Massachusetts judge allows retrial for Lindsay Clancy in children’s murder case

A Massachusetts judge on Monday ruled that Lindsay Clancy can face a new murder trial for the deaths of her three children, finding that a retrial does not breach the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause. Judge William Sullivan dismissed the defense’s request to dismiss the case after a mistrial was declared on Sept. 4 when a juror refused to agree with the rest of the panel.

Sullivan scheduled a hearing for Nov. 16 to determine the timing of the second trial, suggesting it could be held in March of next year. He wrote that the jury’s deadlock constituted a “manifest necessity” for a retrial and that questioning the holdout juror during deliberations would have been “impermissibly coercive.”

The defense had argued that the mistrial was premature and that the holdout juror’s notes indicated a refusal to follow the law on reasonable doubt, which they said should have led to the juror’s removal rather than a new trial. The judge rejected a request for a limited inquiry into the juror’s statements, saying there was no need to examine the juror under oath at this stage.

Prosecutors did not comment on the ruling. Martin Weinberg, an attorney for Clancy, said the defense is likely to appeal the decision. A spokesperson for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz declined to comment.

Clancy was convicted in the first trial of strangling her 5-year-old daughter Cora, 3-year-old son Dawson, and 8-month-old son Callan with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. After the killings she attempted suicide, cutting herself and jumping from a second-storey window, which left her paralyzed. Her lawyers maintain she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, a verdict that would have resulted in commitment to a state psychiatric facility. Under Massachusetts law, a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory life sentence without parole.