Jury in Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial Ends the Week Without a Verdict After Asking to See Key Evidence

Mass. — Jurors in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three young children in 2023, ended their second day of deliberations Friday without reaching a verdict and will return Monday morning to continue weighing the case.

The 12-person jury, made up of nine women and three men, has now deliberated for roughly 10 hours over two days, spending about three and a half hours Thursday and roughly six and a half to seven hours Friday, according to the Boston Globe and CNN. Judge William F. Sullivan told jurors, “It’s been a long day for everybody,” before sending them home for the weekend, with deliberations set to resume Monday at 9 a.m.

Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. Sullivan has instructed the jury that it may return verdicts of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter on each of three separate verdict slips, one for each child. Both the prosecution and the defense agree Clancy strangled her children with exercise resistance bands and then attempted suicide at the family’s home in Duxbury on Jan. 24, 2023. The central question for jurors is not what happened, but whether Clancy was “criminally responsible” for her actions, a legal standard requiring that she understood the wrongfulness of what she was doing and was able to control her behavior in accordance with the law.

Prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses over five weeks of testimony, arguing Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she killed her children and that she retained the ability to distinguish right from wrong. In her closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors, “I’m not saying she was happy about it. I’m saying, it was what she had to do to end her misery. But it was a choice. It was a choice.” Prosecutors pointed to evidence that Clancy sent her husband out to run errands before the killings and that she asked for an attorney upon waking in the hospital, arguing those actions reflected calculated, rational behavior rather than a break from reality.

Clancy’s defense, which called 10 witnesses, argued she suffered from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible for her actions. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told jurors in closing arguments that Clancy’s collapse came “because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got,” pointing to the more than a dozen psychiatric medications she had been prescribed in the months before the killings to treat depression, anxiety, insomnia and suicidal thoughts. Clancy did not testify during the trial. She remains partially paralyzed as a result of her suicide attempt and has been held at a state hospital in Tewksbury since 2023.

Testimony from Clancy’s former husband, Patrick Clancy, traced her mental health decline back to September 2022, as she prepared to return to work following parental leave. “She just had a really hard time being separated from them,” he testified, according to CNN. Her condition worsened in the following months, particularly after she began taking the antidepressant Zoloft in October 2022, and she checked herself into a hospital twice, once in December and again over the New Year’s holiday. Clancy wrote in a note on her phone at the time, “Medication stole my motherhood and my life,” Patrick Clancy testified. Doctors who treated her before the killings said she did not display a suicide plan, thoughts of harming others or signs of psychosis, and her psychiatrist testified that Clancy told her the day before the killings that she was “doing all right.”

Competing psychiatric experts offered sharply different assessments of Clancy’s mental state at the time of the killings. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defense, said Clancy was “frankly psychotic” during the killings and described an auditory hallucination she reported experiencing. “Not only did she hear a command, but she felt that her body was taken over by an external force where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body,” Resnick testified. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.” Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a psychologist who testified for the prosecution, disagreed, saying Clancy understood right from wrong and was in control of her actions, while expressing skepticism that she had ever reported hearing a voice before or after the killings. Both experts agreed, however, that Clancy’s actions were rooted in a distorted sense of love and protection toward her children rather than malice.

During deliberations Friday, jurors asked to review physical evidence including Clancy’s prescription pill bottles and the knife she used during her suicide attempt, according to Reddington. Sullivan did not publicly disclose the jury’s specific question, discussing it instead with attorneys during a private sidebar conference.

The trial has drawn national attention to questions surrounding maternal mental health, and supporters wearing pink gathered outside the courthouse in Plymouth last week in a show of solidarity with Clancy. If the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict, Sullivan could declare a mistrial. If convicted of murder, Clancy faces a sentence of life in prison. If jurors find her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, prosecutors have said they may petition the court to have her committed to a psychiatric facility rather than released.

This case involves serious mental health and suicide-related content covered here for its factual, legal significance; readers who may be personally affected by similar issues are encouraged to seek support, including from a mental health professional or a crisis helpline.