Request for Clancy, 36, to be acquitted turned down nearly a month after first trial ended with deadlocked jury The judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder case on Thursday refused to declare her not guilty, turning down a defense motion that had argued there was not enough evidence to prove she was responsible for killing her three children.…
Page A2From§Eachthe supper edition — 1 October 2026
Hung jury couldn't decide if evidence was enough; judge rules alone that it is.
As it ran on the front
On September 2, the jury trying Lindsay Clancy for the deaths of her three children went home for a fifth night without a verdict, telling the judge for the second time that it could not decide whether she was criminally responsible. The judge sent them back anyway, under what the law calls a "dynamite charge" — an instruction to keep blasting at a wall that will not move. It did not move. The next day, the defense said one juror, the lone holdout, was the only thing standing between the room and a unanimous verdict; the foreperson's note said he was not following the court's own instructions on reasonable doubt. The hour ran out. He declared the mistrial he had given the jury seven days to avoid.
Six days after that, the defense tried to end it for good: attorney Kevin Reddington asked the judge to simply find Clancy not guilty, arguing that the commonwealth's own expert and the defense's agreed she suffered a severe mental illness, and that no one had proven she killed her children. Twelve days after that motion, the defense asked the same judge to look into something else — whether the holdout juror who caused the collapse had been on a phone during deliberations. Both questions sat in front of Sullivan at once: did the state prove its case, and did the one juror who stopped the first twelve from answering that question follow the rules while stopping it.…
…(cont) On Thursday, the judge answered the first question, not the second. He ruled a rational jury could find Clancy guilty and sent the case back toward another trial. The cellphone inquiry — the thing that might explain why the first jury never got to vote — remains open, unresolved, parked while the machine resets to day one.
A hung jury is supposed to be the system's shrug, not its policy. Here it is becoming the policy: deadlock, order more deliberation, deadlock again, mistrial, deny the exit, retry. Every other door stays open. That one stays shut, for now, while the case — and the three dead children at the center of it — goes back to the start.
“Twelve people couldn't agree there was enough evidence, so one guy in a robe just decided there was — and the juror who torpedoed the first jury's phone still hasn't been checked out. That's not justice moving slow, that's justice picking which questions get answered and which get parked for next time. The kids are still dead either way; the docket's the only thing that got a second shot.”
“The judge followed the standard, plain and simple — "a rational jury could find her guilty," that's the bar, nothing political about it. As for the juror's phone, that's a separate administrative matter, totally unrelated to the mistrial — wait, no, that's actually the reason the mistrial happened. Did I say unrelated? Strike that.”
The receipts
Judge William Sullivan's ruling puts Clancy one step closer to a potential retrial.
The Massachusetts judge overseeing Lindsay Clancy’s trial declined defense attorney Kevin Reddington’s request to find the mother accused of killing her three children not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility after a mistrial was declared last month. Reddington had argued that the commonwealth and defense’s expert witnesses agreed…
Judge William Sullivan ruled that evidence permitted a rational jury to find Lindsay Clancy guilty of murder, rejecting her not guilty motion.
The judge denied a request from Lindsay Clancy's attorney to find her not guilty of murder in the 2023 deaths of her three children following her mistrial last month.
· Lindsay Clancy attorney asks judge to acquit client and end murder case from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy judge declares a mistrial after the state’s top court denies defense’s appeal from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked for second time, judge orders "dynamite charge" from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy defense attorney asks judge to investigate holdout juror over alleged cellphone use from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy judge gives defense one hour to file stay before mistrial declared from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Single holdout juror preventing unanimous verdict in Lindsay Clancy trial, defense claims from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.