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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FWIW, I've been on juries and THIS JUDGE IS MISSING SOMETHING VERY MAJOR HERE. When the foreperson sent the judge a NOTE telling the judge that one of the jurors "REFUSES TO FOLLOW THE LAW", THAT IS GROUNDS FOR FOREPERSON REMOVAL because he or she interjected their OWN PERSONAL FEELINGS about the holdout thereby MALIGNING them SIMPLY BECAUSE THE SAID FOREPERSON DOESN'T LIKE A JUROR'S STANCE ON THE CASE.
REPLACE the foreperson! The brave holdout juror DIDN'T REFUSE TO FOLLOW THE LAW, THEY REFUSED TO BEND TO THE WILL OF THE FOREPERSON WHICH IS 100% WITHIN THE LAW !!!!!
The male juror who REFUSES TO LET HER WALK is a patriot! Stay strong, dude !
Why has the judge allowed this defense attorney to make these outrageous comments.
Its already a mistrial with him attacking a juror while they are out.
It juror intimidation of the worst kind.
The judge has allowed this tial be circus and let the hear ALL OF the lefty media spin and crazy protestors.
This judge wanted her off from day one .
allowing 9 woman and 3 men on a juror.
And dont he ban the gruesome murder photos which
showed she tortured the infants .
Move this trial and isolate the jury and close off the court house and a new judge.
Matt Walsh@MattWalshBlog
The defense just confirmed in open court that the hold out juror is a man. It’s one sane man against two simps and nine girlbosses. Hold the line, sir.
She knew exactly what she was doing - willingly telling her husband to pick up food at a distant location and then using a GPS tracker to see how long he’d be out of the house - as to not interrupt her killing the children.
Guilty. Death Penalty.
“Hold until relieved!”
The more I read into this case, the more I have to agree with you and others. I can’t believe that she didn’t know what she was doing, and couldn’t stop herself.
Why did the prosecution even bring this case. She is “Guilty, but insane” and admits it - they should have taken a plea. I am satisfied with the Andrea Yates solution which is LWOP for the murders, but in the state psychiatric hospital. Lindsay Clancy will never go to state prison general population in a wheelchair anyway; she would be permanently housed in the medical unit with the other disabled, elderly, infirm, and dying prisoners. What’s the difference?
Men on this board are so punitive about this case! Another board, 80% female posters, has about 50% GBI/NGRI, 30% murder, then the rest and I Don’t Know. Men don’t seem to understand PPP, PPD or even PMS unless it is explained to them as physical conditions. I also think if this woman looked like Sydney Sweeney, then men would feel sorry for her.
Clancy is not a psychopath, that is so dumb, or without emotion. She is drugged into numb, looks like Haldol or Thorazine with the blank expression, waxy face, giant coal eyes that move slowly and stare. She looks like an origami of herself, nothing like who she was. She is very mentally ill IMO.
I surmise that you also have a grounding in the practice of criminal law. Or at least know enough to groan at the shallowness of the legal analysis on TV.
The comments streaming on the side of the courtroom TV are so incredibly divisive. Hate rules the day, and clearly a lot of liberal women are driven deeply by hate.
yes
If I took Fentanyl and cocaine and killed my children I would hang. This woman is pretending that all these prescription drugs were forced down her throat by someone else and therefore she’s not guilty. Bullshit. She chose to take all these drugs if in fact she was taking them, and she should be held accountable for killing these precious children. What’s happening in America is sickening, not just that this lady did this to these kids but that all these retarded women are advocating for her
No way in hell will she go scot-free.
Crazy of not is no excuse to walk away from a murder period.
I was not following this case minutely until yesterday when my wife asked me my opinion to which I said on the surface the one thing I believe is that a parent of sound mind would not kill their kids. I asked her why was she curious. She said her hair dresser lady said she has followed the whole case and is convinced her husband did it! I said her hair dresser is probably a lib democrat so don’t discuss much more than the weather with her especially if she has a sharp object close by.
I was on a criminal jury once as foreman. Vote was 6-6. I asked whole was most certain of guilt. Little old lady said me. I asked for her evidentiary support. Her answer was: he looks guilty.
Whale of a teacher. Had lived in post WW2 Japan. Hopped up on her desk one day and commenced to dance Japanese style, singing and tapping her throat to give a Japanese effect to her voice.
She used to wear outrageously tiny-waisted poodle skirts with crinolines and rode her bike to school in them.
Quite the odd bird.
This type of judicial behavior will make it so that nobody will want to serve on any jury ever.
Guess that is what the PTB really want. Just more ways to collapse a just system.
“NOT LOST”
KILLED—DELIBERATELY
Point being, *if* she didn’t do it, you’d think she would be more sad about it.
The problem is that she set it up and planned it. That is in the evidence.
Does a person plan a murder and sit back and wait for that one moment of psychosis to overtake them and carry out the plan? Immediately following it recovers from the moment of psychosis and is just fine.
One thing we do know, her postpartum depression disappeared in a matter of minutes because the 3 reasons for her misery are dead. Even though it took 8 months to get to that point.
I think it is reasonable to conclude she knew what she was doing.
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