PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — As Lindsay Clancy sat in court for the first time since her mistrial earlier this month, her attorney attacked the prosecution’s case and the entire investigation as he asked a judge to dismiss the charges against her.
Clancy, 36, stood trial for two months on charges that she murdered her three young children. Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were strangled in the family’s basement on Jan. 24, 2023. After deliberating for more than a week, jurors deadlocked, voting 11-1 that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge declared a mistrial, and prosecutors have signaled they will retry the case.
Lindsay Clancy appears in court for a hearing on Sept. 29, 2026. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger)
In court on Tuesday, Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, said the fact that his client was pleading not guilty by reason of insanity — arguing that she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis when her children were killed — forced him to concede his client committed the killings. “You are put in a conundrum where you have to, in effect, admit culpability to raise the lack of criminal responsibility. Many, many laypeople have difficulty understanding the concept,” Reddington said. “I submit to the court that a motion for a required finding of not guilty should have been entered on the total and complete lack of evidence.”
Reddington pointed to what he called holes in the evidence that, he said, resulted from a failed investigation. “When you consider the evidence that the government has, you have the exercise bands, you have the woefully deficient DNA, you have the woefully deficient fingerprinting,” he said. “You have the horrific, ridiculous investigation — using the term loosely — by police. There was no investigation. It was not even a horrendous investigation. There was no investigation.”
“What we heard throughout the course of trial was that there was objections to the presentation of Commonwealth’s evidence on the underlying murders because the defendant admits, the defendant stipulates [to killing the children], whether the Commonwealth agreed to the stipulation or not,” prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said at Tuesday’s hearing. “And now, for the first time, the defendant is arguing that there’s no evidence that she did this. I’d suggest to you that the entire record is voluminous as to the information supporting the fact that she did this.”
Reddington called the prosecution’s timeline “ridiculous” and said the Commonwealth changed its theory mid-trial, specifically about the injuries the defendant suffered after the children’s deaths when she cut herself with a knife and jumped out of a window. “Originally, the government comes into the courtroom and says that the reason she killed these kids is because she was sick of being a mother. She wanted to move on with her life, apparently,” he said. “Well, they backed off on that like a poodle on a linoleum floor. Once the case got to the jury on closing argument, now all of a sudden, ‘Oh, yeah, she did try to kill herself.’ We spent a week trying to show that, in fact, it was a legitimate suicide.”
Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy sit together in a chair. (Court evidence)
Buckingham defended the prosecution’s case and said its theory was clear: “The Commonwealth presented evidence, not that the defendant was a bad mother or unhappy with being a mother and trying to start a new life,” she said. “It was the fact that she was in a point in her life where she felt that she was never going to be the same, and she was never going to be the person that she was before. She was frustrated with the system that she had been dealing with, she was frustrated with the results that she was getting and she had succumbed to the idea that she didn’t want to be here anymore and that she was going to commit suicide and that she was going to take the kids with her because no one could care for them like she could. She didn’t want them to suffer.”
Judge William Sullivan said he would take the issue under advisement. Though he could still dismiss the charges, Sullivan pressed the attorneys to set a trial date, but neither prosecutors nor the defense would commit. “The discussion three weeks ago was, ‘Let’s try this thing in a week,’ right?” Sullivan said, prompting laughter in the courtroom. “And now no one wants to pick a trial date.”
Sullivan: I don’t want this thing to just start to get kicked down the road and punted.
Reddington: It’s not going to get punted, but I’ll tell you right now I can’t do a trial before June. I’m just letting you know that right now. It’s not a matter of punting or kicking or anything.
Sullivan ordered the parties to return to court on Nov. 2, when additional motions will be argued, including those involving the lone holdout juror in the case. He told the attorneys to be ready to choose a trial date then.
