BREAKING: Clancy judge tells jury to continue deliberating after they reveal they can't come to unanimous decision

The jury in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three children, came back on Tuesday morning telling the judge that they cannot come to a unanimous decision after days of deliberations. Judge William Sullivan ordered the jury to go back in and continue their deliberations. 

The jury was brought back into the courtroom around an hour after they started for the day on Tuesday, in the wake of the jury submitting to the judge that "after many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision." Sullivan added, "I brought you back out because I know that this was a long trial. All right, I know there were over 80 witnesses, there were over 300 exhibits, and but because of that, I'm going to ask you to go back out, keeping in mind all of the instructions that I gave you, to go out and to continue your deliberations at this time."

This came after weeks of testimony in the case, with the defense laying the case that Clancy, who had had her third child earlier in 2022, was suffering from postpartum mental illness at the time of the January 2023 incident. Clancy had admitted to killing her three kids, and then attempting to kill herself.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington said in his closing argument that Clancy kept reaching out for help, “and she was not getting it.” Reddington emphasized the testimony of Dr. Phillip Resnick, saying, “He indicates clearly, in his opinion, that she was in a state of psychosis at the time of this death, times three.”

The prosecution laid the case that Clancy, despite suffering from mental health problems, was aware of what she was doing, and carried out the killings with premeditation. The three children—Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months—were strangled in the basement of Clancy’s home while her husband, Patrick, was out running errands.  

In closing arguments, prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said that Clancy “had more access to treatment and care and support than a lot of people do,” and that “this wasn't a woman suffering from a lack of care, a lack of resources. She had an abundance of help, an abundance of care.”

She later said, “So why did she specifically do it? She was depressed. She was exhausted. She was done. She didn't want to try anymore. She felt damaged. But those kids, those kids were her protective factor. Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery, and so she had to remove the protective factor. I'm not saying she was happy about it. I'm saying that it was what she had to do to end her misery, but it was a choice.”

The jury heard from a number of experts, people who interacted with Clancy following the incident, and family members during the trial. Among the family members who testified in the trial were Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's former mother-in-law, her mother, and her sister. They spoke on Clancy’s deteriorating mental health in the wake of the birth of her son. 

Among the experts who testified was Dr. Paul Zeizel, a forensic psychologist who was a witness for the defense. Under cross-examination, Zeizel said that Clancy has not heard voices in her head since the killings. The final witness in the case, FBI psychiatrist Dr Gregory Saathoff, testified that it is not typical for a person experiencing psychosis to hear a voice only once. Clancy had said that she heard a male voice telling her, "This is your last chance. You have to kill your kids and kill yourself."