Reporter’s note: If you were a member of the jury who would like to speak out, please contact me at Adam.Sabes@fox.com.
Lindsay Clancy’s attorney is asking a judge to acquit her after a mistrial was declared on Friday, arguing the trial evidence was legally insufficient to prove she was criminally responsible for killing her children.
Clancy, 36, faced three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the slayings of her children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — who were discovered strangled at the family’s home in January 2023. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday after jurors could not agree on a unanimous verdict, with the panel split 11-1.
“The argument by Mr. Reddington is not based on the holdout juror — it is that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that the defendant, Ms. Clancy, was criminally responsible,” says retired Massachusetts Judge Jack Lu, who breaks down the filing below.
The motion, filed by defense attorney Kevin Reddington on Thursday, asked Sullivan to enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility on each charge. He wants the motion to be heard at a hearing on Sept. 29.
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“A hung jury is not a verdict; jeopardy does not terminate on a hung jury, and a mistrial ordinarily permits retrial,” Reddington conceded in the filing.
However, he argued that 11 of the 12 jurors “applied the reasonable doubt standard” and concluded that the prosecutors hadn’t proven Clancy was criminally responsible. The holdout, the filing suggests and other jurors have alleged, allegedly ignored his own doubts and insisted on a guilty verdict.
In particular, Reddington targeted the prosecution’s witnesses.
“Taken at their strongest, these show that Ms. Clancy could perform familiar tasks and act in sequence,” he wrote of the Commonwealth’s rebuttal experts. “They do not show that she could appreciated wrongfulness or conform her donut to the law. That is the element. Nothing else counts.”
Prosecutors short-circuited their own case when the Commonwealth’s forensic experts agreed that Clancy had a serious mental illness on the day she strangled her kids, Reddington argued.
Read the filing:
“The treating clinicians who saw Ms. Clancy in the weeks before January 24 testified that she presented with postpartum depression and anxiety and that they did not observe psychosis; that testimony bears on which illness she had, not on whether she had one, and depression and anxiety of the severity that led to psychiatric admission are themselves a mental disease or defect,” Reddington wrote. “No rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she had no mental disease or defect when the Commonwealth’s own proof established that she did.”
Reddington cited Rule 25 under the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure, which Lu said governs motions like the one filed Thursday.
“This translates to the defendant moving for a court-ordered not guilty claiming that the defendant is entitled to a not guilty as a matter of law,” he told Fox News Digital. “In this case it is based on the claim that the prosecution witnesses were insufficient to prove that the defendant was criminally responsible.”
Such filings are routine, he said, but seldom prevail. In his own time on the bench, he said he could not remember granting one.
“I cannot remember ever seeing one of these motions acted on,” Lu said. “Mr. Reddington is asking to wipe the entire case out and that is a big ask.”
Nick Dargie, 25, told ABC News that the lone holdout juror at one point attempted to mimic the way Clancy killed her three kids with an exercise band and water bottle.
“He took the exercise band out of the bag, grabbed an empty water bottle and tied the band around the water bottle and pulled it,” Dargie said. “I was just so shocked that he did that.”
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“I was shocked, it didn‘t make any sense to me. Like, we‘re not in here to play detective or it‘s not a game of Clue. like, this is serious. I asked him why,” he added.
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Dargie said the holdout juror refused to explain how witness testimony helped prove his stance.
“There was several times I would ask him to show us evidence or, you know, describe a witness testimony that helped to prove what he was saying, and … he couldn’t,” Dargie said. “There wasn’t a single piece of evidence or witness testimony that he used to prove why he was thinking the way he was, which is why we ultimately sent in that note.”
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He was referring to the note sent by the jury foreperson, who reported that one juror was refusing to follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt.
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After several jurors came forward about what went on in the deliberation room, Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, told “CBS Mornings” Wednesday that he would be filing a new motion to dismiss based on double jeopardy.
“I would defend that person’s right to be a holdout for a month,” Reddington said. “That’s what the system is based on, but when the forelady indicated clearly and unequivocally in the jury question that this person had doubt, reasonable doubt as we know now, and just refused to listen to the judge’s instruction on the law, that’s when I was upset.”
While Plymouth County District Attorney Timmothy Cruz hasn’t indicated what he will do with Lindsay Clancy’s case after the mistrial, Sullivan set a status hearing for Sept. 29.
