After four grueling days of deliberation, jurors in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial told a Massachusetts judge Tuesday morning that they cannot reach a unanimous verdict on whether the former nurse is guilty of strangling her three young children to death.
Judge William Sullivan refused to accept the deadlock. He ordered the nine women and three men to return to the deliberation room and keep working.
“I know that this was a long trial,” Sullivan told jurors. “I know there were over 80 witnesses, over 300 exhibits. But because of that, I’m going to ask you to go back out, keeping in mind all the instructions that I gave you, to go out and to continue your deliberations at this time.”
Clancy showed no visible emotion as the judge delivered his instruction. Neither prosecutors nor her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, objected to the order.
The case has gripped the nation since January 2023, when Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, allegedly took her three young children to the basement one at a time and strangled them with exercise bands. Prosecutors say she planned the attack, sending her husband Patrick on an errand to get him out of the house before carrying out the killings. She then jumped from a second-story bedroom window in what authorities say was a suicide attempt.
Clancy has admitted to killing her children. The question before jurors is whether she was legally responsible for her actions.
Her defense team argues she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis, made worse by a cocktail of psychiatric medications prescribed by various doctors. Patrick Clancy, the children’s father, testified that his ex-wife called him from a hospital about a week after the incident and described hearing voices.
“She said she heard a man’s voice telling her if she didn’t do it now, she would lose her chance, or something like that,” he told jurors.
But prosecution experts have cast serious doubt on that explanation. Forensic psychologist Dr. Heilbrun, who performed psychiatric tests on Clancy earlier this year, told the jury he questioned whether she was experiencing acute psychosis at all. He noted that Clancy had never heard the commanding voice before or after the crime, which he described as an unusual symptom for someone suffering from genuine psychosis.
Heilbrun offered a different theory: Clancy intended to kill herself and took her children’s lives so “they would be together in heaven with God.”
The jury began deliberations last week after sitting through five weeks of testimony. On Friday, they requested to examine pill bottles that had contained Clancy’s medications and a knife she allegedly used during her suicide attempt. They had logged 10 hours of deliberation before being released for the weekend.
When they returned Monday, they still could not agree. Tuesday brought more of the same.
Reddington said before court that he would “absolutely” pursue another trial if this one ends in a hung jury. “Maybe today’s the day, we’ll see. I don’t know,” he said. Despite the deadlock, he expressed confidence in the panel, commending jurors for their attentiveness throughout the lengthy proceedings.
Asked what a hung jury would mean for his client, Reddington was direct: “Try it again.”
