The jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial have been sent home for the weekend after failing to reach a verdict in the first two days of deliberations.
The jury of twelve, all non-sequestered, were dismissed on Friday and told not to discuss the case after they failed to unanimously decide if Clancy is guilty of murder in the deaths of her children.
A total of nine women and three men, selected from 18, are set to decide Clancy’s fate and will return to weigh the charges on Monday.
The former labor and delivery nurse, 36, faces first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter charges.
While Clancy does not deny using exercise bands to strangle her three children – Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan – at her Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in 2023, she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told NewsCenter 5 that his client was ‘nervous’ as they awaited the verdict outside court on Friday.
‘She’s nervous, like I said before. She’s sad, scared. The same she’s been forever since this incident,’ Reddington said.
On the day of the murders, Clancy sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the home to run errands.
Jurors have been dismissed for the weekend after they failed to unanimously decide if Lindsay Clancy is guilty of murder in the deaths of her children
Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan were strangled to death on January 24, 2023, inside their family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts home
The former labor and delivery nurse, 36, faces first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. Pictured: Defense Attorney Kevin Reddington holding evidence in court
Patrick went to a local CVS Pharmacy in Kingston – about a 12-minute car ride from Duxbury – on the night of January 24, 2023, after Clancy asked him to get liquid stool softener for one of the children.
During the trial, the prosecution showed surveillance footage of Patrick inside the store and then a restaurant, ThreeV.
According to time stamps presented by the state, he left the home that night at 5.12pm. Patrick arrived at CVS at 5.32pm and picked up the takeout order at 5.54pm.
By 6.09pm he made it back home and found Clancy lying in the snow in their backyard beneath their second-story bedroom window.
He ran upstairs to find their bedroom door locked before using a spare key to enter. When he got inside, he saw his wife on the ground outside the window.
Patrick asked Clancy what happened. In response, she told him that she tried to kill herself, he testified. He then stayed by her side for ten minutes after phoning 911.
When first responders made it to their home, Patrick rushed inside and down to the basement, where he discovered his three children strangled to death.
Massachusetts State Medical Examiner Dr Kimberly Springer testified in court that Callan’s autopsy revealed abrasions on the infant’s neck and hemorrhages on his face and beneath his skin.
Like his brother and sister, Callan had been strangled with an exercise band.
Clancy had told her husband she tried to end her own life when she cut her wrists and neck before plunging out of a window on the night of the murders.
ADA Jennifer Sprague presented closing arguments on Thursday, and asked the jury to find Clancy guilty. ‘She knew what she did was wrong. She could conform her behavior to the law and chose not to,’ she said
Patrick Clancy, Clancy’s former husband, sits on the stand during his ex-wife’s murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court
However, the prosecution has pointed to medical professionals who said she suffered superficial wounds.
Experts who took the stand during the trial stated that they found that she had superficial, or minor, injuries to her skin from the incident. The fall itself has left her paralyzed from the waist down and wheelchair bound for the rest of her life.
Clancy claimed that she is not responsible for her actions after suffering postpartum psychosis and being prescribed a powerful cocktail of drugs to cope with depression.
Both she and her ex-husband have filed separate lawsuits against several of her medical providers alleging that they overmedicated the mom while treating her for postpartum mental health issues.
This overmedication led to her conditions worsening, and ultimately to the deaths of the children, the suits claim.
Many of the providers they are suing took the stand during her murder trial, including Dr Jennifer Tufts and Nurse Rebecca Jollotta.
The civil suits are still making their way through the courts but the defendants have denied the claims put forward.
In Clancy’s case, the prosecution argued the killings were intentional and well planned, not the work of someone who had lost control.
Clancy claimed that she is not responsible for her actions as she was suffering postpartum psychosis and being prescribed a powerful cocktail of drugs to cope with depression
If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility
ADA Jennifer Sprague presented closing arguments on Thursday, and asked the jury to find Clancy guilty.
‘She knew what she did was wrong. She could conform her behavior to the law and chose not to,’ Sprague said.
‘She didn’t expect to have any consequences because she expected to die with her children.
‘You know it was deliberate premeditation because of the way she killed them and the way they died.’
Sprague continued: ‘She didn’t see them in that moment as individual human beings with rights, with dreams, with futures.
‘She didn’t bring them up to their beds; she left them, discarded on the basement floor, like broken toys, like she was done playing the game. You know, to a moral certainty, she is guilty.’
One member of the jury appeared to wipe away tears during the closing argument.
If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
