A Massachusetts jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a mother accused of murdering her three children, and a mistrial has been declared by Judge William Sullivan.
The ۱۲-person jury was made up of nine women and three men and, according to the notes given to the court, was split ۱۱ to one.
Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children at their home near Boston, but says she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that led to her actions. After the killings, her husband found her injured in the yard, where she landed after jumping from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors argued she knew what she was doing in a deliberate act of murder.
So what happens now?
Mistrial
A mistrial means the case essentially goes back to the same status as before the trial began, with the ۳۶-year-old former nurse charged with murder and held at a psychiatric hospital awaiting a resolution of the criminal case.
Will prosecutors try again?
Prosecutors have to decide whether to try again with a new jury for the case. If they do attempt a second trial, the jury selection process would begin again and a new trial would be scheduled. However, the exact type of charges could potentially be different.
Plea deal?
Prosecutors could also offer a plea deal to Clancy, said Brad Bailey, a Boston defense attorney and legal expert. “Any time the threat of a retrial with murder one hanging over the client is re-interjected, defense lawyers will, at the very least, explore whether or not there’s any interest in a resolution,” Bailey told the Associated Press.
Give up?
The district attorney’s office could also decide to not retry the case out of a sense that another mistrial is likely in the complex and emotional case.
“Sometimes they decide not to, because of the sense that there may be the same result each time they try it, and because of the expenditures involved in trying the case to begin with, particularly when you have expert witnesses,” Bailey said. “Those are going to be expensive cases.”
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What will the defense do?
Clancy’s defense team will almost certainly push to drop the charges against their client.
Bailey expected her defense attorney to aggressively lobby against another trial if a mistrial is declared, making a case to the district attorney’s office along the lines of: “‘Why are you doing this to this poor woman? She’s still clearly obviously suffering. She’s been punished with her paralysis and, worse than that, the loss of her three children.’”
The court has set a status conference for ۹am ET on ۲۹ September.
In the US, the national maternal mental health hotline is ۱-۸۳۳-۸۵۲-۶۲۶۲. In the UK, the Pandas foundation offers support via WhatsApp on ۰۷۹۰۳ ۵۰۸۳۳۴. In Australia, the national maternal and perinatal mental health hotline is ۱۳۰۰ ۷۲۶ ۳۰۶.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
