Prominent Republicans on Friday criticized a Massachusetts jury for not finding Lindsay Clancy guilty of first-degree murder, after they failed to reach a unanimous verdict following the weekslong trial. Clancy admitted she killed her three young children in 2023, but argued she should not be held criminally responsible, claiming she was…
Page A2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 5 September 2026
Massachusetts jury can't agree Lindsay Clancy is guilty; Republicans already have.
As it ran on the front
I have a page in my coat pocket. I printed it off myself, because I wanted it in my hand and not just on the little phone screen, and I've still got it — here, this one. The headline reads "Republicans denounce Lindsay Clancy mistrial: 'Victims deserved far, far better.'" Under it, in the plainer type reporters use for the parts they're sourcing, it says Republicans were criticizing "a Massachusetts jury for not finding Lindsay Clancy guilty of first-degree murder, after they failed to reach a unanimous verdict." That's the actual sentence. I copied it word for word because something about it bothered me, and I wanted to be able to point at it later.
Here's what bothers me, and I'll say it once and try to leave it alone for a while: that word "guilty" is sitting on this page, printed, describing a result — and the jury never reached one. A mistrial isn't a verdict. It isn't an acquittal either. So which of those three things does this page actually describe?…
…(cont) My car's been doing this thing lately where the radio kicks in before the engine's really caught — you turn the key, and for a half-second the music's playing over an engine that hasn't decided to run yet. The guy at the garage says that's a fan belt starting to go, and once it slips, things just fire out of order. He says an engine that's running right does things in sequence. In a courtroom, which comes first — the deliberation, or the reaction to it?
So let's put this in order, the way it actually happened. September 1st: the Washington Examiner reported the judge sent the jury back after they hit a stalemate. September 2nd: The Hill reported Clancy's own attorney saying she couldn't sit through another trial. That same day, CBS reported the jury deadlocked a second time and the judge issued what's called a "dynamite charge," ordering them back to try again — and Fox ran a retired Massachusetts judge insisting a unanimous verdict was still "very possible." Nobody's headline used the word "guilty" on any of those days. That word shows up on the 4th — the same day NBC and CBS both reported the mistrial was declared.
I hate to circle back to this, and I'm sorry, but it's the part I actually wrote down, so here it is from the other side: on the page in my pocket, the word "guilty" is printed on the same day the courtroom produced no verdict of any kind. Not guilty, not not-guilty. Nothing. The radio, playing over an engine that hadn't caught.
Oh — before you go, one more thing, because I almost missed it going back through my own clippings. CBS reported today that the mistrial only came down after Clancy's attorney made a last-minute appeal specifically trying to avoid one. Her own side spent Friday trying to stop this outcome from happening. So whose result is a hung jury, if the side that ended up stuck with it spent the day fighting it? And if nobody who was actually in that courtroom — not the jury, not the defense, not the judge — got anywhere near the word "guilty," where exactly did the page in my pocket get it?
“They call it a mistrial because twelve people couldn't agree, and before the paperwork's even filed the same crowd goes on TV and announces she's guilty anyway — that's not an opinion, that's a press release standing in for a jury box. It's a familiar move: if the system doesn't hand you the verdict you already wrote, you just skip the system and read the verdict anyway. And the part that should worry you isn't Lindsay Clancy — it's that they just told you, out loud, the jury box is optional as long as somebody's holding a microphone.”
“Look, a hung jury isn't a not-guilty, okay, so nobody's presuming anything that isn't already — she confessed, for God's sake, this was never some big whodunit. Did I just say the confession settles it? Because if the confession settles it we didn't need the trial, and if we needed the trial then maybe the President shouldn't be settling it from a podium the same afternoon — forget I said that.”
The receipts
A mistrial was declared in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial Friday, after her attorney's last-minute appeal failed.
The Massachusetts trial of Lindsay Clancy, the mother charged with murdering her three young children, ended in a hung jury on Friday. Shanelle Kaul reports and Caroline Polisi has legal analysis.
President Trump responded Friday to a judge’s decision to declare a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, weighing in for the first time on the legal battle that has captured national attention. “It’s a shame. It’s a horrible tragedy,”
The mistrial came after an extraordinary final day in which the defense made a last-ditch appeal to Massachusetts’ top court over a juror it said was blocking a not guilty verdict. NBC News’ Emilie Ikeda reports.
Shortly after the judge overseeing Lindsay Clancy's murder case declared a mistrial, President Trump called it a "terrible situation" and a "horrible tragedy."
The judge overseeing the Lindsay Clancy case declared a mistrial Friday after only a single juror prevented a unanimous verdict, purportedly because he was willing to convict the self-admitted baby killer. In a seeming bid to discredit the juror, Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, appeared to suggest the holdout juror might be…
· Judge in Lindsay Clancy trial orders jury to keep deliberating after stalemate from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy can't handle another trial, her lawyer says from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy verdict still within reach – retired Massachusetts judge pushes back on hung-jury predictions from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked for second time, judge orders "dynamite charge" from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.