Plymouth (United States) (AFP) – The defense for Lindsay Clancy, the US mother accused of murdering her three children, on Thursday accused a single holdout juror of blocking a verdict in the high-profile trial. Clancy, 36, does not deny strangling Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis — excusing her from criminal responsibility.
Her five-week trial, which was televised and featured more than 80 witnesses, has sparked debate in the United States over maternal mental health. Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s main lawyer, told a Massachusetts court Thursday that there is “one juror who refuses to listen to the law that you’ve given him or her on reasonable doubt.” He requested that the juror be removed from the 12-member panel, but Judge William Sullivan refused and instead sent them back to continue a seventh day of deliberations Friday.
To reach a verdict, all 12 jurors must be in agreement. If they cannot agree, the judge will declare a mistrial and prosecutors must decide whether to try the case again with a new jury. On Wednesday, Sullivan issued the jurors a last-resort, so-called “dynamite charge” that encourages them to keep discussing in a bid to break the impasse and avoid a mistrial.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, saying she heard a voice ordering her to kill her children. Her lawyers say this was caused by postpartum psychosis. After the killings at her family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts in January 2023, she jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The former nurse faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty of first-degree murder. Jurors can also find Clancy guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, or not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility — a verdict that would see Clancy sent to a psychiatric facility.
© 2024 AFP
