Lindsay Clancy Returns To Court As Defense, Prosecutors Discuss 2nd Trial Date

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,

Lindsay Clancy is scheduled to appear in court again on Nov. 2 as her attorneys and prosecutors convene to discuss possible dates for a new trial, and finish presenting motions left pending from a September hearing.

Clancy was very nearly acquitted for the January 2023 murder of her three young children. According to jurors who participated in the trial, the vote count was deadlocked at 11-1 in favor of “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

But after one juror refused to budge, Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.

Prosecutors have not officially said whether they will seek a second trial, and Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, previously said that he “can’t do a trial before June [2027].”

Reddington has also filed motions seeking to allow his client to walk free, one of which has already failed.

At the beginning of October, Sullivan denied a defense request that asked him to free Clancy on the grounds that the state had not presented enough evidence to support the murder charge.

That argument was a change of tactic by Clancy’s attorney. Reddington had previously argued that the defendant was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was heavily medicated when she allegedly strangled her three children before attempting suicide by slashing her wrists and leaping from a window.

Clancy, who was left paralyzed by the fall, had allegedly told several people that she killed her children. But at a hearing on Sept. 29, Reddington said there was “no evidence” she had done it or admitted to doing it. He said his client may be suffering from false memories.

Reddington also said at that hearing that he plans to make the case that Clancy cannot be tried again, due to double jeopardy.

Prosecutors also plan to argue a motion to bar “prejudicial, extrajudicial statements.” That request was made after Reddington made comments disparaging the holdout juror following the declaration of a mistrial.

Those statements, along with statements made during interviews by jurors following the mistrial, drew unwanted attention to the lone juror, who was the only black person and one of three men deliberating the case.

He and his family were subsequently harassed and had to be moved to a secure location.

“My family cannot leave the house,” the juror’s brother said in an interview with The New York Post. “They are leaving notes at my mother’s house. They won’t leave us alone and we don’t know anything.”

The judge has also rejected a defense motion requesting an investigation into that juror. Reddington had asked the judge to probe the juror’s phone records, and to scrutinize whether he was untruthful on a juror questionnaire.

Before Sullivan declared a mistrial on Sept. 4, he allowed the defense to seek an emergency hearing with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In a brief Zoom hearing, the defense asked the state’s top court to order the judge to remove the holdout juror, or question him about his ability to properly apply the law.

The court declined to do so.