PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial were set to resume deliberations Wednesday, a day after telling the judge they couldn't agree on whether she was criminally responsible for killing her three children.
On Tuesday morning, the jury, then in its fourth day of deliberations, sent Judge William Sullivan a note saying it had been unable to reach a unanimous decision, which is required by law for either a conviction or an acquittal. Sullivan told the jurors to keep trying — a common instruction in criminal trials when juries indicate they are having trouble reaching a verdict.
After deliberating in private for the rest of the day, the jury asked at around 3:30 p.m. to go home and resume deliberations in the morning.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, doesn't deny strangling her children, but she says postpartum psychosis led to her actions. Prosecutors argue that she knew what she was doing. Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
Jurors heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how her mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital. Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she killed the children.
If jurors ultimately can’t agree on a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges or try to negotiate a plea deal with her lawyer.
After court ended Tuesday, Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, said he saw it as a good sign that the jury kept working.
“The fact that they have not said that they’re done is very, very heartening,” he said. “Obviously, they’re working very hard.”
If the jury decides Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions, it could convict her of either murder or manslaughter. If she is acquitted, a judge could still order her confined to a mental health facility if an evaluation determines that she poses a danger to the public.
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