BREAKING: Lindsay Clancy attorney files motion for not guilty ruling from judge after mistrial

Kevin Reddington, the defense attorney representing Lindsay Clancy in ongoing proceedings, has filed a motion seeking a required finding of not guilty. 

The motion, filed on Thursday, states that all six forensic experts in the case had agreed during the trial that Clancy had suffered from a serious mental illness when she killed her three children on January 24, 2023. 

The filing states, “The Commonwealth's rebuttal experts disputed the label, not the fact; a major depressive episode according to Dr. Mack; bipolar II disorder with dissociation according to Dr. Heilbrun. The treating clinicians who saw Ms. Clancy in the weeks before January 24 testified that she presented with postpartum depression and anxiety and that they did not observe psychosis; that testimony bears on which illness she had, not on whether she had one, and depression and anxiety of the severity that led to the psychiatric admission are themselves a mental disease or defect. No rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she had no mental disease or defect when the Commonwealth's own proof established that she did,” per NBC 10 Boston. 

Reddington had moved for a required finding of not guilty at the end of the state’s evidence in the case, and again at the close of all evidence. The Thursday filing is renewed under Rule 25, with Reddington claiming that the state did not present evidence that allows a juror "earnestly seeking the truth to determine that Clancy's guilt on the crime was proved on each element of the offense."

Marian Braccia, Director of the LL.M. in Trial Advocacy at Temple University Law School and a former assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, explained for People of the statute, “A rule 25 motion is essentially a ‘sufficiency of the evidence’ mechanism. It allows the trial judge to enter a finding of not guilty if the judge concludes that the Commonwealth’s evidence was legally insufficient to sustain the conviction.”

Braccia added, “If Judge Sullivan says, ‘I agree with the defense, the Commonwealth was deficient. They did not present sufficient evidence that any rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that there was criminal responsibility here’ — then the result would be an acquittal,” Braccia says. “There would be an entry of a not guilty verdict. It would not be another mistrial, and that is enormously consequential, because an acquittal implicates double jeopardy.”

The motion seeks for the Plymouth Superior Court to enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility on each indictment. Reddington has requested that the motion be heard during a scheduled September 29 hearing before Judge William Sullivan. 

On Friday, the trial for the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three children ended in a mistrial after one holdout juror refused to side with the 11 others in finding her not guilty by reason of insanity. Clancy had admitted to killing her children, and her defense said that she had been suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings.