Judge and Lindsay Clancy's attorney spar as deliberations hit seventh day in triple-murder trial
The friction that has been building inside the Lindsay Clancy jury room spilled into open court Friday, with Judge William Sullivan and defense attorney Kevin Reddington clashing over a juror described as refusing to accept the law on reasonable doubt.
The two went back and forth at the start of the seventh day of deliberations, after a note from the jury foreperson alleged that one member had “refused to listen” to the court's instruction on reasonable doubt, according to Reddington.
“What do you want me to do? Get a brass band?” Sullivan asked when Reddington pushed for stronger judicial action.
The conflict surfaced Thursday afternoon. At that point, the panel had deliberated for more than 36 hours and had twice said it was deadlocked. Sullivan questioned each juror individually, reread the reasonable-doubt instruction, and denied Reddington's request to remove the holdout juror.
“I don't think it's appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or 11,” Sullivan said at the time.
When court resumed Friday, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague asked Sullivan to send the jury back to continue deliberating. Reddington renewed his push to dismiss the juror, arguing the note suggested the juror had lied under oath during the individual questioning.
“Clearly, judge, we have a person who ... looked you in the eye and lied,” Reddington said.
Sprague disagreed, saying the note reflected a genuine disagreement about the law rather than misconduct. “The note indicates that the parties disagree on what is reasonable doubt or what doubt is and how it should be applied,” she said. “And we are in no position to judge if the 11 are right or the one is right.”
After Sullivan declined to question the jury individually again, Reddington asked him to deliver the reasonable-doubt instruction “forcefully.” Sullivan bristled, noting that he had read the instruction as written by the state's Supreme Judicial Court.
“The fact that I perhaps didn't give it my full inflection, I'm sorry about that. I'm not an actor. I'm just giving the instructions,” Sullivan said. Before bringing the panel back, he added, “I'll try and give this with more pizzazz than I gave yesterday, I suppose.”
Clancy, now 36, is charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, in January 2023 at the family’s home in Duxbury, Mass. Prosecutors say she carried out the killings in a deliberate, planned attack. Her defense argues she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and is not criminally responsible. She has pleaded not guilty.
The case has become a test of how far a jury can go in questioning the court's instructions before deliberations break down entirely. If the panel remains deadlocked, a mistrial would force prosecutors to decide whether to retry a case that has already drawn intense public attention and left the children's father, Patrick Clancy, at the center of an agonizing legal and medical debate.
For now, the nine women and three men on the jury remain behind closed doors, with no signal from the court about when a verdict might emerge.