PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — After more than 17 hours of deliberations, jurors in Massachusetts said they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict in Lindsay Clancy‘s murder trial.
Lindsay Clancy appears in court on Sept. 1, 2026. (Court TV)
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder in the deaths of her young children. Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were strangled to death with exercise bands in the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. Clancy has admitted to physically killing her children, but has claimed that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that a voice compelled her to hurt her kids before she slashed herself with a knife and jumped out of a second-story window.
Jurors in the case listened to five weeks of testimony, including emotional testimony from Clancy’s family and evidence from the medical examiner that left the defendant sobbing in the courtroom.
After more than 17 hours of deliberations, the jury returned to the courtroom on Tuesday morning to report that they were deadlocked. Judge William Sullivan did not read the note aloud in court; he called the prosecution and defense attorneys to sidebar to inform them of the deadlock.
The jury began its deliberations on Thursday afternoon; the panel deliberated all day Friday and Monday without reaching a verdict.
When the jury returned to the courtroom, Sullivan acknowledged the trial’s scope, noting it heard from more than 80 witnesses and reviewed more than 300 exhibits before sending jurors back to deliberate further. “I’m going to ask you to go back out, keeping in mind all the instructions that I gave you,” he said.
Sullivan’s instruction fell short of Massachusetts’ “Tuey-Rodriguez” charge, an instruction given to the jury in the Commonwealth if it reports an impasse. Once the judge reads that formal charge, the judge cannot send the jury back to deliberate again if it announces it is deadlocked.
Aside from reporting they were deadlocked, jurors only asked one other question — to have access to the knife Clancy used and the medications found in her nightstand drawer.
