A judge in Massachusetts declared a mistrial on Friday in the case of Lindsay Clancy, charged with murdering her three young children — aged five, three and eight months — in 2023. The jury of twelve, nine of them women, had deliberated for six days. It divided eleven to one.
The note the jurors sent said, as the judge read it: it is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision, and we will not be able to. NPR takes that wording from WBUR's coverage.
The mistrial came after the state's highest court refused an emergency appeal from the defence earlier that afternoon. The appeal had asked the court either to excuse the juror the defence said was refusing to follow instructions, or to inquire further into whether that juror could follow them.
What the jury could not agree on was responsibility rather than facts. The defence argued she should not be held criminally liable because she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis at the time — the approach usually called the insanity defence. The prosecution argued she was well enough to plan and to act with intention.
Nothing is settled by this. The district attorney will decide whether to try the case again; asked on Friday, Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz declined to say, calling it an emotional trial for everybody and adding that for him it came back to the three children. The defence lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said the eleven-to-one split should make the prosecution think again — if he were Cruz, he said, he would not want a retrial. Clancy remains in custody at a state hospital, where she has been held for more than three years.
Why it is on the board
Top of the New York Times's most-read list when we collected and second on NBC News's, with a Times opinion piece on the same verdict at seventh — three of the American entries we held.
확인: NBC News · NPR