US jury deadlocked in trial of mother accused of killing three children
Jurors in the Massachusetts trial of Lindsay Clancy say they cannot reach a unanimous verdict after three days of deliberations. The judge has urged them to continue, as the case hinges on whether the former nurse was legally insane when she killed her three children.
A jury in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse from Massachusetts, has told a judge it is deadlocked after three days of deliberations. Judge William Sullivan read the jury's note in court on Tuesday, prompting audible gasps from the courtroom. He asked the panel to keep trying.
Clancy, 36, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder over the deaths of her children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan in January 2023. The children were found strangled with fitness bands at the family home. Clancy has been left paralysed after jumping from a second-floor window shortly after the killings; she sat in a wheelchair beside her lawyer during the proceedings.
Her defence lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time and could not tell right from wrong. Prosecutors, however, say the killings were calculated and intentional.
The jury of nine women and three men began deliberating last week, after hearing weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Clancy faces a mandatory life sentence without parole. The jury could also consider lesser verdicts: second-degree murder, which involves malice or extreme recklessness but not premeditation, or manslaughter, defined as an unintentional killing through wanton and reckless conduct. Both would carry prison time.
A verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity would not free her; she would be committed to a psychiatric hospital, with her status reviewed periodically, and could remain there for life.
