A jury room fight has burst into the open in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial — and one holdout may now stand between the case and a final verdict.

After six days of deliberations, Clancy’s defense attorney asked the judge to remove a juror accused by the foreperson of refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt.

The judge said no.

That leaves a panel that appears to be split 11-1 headed back for yet another day of deliberations, with a mistrial now looming over one of the most closely watched trials in the country.

The court has not published a formal ballot count. Sullivan’s own reference to one juror and the other 11 nevertheless made the basic divide unusually plain.

Defense Makes a Direct Move Against the Holdout

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According to the Associated Press, the jury foreperson sent Judge William Sullivan a note saying one juror would not follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. It was the panel’s third signal of serious trouble after two earlier notes said the jury could not agree.

Sullivan then called jurors up one at a time and questioned them privately about whether they could follow his legal instructions. Afterward, he brought the panel back together, reread the reasonable-doubt standard and the prosecution’s burden of proof, and ordered the jurors to resume deliberating.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington objected after jurors were sent out again. He asked Sullivan to remove the juror, arguing that a panel that had already worked for nearly a week could be pushed into a mistrial because one member had rejected the court’s instruction.

Sullivan refused the motion and kept all 12 jurors on the case. He said removing a juror during deliberations is an extraordinarily sensitive step and that he would not take sides between one member and the other 11 based on a dispute inside the jury room.

That statement strongly suggests an 11-1 divide. It does not, however, establish a publicly confirmed ballot count or tell the public exactly how every juror voted on each possible verdict.

The panel had already told Sullivan twice that it could not reach a unanimous decision. Thursday’s note was different because it raised an accusation about one juror’s willingness to apply the law, turning a private disagreement into an issue the attorneys had to address in open court.

Reddington warned that the unresolved dispute could produce a mistrial. The judge sent the jurors home shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern and ordered them back Friday morning.

Why the Judge Would Not Remove the Juror

CBS News Boston reported that prosecutor Jennifer Sprague backed the judge’s approach, arguing that the private nature of deliberations makes it impossible to determine which jurors are right about the dispute. She said individual assurances from the jurors and a renewed instruction to the full panel were enough.

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Local legal analyst Jennifer Roman called it a rare and difficult situation for the court. A judge must make sure jurors follow the law, but singling out one member after complaints from the rest of the panel can look like pressure to abandon a sincerely held vote.

The jury had already declared itself deadlocked twice after beginning deliberations the previous Thursday. Sullivan responded Wednesday with Massachusetts’ last-resort instruction for divided juries, urging jurors to reconsider opposing views without surrendering honest convictions merely to reach a verdict.

They deliberated through Thursday and still came back empty-handed. Court ended shortly after 4 p.m., with a seventh day of deliberations ordered for Friday morning.

The panel includes nine women and three men. Jurors are weighing five possible outcomes: not guilty by reason of insanity, not guilty, first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter.

Every route requires unanimity.

Reddington said after court that he does not want a mistrial and expects the juror dispute to be argued again Friday. If no agreement is possible, prosecutors could eventually face a choice among retrying Clancy, dropping the charges, or pursuing a negotiated resolution.

The Case Behind the Deadlock

At the center of the trial are the deaths of three children: 5-year-old Cora Clancy, 3-year-old Dawson Clancy, and 8-month-old Callan Clancy.

The children were killed in the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.

The defense does not dispute that Clancy killed the children. Instead, Reddington argues that postpartum psychosis and the effects of medication left her unable to understand the wrongfulness of her actions.

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Prosecutors have taken the opposite position. They contend that Clancy planned the killings, sent her husband out of the house, and knew right from wrong.

The deadlock is not over whether the children died at their mother’s hands. It is over whether Clancy was criminally responsible at the time and, if so, which offense the evidence proves.

One More Day — Then What?

The jury is scheduled to return Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern for a seventh day of deliberations.

If the split holds, Sullivan could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to retry Clancy, drop the charges, or seek another resolution.

For now, the case remains exactly where it has been for nearly a week: 12 jurors in a room, an unresolved dispute over criminal responsibility, and one vote that could determine whether this trial ends with a verdict at all.

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This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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