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Updated Sept. 4, 2026, at 2:53 p.m. ET. Twelve jurors deliberated for more than 38 hours across seven days without reaching a unanimous verdict in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial. At 2:22 p.m. Friday, Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan formally declared a mistrial and discharged the jury after Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt denied the defense’s emergency request to stop him.

The ruling ends this trial but not the criminal case. There is no acquittal, no conviction and no finding on whether Clancy was criminally responsible when she killed her three children in January 2023. The charges remain pending, and prosecutors may seek a second trial. The Associated Press confirmed the mistrial minutes after the jury was released; CBS Boston reported the precise 2:22 p.m. declaration.

The emergency appeal failed

Sullivan had announced late Friday morning that the jury’s third deadlock note left him no choice but to declare a mistrial. Before the jurors returned to the courtroom, defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked for one hour to seek extraordinary relief from a single justice of the SJC. Sullivan delayed the declaration, leaving the jury intact while the emergency petition was heard.

The filing, docketed as SJ-2026-0402, asked Wendlandt to require Sullivan to investigate whether the juror identified by the foreperson could follow the reasonable-doubt instruction. It alternatively sought to prevent that juror from continuing unless individual questioning established that the juror was willing and able to apply the law. The defense argued that the reported conduct reflected juror bias or refusal, not an ordinary disagreement over the evidence. The requested relief and the sequence of events were detailed in contemporaneous court coverage.

Wendlandt heard prosecutor Jennifer Sprague and defense appellate lawyer Dana Goldblatt by video at approximately 1:30 p.m. She took the matter under advisement and then declined to intervene. Sullivan announced that result when court resumed, rejected Reddington’s renewed objection and summoned the jury. No publicly accessible written opinion explaining the denial had appeared in Massachusetts court materials by this report’s 2:53 p.m. cutoff; the operative result was announced in open court and independently reported by multiple outlets.

The distinction is important. Until the jury returned and Sullivan declared the mistrial, the trial had only been paused. After the SJC denial and the jury’s discharge, the mistrial became final at the trial-court level.

A lone-juror dispute produced no lawful verdict

The foreperson’s Thursday note said one juror had acknowledged doubt but would not apply the court’s instruction on reasonable doubt, according to accounts from the courtroom. Sullivan questioned all 12 jurors individually and asked whether each could follow his instructions. He concluded that the note did not establish a lawful basis to remove the juror and reminded the panel that it must accept the law as he gave it.

Reddington said the panel stood 11–1 in favor of finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. That was the defense lawyer’s account, not a verdict, and the jury never returned a signed or unanimous decision on any charge. The Boston Globe reported his statement and his plan to renew a request for Sullivan to enter an acquittal.

Massachusetts Rule 20 tightly limits the removal of a deliberating juror, particularly when the asserted problem may be inseparable from the substance of deliberations. The rule protects both sides from changing the jury’s composition merely because one member views the evidence differently. Sullivan treated the foreperson’s report as a dispute about how evidence and doubt were being evaluated, rather than proof of a purely personal incapacity or refusal that permitted removal.

The jury’s final note said it could not become unanimous and would not be able to do so. Under Rule 27, a jury lacking unanimous concurrence may be sent back for more deliberation or discharged. After two earlier deadlock reports, repeated instructions and a seventh deliberation day, Sullivan chose discharge.

The charges remain unresolved

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is charged with three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation in the deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. The children were found in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. The Plymouth County district attorney announced the indictments in September 2023.

Clancy does not dispute causing the children’s deaths. Her lawyers argued that severe postpartum psychosis and bipolar illness left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her acts or conform her conduct to the law. Prosecutors acknowledged serious mental-health problems but argued that evidence of planning, timing and concealment showed she remained criminally responsible. The competing evidence and the entire procedural history are reviewed in TAQ’s earlier full account.

Massachusetts’ state instructions required prosecutors to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt once the issue was raised. The jurors could have returned first- or second-degree murder, manslaughter, ordinary not-guilty verdicts or findings of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. They returned none of them.

A mistrial caused by a genuinely deadlocked jury ordinarily permits a retrial because the first jury did not resolve guilt or innocence. Reddington’s effort to determine whether jurors had unanimously decided any individual count or lesser offense could generate further litigation, but the public record contains no partial verdict. It would therefore be an inference—not a ruling—to say that 11 jurors’ reported position legally resolved any charge.

What happens on September 29

The parties are scheduled to return to Plymouth Superior Court on Sept. 29 for a status conference, according to CT Insider. Prosecutors had not announced by Friday afternoon whether they would retry Clancy, negotiate a plea or decline further prosecution. Reuters reported the mistrial after a trial that lasted nearly six weeks and placed sharply conflicting psychiatric evidence before the panel.

The defense is expected first to press its motion for a required finding of not guilty. Massachusetts Rule 25 allows such a request when the defense argues the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain a conviction. That motion is distinct from the jury’s disagreement: Sullivan would assess legal sufficiency, not choose which side’s psychiatric experts were more persuasive. If the motion fails and prosecutors elect to proceed, the court will begin addressing retrial timing, juror selection and renewed pretrial motions.

For now, the confirmed legal status is narrow but consequential: the SJC single justice denied emergency relief, Sullivan declared a mistrial, the jury was discharged, and all criminal charges remain pending. The Sept. 29 conference—not Friday’s deadlock—will provide the first formal indication of whether the Commonwealth intends to try the entire case again.