By Nate Raymond, Maria Alejandra Cardona and Luc Cohen
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts, Sept 4 (Reuters) – A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in the U.S. murder trial of Lindsay Clancy for killing her three young children, a tragedy her attorney said occurred while she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
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.
Judge William Sullivan’s mistrial declaration came after jurors sent three notes this week indicating they had reached an impasse.
The mistrial paves the way for a potential second trial, which Sullivan said could take place later this year. Clancy is due in court for a follow-up hearing on September 29.
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.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought throughout the trial to convince jurors she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing she was a loving mother who had been in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.
EMERGENCY APPEAL
The 12 jurors in Plymouth, Massachusetts, deliberated for seven days. Prosecutors supported the mistrial declaration.
In a dramatic sequence of events, Sullivan said on Friday morning that he felt he had no choice but to declare a mistrial, after the jury sent its third note this week saying it was deadlocked. Clancy’s defense lawyers then filed an emergency appeal to Massachusetts’ highest court to stave off the mistrial declaration.
Clancy’s lawyers argued Sullivan should have inquired further into whether the holdout juror could heed the judge’s instructions to follow the law. The Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts’ Suffolk County denied the defense request, paving the way for the mistrial declaration.
Earlier on Friday, Sullivan rejected a defense request to remove the juror, who Reddington said was preventing the jury from returning a not-guilty verdict.
Reddington cited a note the jury foreperson sent on behalf of 11 jurors indicating that one juror had acknowledged doubt but refused to apply it to the verdict.
Jurors could 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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