PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The judge in Lindsay Clancy’s trial has given her defense attorney one hour to appeal after the judge initially said he was going to declare a mistrial.
This decision came after jurors reported for the third time that they couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three children in 2023.
“I’m going to declare a mistrial at this point,” Sullivan said before the defense asked for stay of the declaration.
Reddington will ask the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to effectively force Sullivan to allow the jury to continue deliberating.
Nearly 40 hours into deliberations over seven days, the jury said in a note on Friday, “It is with a heavy heart we are unable to come to a unanimous decision.”
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington blamed postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors said she knew what she was doing.
Postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery. Experts at the Cleveland Clinic describe it as a mental health emergency affecting someone’s sense of reality. Though most people with postpartum psychosis don’t harm their children, mothers with severe cases may try to do so.
