PLYMOUTH, Mass. (TCN) — Judge William Sullivan has rejected a motion from Lindsay Clancy’s defense team to dismiss her murder charges.
Clancy, 36, is charged with three counts of murder in connection with the strangulation deaths of her children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — at her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. She admitted to strangling all three children with exercise bands while the children’s father and her husband, Patrick Clancy, was running an errand, before attempting suicide.
At trial, her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued that Clancy was not criminally responsible for the children’s deaths due to postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors believe she was not psychotic and sent her husband out of the home on an errand so she could kill the three children. The highly publicized murder trial ended in a mistrial on Sept. 4, with jurors split 11-1 in Clancy’s favor.
On Nov. 2, Clancy and her team appeared in court for a hearing on whether she would be retried. Clancy’s team bid to have the charges dismissed on double jeopardy grounds and said the holdout juror should have been questioned. The prosecution requested that Sullivan dismiss the motions, as they are still seeking justice for the three slain children.
The Guardian reports Sullivan denied the motion to dismiss the charges on Nov. 9, stating that a retrial does not equate to double jeopardy — being prosecuted twice for the same crime.
ABC News reports Sullivan wrote, “Because the Court concludes that there was a manifest necessity for a mistrial 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 also denied a motion to investigate the holdout juror and a request from the prosecution for a gag order, per ABC.
Sullivan scheduled another hearing for Nov. 16 to discuss dates for a potential retrial. He has previously stated it could happen in March 2027, per The Guardian.
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