By Nate Raymond
Nov 9 (Reuters) – A Massachusetts judge cleared the way on Monday for Lindsay Clancy to be tried again on murder charges for killing her three young children at her home in 2023, saying a retrial would not unconstitutionally subject her to a double prosecution for the same crime.
Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth rejected a bid by Clancy’s attorneys to have the case against her dismissed. The judge on September 4 declared a mistrial after the jury reported that a holdout juror was preventing it from reaching a unanimous verdict.
The ruling means a second trial can occur next year. Sullivan has scheduled a November 16 hearing to discuss when to hold that trial, which he has suggested could occur in March.
Defense lawyers had argued that such a retrial would violate Clancy’s protection under the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment against being tried twice for the same crime, known as double jeopardy. They said Sullivan acted prematurely in declaring a mistrial and it was not manifestly necessary.
Citing jury notes that stated the holdout juror was not following the law on reasonable doubt despite the judge’s instructions, defense lawyers said Sullivan should have instead questioned the holdout and potentially removed the juror.
But Sullivan said the notes did not indicate the holdout had announced he was refusing to follow the law but instead suggested a disagreement among the jurors. Questioning the holdout in the midst of their deliberations would have as a result been “impermissibly coercive,” Sullivan wrote.
“Because the court concludes that there was a manifest necessity for a retrial based on the jury’s deadlock, a retrial on the murder indictments does not violate Clancy’s right not to be placed in double jeopardy,” Sullivan wrote.
The judge in a related decision declined to conduct a limited inquiry into the holdout, saying he saw no point in examining him under oath at this stage in the proceedings.
Lawyers for Clancy, 36, and a spokesperson for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.
No one at Clancy’s initial trial disputed that she strangled daughter Cora, 5; son Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old son Callan with exercise bands on January 24, 2023, in the basement of their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury.
She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-story window in an attempt to end her own life, leaving her paralyzed.
Her lawyers have argued Clancy was in the throes of postpartum psychosis and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, known in Massachusetts as lack of criminal responsibility.
Some of the jurors in televised interviews after the mistrial was declared said that, but for one holdout juror, they had been prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity.
Such a verdict would have resulted in her commitment to a state psychiatric hospital, subject to regular court review. In Massachusetts, a conviction on first-degree murder charges carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
