A hung jury is not mercy. It is unfinished business.

By Everett Kane

Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday in Plymouth Superior Court after the panel in Lindsay Clancy’s murder case reported, with a “heavy heart,” that it could not reach a unanimous verdict and would not be able to. Seven days. More than forty hours. Nine women, three men. No conviction. No acquittal. No free pass.

Clancy still faces murder charges in the January 2023 deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in Duxbury. She remains held at a state psychiatric hospital. Sullivan set a hearing for Sept. 29. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said his office would not decide Friday whether to retry her. He did say this: “The facts are Lindsay Clancy killed her three children and the evidence suggested to us that she was in control of her actions when she committed those homicides.”

That is the case. A mistrial does not erase it.

The defense never disputed that she caused the deaths. It asked for not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility — Massachusetts language for an insanity defense — and sold postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors conceded mental illness and a suicide attempt. They did not concede that illness wiped out her knowledge of right and wrong. Competing experts. Contested diagnosis. The jury could not agree. That is not a social-media pardon.

Online, the husband-did-it cut never belonged in the courtroom. Patrick Clancy was not charged. Prosecutors never said he played a role. Trial evidence put him at a pharmacy and a restaurant while she was home. He called 911. His remarriage and move are gossip, not a second indictment. A true-crime crowd with a ring light does not get to rewrite the defendant.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, outside court, suggested one juror stood in the way of an acquittal and that the others were “robbed.” Maybe. Maybe not. A single holdout is not a finding of innocence. It is a finding that twelve people could not speak with one voice on criminal responsibility.

Massachusetts does not treat a diagnosis as a release form. Lack of criminal responsibility under the McHoul standard requires a mental disease or defect that left a person unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct or unable to conform it to the law. Illness alone is not enough. A mistrial puts the choice back on the Commonwealth: retry, plea, or fold. Folding would be a political answer to a legal question.

Three children are dead. Their mother is still the defendant. The father is still a witness, not a co-defendant. Sympathy is not a verdict. Neither is a deadlock.

Cruz should retry. Keep the nine seats in the jury box filled. Do not let a hung panel do what the evidence did not.

Mara Ellis, a colleague, writes: Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday in Lindsay Clancy’s murder case after the Plymouth jury told the court, with what WBUR reported as a “heavy heart,” that it still could not agree. Reuters and BBC put the deadlock after about a week of deliberations and weeks of trial. That is not a finding she didn’t kill Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan in their Duxbury home in January 2023. It is a hung jury on whether she is criminally responsible. I have a baby in the next room when I write this. Empathy for a sick mother is not a pass for three dead children.

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told reporters Friday his office had not decided on a retrial, per Reuters. The kids stay dead either way. Patrick Clancy was the husband who came home to that house. Lindsay Clancy is the defendant. Don’t move the blame onto the man who wasn’t holding the bands. A mistrial is process. It is not mercy for the crime.

More on The Hill: https://capitolandcleats.com/the-hill

Also: https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/the-husband-didnt-do-it-lindsay-clancy-2026-09-01

Also: https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/house-passes-stopgap-dec-11-2026-09-01