslaughter innocent verdict would mean she couldn;t be tried again for that as well. A not guilty by reason of mental defect verdict will get her a long time in a mental institution but not forever. So he’s pushing for that.
One (or more of them) was responsible for her bf’s death, who was also a cop.
She was an easy scapegoat. Most of those cops have since been fired or died. The DA didn’t bring charges against any of the cops and stepped down. A new DA was just elected on Tues. It will be interesting to see if they do anything.
Sounds like it
Massachusetts a L state bet she gets off the hook.
_________________________
No way in hell will she go scot-free. The question is between the criminal murder counts and whether she is ruled not guilty due to insanity or mental defect. She will be institutionalized either way.
I do kinda see this line of defense.
"We're going to give you a whole cocktail of different crazy pills. They might make you do crazy things like murder your children. We don't really know what they do when they're mixed together but you can trust us. We're licensed medical professionals. Anyway, that's a 'you' problem. We do know that the pharma industry pays us a lot of money to dole these out like candy. Best of luck! Let us know what happens!"
11 Angry Women...and one competent man
Sorry I do t remember the particulars, but Matt Walsh was reviewing MA law the other day. In short, she becomes all better and she’s out in as little as a year
Yes and even if insane they should be executed or incarcerated for life. We just don’t have the mechanisms and treatments to reform these people and murder is so extreme that sentimental appeals to the heart are destructive to justice if we don’t at least isolate them from normal society forever.
I don’t like the idea that we can use prisons in a way to allow other prisoners to take care of murderers of children and abusers of children instead of society dispatching these evil people as a matter of state justice and legal policy. It just makes for more dangerous prisons for the guards who have to work in them.
Yes and even if insane they should be executed or incarcerated for life. We just don’t have the mechanisms and treatments to reform these people and murder is so extreme that sentimental appeals to the heart are destructive to justice if we don’t at least isolate them from normal society forever.
I don’t like the idea that we can use prisons in a way to allow other prisoners to take care of murderers of children and abusers of children instead of society dispatching these evil people as a matter of state justice and legal policy. It just makes for more dangerous prisons for the guards who have to work in them.
First there should be an odd number of jurors so you can reach a majority. Though in capital cases I think it has to be unanimous. Second, the fact that this wasn’t a slam dunk guilty tells you a lot about the state of Massachusetts. I’d like to think the holdout is a not guilty vote, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out otherwise.
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