Twelve people locked in a room can’t agree on what to do with Lindsay Clancy, the former labor and delivery nurse accused of strangling her three babies, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, back in January 2023.
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The jury told the judge this Tuesday morning that it couldn’t come to a unanimous decision as they kicked off a fourth day of deliberations. That’s after roughly 18 hours of deliberating across four separate days with barely a peep from the jury room. Judge William Sullivan wasn’t trying to hear “we give up” though. “After many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision,” the jury’s note read.
However, Sullivan sent them right back in, reminding them what they signed up for. “I know that this was a long trial. I know there were over 80 witnesses, there were over 300 exhibits,” he told the panel, before asking them to keep pushing through.
For the people just tuning in, Clancy isn’t denying she put her hands on her kids, her defense team has been crystal clear about that from jump. What they’re arguing is that she was deep in postpartum psychosis, a mental break so severe she wasn’t even living in reality when it happened. Her team says she’d already been in and out of a psychiatric hospital trying to get help before the tragedy went down. The prosecution isn’t buying any of that.
They’re painting a picture of a woman who was exhausted, depressed, and made a cold, calculated choice to end her children’s lives before trying to take her own.
The jury’s got options on the table, and none of them are simple. They can convict her of first-degree murder, knock it down to second-degree or manslaughter, find her not guilty altogether, or land on “not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility” which basically means they believe she genuinely couldn’t control what she was doing because of the psychosis.
That last option doesn’t mean she walks free, either. If the judge feels she’s still a danger, she could get committed to a mental health facility instead of a cell.
Right now, all eyes stay on that Plymouth County courthouse. If this jury stays deadlocked, we could be looking at a mistrial, meaning the whole thing could start over from scratch with a brand new jury. We’ll keep you posted as this one develops.