PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — Hours after a heated sidebar where witnesses said he was banging on a desk and tossing papers, Lindsay Clancy‘s attorney filed a motion asking the judge to hold all future discussions in “open court.”
Lindsay Clancy appears in court on Aug. 26, 2026. (Court TV)
Clancy, 36, is standing trial on charges that she murdered her three children. The defendant has admitted to strangling Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in her family’s basement, but has maintained that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and killed the children after a voice commanded her to do so. After taking her children’s lives, Clancy attempted to take her own by slashing her wrists and neck with a knife and jumping out of a second-story window.
Jurors in Clancy’s case had deliberated for six days after hearing five weeks of testimony and evidence when, on Thursday, the foreperson sent a note to Judge William Sullivan saying a single juror holdout was preventing them from reaching a unanimous verdict. The issue, the note said, was that one juror was refusing to follow the judge’s instructions on the law regarding reasonable doubt.
The note was the third that jurors had passed to Sullivan; in each case, after receiving the note, the judge called prosecutors and Clancy’s defense attorney to sidebar to read the message and determine how to respond. None of the notes have been read aloud.
Kevin Reddington speaks to Lindsay Clancy on Sept. 3, 2026. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger/POOL)
The note indicating the jury was at an 11-1 standstill prompted a heated sidebar on Thursday; Law&Crime’s Sierra Gillespie, who was inside the courtroom, said Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, was banging his hands on the desk, throwing his hands in the air and throwing down papers.
Thursday’s drama prompted Reddington to file a motion asking Sullivan to stop holding sidebars. The motion asks the judge to issue “a standing order in this trial that there will be no further sidebars and this trial and all related proceedings will be handled in open court.”
The jury is scheduled to resume its deliberations on Friday.
