Day 5 of deliberations in Lindsay Clancy trial ends without verdict, jury remains deadlocked

The fifth day of deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy case has ended with no verdict, with the jury being sent home around 4 pm. In total, the jury has been deliberating for around 30 hours since they received the case for consideration on Thursday afternoon. 

In Wednesday’s deliberations, the jury once again came back and told the judge they were deadlocked. Judge William Sullivan issued the Tuey-Rodriguez charge to the jury, ordering them one more time to go back and continue deliberations. The jury had first said that they were unable to come to a unanimous decision on Monday morning. 

He told the jury to consider the reasonableness of all opinions of the jurors. “Jurors for acquittal should consider whether a doubt in their own minds is a reasonable one if it makes no impression on the minds of others who are equally honest, equally intelligent, and who have heard the same evidence with the same attention, with an equal desire to arrive at the truth, and who have taken the same oath as jurors.”

“On the other hand, jurors for conviction ought seriously to ask themselves whether they may not reasonably doubt the correctness of a judgment that is not concurred in by other members of the jury, and whether they should distrust the weight or adequacy of the evidence that fails to convince the minds of fellow jurors. With that, I now ask you to return to your deliberations with these thoughts in mind."

The jury is weighing charges of first-degree and second-degree murder, as well as manslaughter for the killings of Clancy’s three young children, which she has admitted to. The defense has argued that she was suffering from postpartum mental illness in the wake of the birth of her youngest when she strangled her three children and attempted to kill herself. The prosecution has argued that the case was premeditated, and that Clancy viewed her children as “keeping her from ending her misery.”