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# 38 Hours, Seven Days, No Verdict: The Lindsay Clancy Trial in Limbo
- URL: https://www.theamericanquorum.com/lindsay-clancy-trial-deadlocked-jury-full-case/
- Published: 2026-09-04T18:03:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T18:03:08.000Z
- Description: After 38 hours over seven days, Lindsay Clancy’s jury could not reach a verdict. The full case—from three children’s deaths and disputed psychiatric care to the holdout-juror fight—now hangs on an emergency appeal.
- Author: News Desk
- Tags: US

*Editor’s note: This report discusses the deaths of children and suicide. Help is available in the United States by calling or texting 988.*

**Updated Sept. 4, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET.** Nearly 40 hours of deliberations across seven days did not produce a unanimous verdict in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy. Instead, the case reached an extraordinary pause Friday: the trial judge said he intended to declare a mistrial, then temporarily held off while Clancy’s attorneys asked Massachusetts’ highest court to intervene. Supreme Judicial Court Justice Dalila A. Wendlandt began an emergency hearing at 1:30 p.m.; no ruling on the requested stay had been reported as of this update.

The immediate question is procedural, but the case beneath it is much larger. Three children are dead. Their mother does not dispute that she killed them. A jury was asked to decide whether those acts were murder, a lesser homicide, or the product of mental disease so severe that Massachusetts law could not hold her criminally responsible. After 21 days of testimony from 85 witnesses, the panel could not agree.

That impasse is the current state of a case that began on Jan. 24, 2023, inside a family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and has since become a national test of how the criminal justice system understands postpartum psychosis, how clinicians respond when a new mother repeatedly reports psychiatric distress, and what proof is required when illness and intent appear in the same set of facts.

## What happened in court Friday

The jury returned to Plymouth Superior Court on Friday for a seventh day of deliberations. It had already reported twice that it could not reach unanimity. On Thursday, the foreperson disclosed something more specific: a single juror had, according to the note, acknowledged doubt but was refusing to apply the court’s instruction on reasonable doubt. The judge questioned the jurors individually and reminded the full panel that it was obligated to follow the law, but he declined the defense request to remove the disputed juror.

Friday morning, jurors sent a third note. “It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to,” the foreperson wrote, according to the [AP account](https://apnews.com/article/bf675a5705897815848871d8885441b2?ref=theamericanquorum.com) from inside the courtroom.

Judge William Sullivan said he believed he had no choice but to declare a mistrial. Prosecutors agreed that the jury had exhausted the required process. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington objected, arguing that the court should examine whether juror misconduct, rather than an honest disagreement about the evidence, had prevented a verdict. He also asked whether the panel could be polled to determine if it had unanimously resolved any of the possible charges, an issue with potential double-jeopardy consequences.

Before the jury was brought into the courtroom and discharged, Sullivan granted the defense one hour to seek emergency relief from a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Attorney Dana Goldblatt filed the petition at 12:29 p.m. on Reddington’s behalf. Justice Dalila A. Wendlandt began hearing the request at 1:30 p.m., according to a live [Globe report](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/04/metro/lindsay-clancy-trial-live-updates/?ref=theamericanquorum.com), while the trial court recessed for lunch until 2 p.m. The distinction matters: Sullivan announced his intention to declare a mistrial, but a mistrial would not become final until declared with the jury present and the panel discharged.

The disputed juror became the center of Friday’s conflict, but the direction of the split has not been established in open court. The defense interpreted the foreperson’s note as showing an 11-to-1 division favorable to Clancy. The public record does not disclose which precise verdict the 11 supported, and the judge warned jurors against revealing numerical divisions in later notes. What is established is that one juror’s conduct was challenged, the judge found no lawful basis to remove that juror, and the full panel ultimately reported that agreement was impossible.

## The three lives at the center of the case

The legal arguments can obscure the loss that created the case. Cora Clancy was 5\. Dawson was 3\. Callan was 8 months old. Cora and Dawson died on Jan. 24, 2023\. Callan was flown to Boston Children’s Hospital and died three days later. Massachusetts’ chief medical examiner determined that Cora and Dawson died from asphyxia and that Callan died from complications of asphyxia, according to the [district attorney](https://plymouthda.com/news/2023-press-releases/duxbury-woman-indicted-on-charges-that-she-murdered-her-three-children/?ref=theamericanquorum.com).

No verdict can restore them, and no account of Clancy’s illness can make their deaths less final. The central dispute at trial was not whether she caused those deaths. It was whether the Commonwealth proved that she had the mental capacity the law requires for criminal punishment when she did it.

## Before Jan. 24: a worsening mental-health crisis

Clancy was a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. She and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, had three children: Cora, born in 2017; Dawson, born in 2019; and Callan, born in May 2022\. Court filings and trial testimony described some anxiety after the first two births, but the months after Callan’s birth brought a much steeper decline.

By September 2022, as maternity leave ended and a return to work approached, Clancy was reporting insomnia, anxiety, racing thoughts, diminished appetite, depression, guilt and difficulty functioning. She began psychiatric care on Sept. 15\. An initial suicide-risk questionnaire recorded denials of suicidal or homicidal thoughts and of voices directing harm.

The picture changed over the following months. Sertraline was started and stopped after Clancy reported worsening anxiety. Lorazepam was added. An emergency-room visit for severe insomnia led to trazodone. Other providers prescribed fluoxetine, zolpidem, mirtazapine, clonazepam and quetiapine at different points. At her February 2023 arraignment, the defense listed 13 psychiatric drugs prescribed between October and January. That number described prescriptions across the period, not 13 medications necessarily taken at once, and toxicology became a point of dispute at trial.

Records described only a few hours of sleep each night, feelings of disconnection from her body and fear that something terrible would happen. By early December, she had reported intrusive thoughts of harming herself and the children. She contacted crisis services, went to emergency departments and entered treatment programs. She was admitted to McLean Hospital on Jan. 1, 2023, and discharged on Jan. 5.

The parties disagreed sharply over what clinicians knew, what Clancy disclosed and whether the care was reasonable. Later civil complaints filed by Lindsay and Patrick Clancy accuse several providers of failing to diagnose, treat and monitor a severe postpartum psychiatric condition. Those are allegations, not adjudicated facts. The providers’ care was also examined at the criminal trial, where the defense portrayed a fragmented system and the prosecution emphasized records in which Clancy denied psychosis, suicidal intent or a plan to harm her children. A detailed treatment chronology compiled from testimony and court filings shows why both narratives could be built from the same record. [That chronology](https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/lindsay-clancy-mental-health-treatment-timeline-22384842.php?ref=theamericanquorum.com) includes reports that symptoms and descriptions changed across appointments.

Clancy’s civil complaint says she was hearing persistent voices before the killings, including commands to die and harm the children. Prosecutors argued those claims emerged later and were inconsistent with contemporaneous observations. The defense said psychosis can be concealed, fluctuate and remain undetected during short encounters, particularly when the patient fears losing her children.

## Jan. 24, 2023: an ordinary day and a narrow window

The trial reconstructed the final day in unusual detail through texts, phone records, surveillance video, internet searches, Apple Watch data and Patrick Clancy’s testimony.

That morning, Lindsay took Cora to a medical appointment while Patrick remained home with Dawson and Callan. The parents exchanged photos. During the day, the children built a snowman and made art. Patrick worked from a basement office and testified that Lindsay appeared happy and was having one of her best days.

Late in the afternoon, Lindsay searched for children’s constipation medicine, contacted a CVS and proposed takeout from a restaurant in Plymouth. She searched the route. At 4:53 p.m., she texted Patrick about dinner. Shortly after 5 p.m., the couple exchanged their orders. Around 5:15, Patrick left to buy the medicine and collect the food. He testified that Lindsay looked normal as he departed, standing near the basement stairs while holding Callan.

At the pharmacy around 5:33 p.m., Patrick called because he could not find the requested product. Lindsay called back about a minute later and approved a substitute. He entered the restaurant at 5:54 p.m., then drove home. The prosecution treated the route search, pharmacy request and restaurant choice as evidence that Lindsay calculated how long she would be alone. The defense argued that route-checking was routine and that sending Patrick on errands was inconsistent with a carefully concealed plan because she knew exactly when he would return.

Patrick arrived to an unnaturally quiet house. At 6:09 p.m., he called Lindsay’s phone. He found the main bedroom door locked, opened it with an emergency key and saw blood and an open window. Outside, beneath the second-story window, he found Lindsay badly injured. She had cut her wrists and neck and fallen or jumped from the window, suffering a spinal injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Patrick asked where the children were. Lindsay said they were in the basement. During the 911 call, he found Cora, Callan and Dawson with exercise bands around their necks and attempted to help them. Jurors heard the call, including Patrick’s anguished discovery, but the judge barred its public release. A trial-based [minute-by-minute](https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticut/article/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-timeline-jan-24-2023-22375201.php?ref=theamericanquorum.com) reconstruction placed the emergency call at approximately 6:11 p.m.

While hospitalized, Clancy later described a male voice or external force telling her this was her final chance to kill the children and herself. One account attributed to her said she believed the children would suffer without her. Other evidence suggested she told each child to go to God. Those statements became central to competing psychiatric interpretations: evidence of a delusional, psychotic command to the defense; evidence of a comprehensible, goal-directed decision to the prosecution.

## From hospital bed to murder trial

Clancy appeared by video from a hospital bed for her first arraignment on Feb. 7, 2023\. Not-guilty pleas were entered to the initial charges. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague described the errands as a manufactured opportunity and the killings as planned. Reddington described a devoted mother destroyed by mental illness and medication. The two narratives presented that day remained substantially intact through the 2026 trial. [Early coverage](https://apnews.com/article/crime-massachusetts-assault-health-c75aace19359a6623a196e909dd30a50?ref=theamericanquorum.com) captured how quickly intent and psychiatric responsibility became the case’s dividing line.

A Plymouth County grand jury indicted Clancy in September 2023 on three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation. She pleaded not guilty in Superior Court the following month and was held without bail at Tewksbury State Hospital. Years of litigation and evaluation followed before jury selection began July 20, 2026.

The trial opened to intense public scrutiny. Eighteen jurors were selected, including six alternates. Testimony ran for 21 days. The Commonwealth called 72 witnesses, the defense called 10 and prosecutors presented three rebuttal witnesses. More than 300 exhibits were introduced. The 12-person deliberating jury, nine women and three men, received the case on Aug. 27 after nearly two hours of closing arguments.

## The prosecution’s case: depression, planning and knowledge of wrongfulness

The Commonwealth did not deny that Clancy was mentally ill. Its burden was to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she remained criminally responsible, meaning that mental disease or defect had not deprived her of the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the law.

Prosecutors emphasized planning and sequence. Clancy proposed takeout, added the pharmacy stop, checked travel time and acted during the brief interval Patrick was away. She used an exercise band on each child, moved through the house and took steps against herself afterward. Phone and watch data documented searches, movement, stairs and changing heart rate. The state argued that these were organized acts rather than behavior beyond conscious control.

The prosecution also pointed to the outwardly ordinary day: coherent messages, photographs of the children, the pediatric visit, a normal conversation during the pharmacy trip and Patrick’s observation that Lindsay seemed calm. Clinicians who treated her testified about denials of psychosis or imminent intent. Prescription bottles and toxicology evidence supported the argument that she had not consistently taken every prescribed medication and that drug levels did not establish an intoxicating combination at the time of the deaths.

Forensic psychiatrist Avram Mack concluded that Clancy likely suffered major depression and anxiety but found insufficient evidence of mania or bipolar disorder. Forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun questioned whether the claimed voice was a hallucination. Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a psychiatrist who has worked with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, testified that she had the capacity to know right from wrong.

In closing, Sprague argued that the children had been a barrier to Clancy’s suicide and that she decided to take them with her, not because an irresistible psychotic command erased her responsibility, but because she believed they would suffer after she died. The prosecution’s theory therefore incorporated mental illness while drawing a hard line between illness and legal incapacity.

## The defense’s case: psychosis, compulsion and a system that missed the danger

The defense asked jurors to begin with the same organized, loving mother the Commonwealth described and ask what could cause her to kill the children she had spent years protecting. Its answer was severe postpartum illness, likely within the bipolar spectrum, aggravated or obscured by rapidly changing medications and a fragmented pattern of virtual appointments, emergency visits, crisis calls and short admissions.

Family members, friends and colleagues described anxiety, insomnia, fear, paranoia, emotional blunting and desperate efforts to obtain help. Patrick testified that Lindsay had disclosed thoughts that something bad could happen to the children, yet no clinician told him that she could not safely be left alone with them. Her mother, Paula Musgrove, read messages in which Lindsay said she was sick, frightened and unable to be alone. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, said she was begging for help.

Psychologist Paul Zeizel, who evaluated Clancy after the deaths, believed she was not criminally responsible and testified about the reported male voice. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist known for his work in maternal-filicide cases, concluded that Clancy was psychotic and unable to control her conduct. He interpreted the sudden command, the idea of an outside force and the desire for the family to remain together after death as psychotic phenomena, not rational motive.

In closing, Reddington argued that the transformation from a devoted nurse and mother into the person seen in a hospital bed could not be explained by ordinary depression or selfishness. He blamed severe disease, medication and inadequate care. The defense did not ask jurors to overlook the children. It asked them to find that their mother’s diseased mind made criminal condemnation legally impossible.

## What postpartum psychosis does and does not prove

Postpartum psychosis is rare, affecting roughly 1 to 2 people per 1,000 births by commonly cited estimates. It can bring hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, mania, severe depression, confusion and rapidly changing symptoms. Massachusetts’ own public-health guidance calls it a “true psychiatric emergency.” [State guidance](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/about-perinatal-mood-anxiety-disorders-pmads?ref=theamericanquorum.com) says immediate help is required.

Its existence is not a verdict in this case. Most people with postpartum psychiatric illness do not harm their children. Intrusive thoughts alone do not equal intent, psychosis or danger. Researchers also distinguish unwanted thoughts that horrify a patient, often seen in postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder, from delusions or commands the patient experiences as real. A peer-reviewed [clinical review](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11058913/?ref=theamericanquorum.com) says symptoms can wax and wane, may be hidden from families and clinicians, and generally require hospitalization when psychosis is suspected.

The trial’s difficulty was retrospective. Jurors had to determine Clancy’s capacity during a short window on a single night more than three years earlier. Evidence that she planned errands could show rational preparation. It could also coexist with a psychotic purpose. Evidence that she appeared normal could show awareness and control. It could also reflect the episodic or concealed nature of severe illness. The experts did not merely disagree about a label; they disagreed about what the same behaviors meant.

## The Massachusetts legal question

Massachusetts uses the phrase “lack of criminal responsibility,” not simply insanity. Once the issue is properly raised, the Commonwealth must prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Under the state’s [jury instructions](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on-homicide-i-criminal-responsibility?ref=theamericanquorum.com), a person is not criminally responsible if, because of mental disease or defect, she lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the requirements of law.

The verdict form gave jurors five paths on each killing: not guilty, not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder or guilty of manslaughter. A first-degree murder conviction would carry life without parole. A lack-of-criminal-responsibility verdict would not necessarily mean immediate freedom; a court could order evaluation and continued psychiatric confinement if Clancy were found dangerous.

Unanimity was required. Massachusetts law makes removing a deliberating juror deliberately difficult because a judge cannot change a jury’s composition merely to alter the substance or direction of deliberations. A replacement may be permitted for an emergency or another compelling reason, but the reconstructed jury must begin deliberations anew. Sullivan concluded that the foreperson’s complaint did not establish a legally sufficient, non-deliberative reason to remove the juror. The defense’s emergency petition challenges that conclusion.

## Why no verdict is not a resolution

If the Supreme Judicial Court declines to intervene and Sullivan formally discharges the jury, the result will be a mistrial, not an acquittal and not a conviction. The criminal charges will remain. Prosecutors may try the case again before a new jury, negotiate a plea agreement or decline further prosecution. Clancy would remain confined while the case returns to a pretrial posture.

A retrial would not automatically solve the problem revealed by this jury. The prosecution presented evidence of preparation, concealment and an ability to function. The defense presented an extensive record of psychiatric deterioration, help-seeking and competing expert diagnoses. A new panel would confront the same collision between visible organization and possible psychosis, unless the parties narrow the issues or new evidence changes the record.

The civil litigation will proceed on a separate track. Both Lindsay and Patrick Clancy have sued medical providers, alleging failures in diagnosis, medication management, monitoring and discharge planning. Those cases must test professional duties and causation under civil standards; the criminal trial’s outcome does not decide them.

## What the case leaves behind

The Clancy case resists a clean public narrative. Treating it only as calculated murder ignores months of documented psychiatric distress and repeated contact with the healthcare system. Treating it only as a failure of medicine risks erasing the children and assuming a legal conclusion the jury could not reach. The record contains evidence that supports both moral intuitions, which is precisely why 12 jurors spent nearly 40 hours unable to speak with one voice.

It also exposes a practical gap. Families can be told to seek help, yet still move among short telehealth visits, emergency departments, crisis lines, specialized programs and inpatient facilities without one team holding the entire risk picture. Patients may deny symptoms, minimize them, fear the consequences of disclosure or describe them differently from one day to the next. Clinicians must distinguish anxiety, depression, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, bipolar illness and psychosis while making urgent safety decisions with incomplete information.

That complexity does not excuse homicide, and diagnosis alone does not answer criminal responsibility. It does mean that postpartum psychosis must be treated as the emergency medical authorities say it is. The [federal guidance](https://medlineplus.gov/postpartumdepression.html?ref=theamericanquorum.com) is direct: hallucinations, confusion or dangerous behavior after childbirth require immediate emergency care.

For Cora, Dawson and Callan, the system’s conclusions will always arrive too late. For Lindsay Clancy, the legal question remains unresolved. For the public, the case presents a harder obligation than choosing between sympathy and condemnation: to hold the children’s lives, their mother’s acts, the evidence of illness and the demands of law in view at the same time.

*If you or someone you know may be in suicidal crisis, call or text 988 in the United States. If a postpartum person is experiencing hallucinations, delusions, severe confusion or thoughts of harming themselves or a child, call 911 or seek emergency care immediately.*