Lindsay Clancy Judge Finally Declares Mistrial After She Appealed To Remove Holdout Juror: What Happens Next?

Lindsay Clancy asked Massachusetts’ highest court to step in and force the judge overseeing her high-profile triple murder trial to question or remove a juror who has reportedly become a holdout before declaring a mistrial. However, Judge William Sullivan has officially declared it a mistrial.

“At this point I’m going to declare that the jury is deadlocked and I’m going to declare a mistrial,” Sullivan said to the jury. Clancy’s attorneys had earlier filed an emergency appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, arguing that Sullivan made the wrong decision by refusing to question a male juror who allegedly has not been properly applying the legal standard for reasonable doubt.

Clancy at Last Makes Demand

Earlier Friday, Reddington urged Sullivan to question the juror, but the judge rejected the request. Sullivan had already questioned each juror individually Thursday but the deadlock stayed even after that.

Sullivan asked each juror whether they were capable of following his instructions on the law. He then went over his instructions on reasonable doubt with the entire panel again. “A mistrial at this point is entirely avoidable, but only if the court does its job,” Clancy’s attorney, Dana Goldblatt, wrote in the appeal.

Clancy’s lawyers are specifically asking the appeals court to decide whether the juror is capable of “to apply the law” and prevent him from taking part in further deliberations “until the court determines … the juror is willing and able to follow the court’s instructions.”

“Intervention is necessary in this case to avoid an avoidable mistrial of a case that is so time and labor intensive and that has captured so much public attention,” the filing states. “It is also necessary to preserve the defendant’s right to a fair trial by unbiased jurors applying the law.”

The 12-member jury, made up of nine women and three men, had deliberated for more than 38 hours over the course of more than a week when Sullivan was preparing to declare a mistrial Friday after receiving the panel’s third deadlock note.

The jury is deciding whether to convict the 36-year-old Duxbury mother of first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan. The children were killed on Jan. 24, 2023.

Court Goes into Chaos

Redding has asked jurors to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis when she allegedly heard a voice telling her to kill her children and herself.

Prosecutors, however, have argued that Clancy intentionally planned the killings because she was overwhelmed by caring for the children and wanted to end her life while taking them with her.

Jurors sent four notes to the judge — one on Tuesday, another on Wednesday, a third on Thursday and a fourth, seemingly final note on Friday — saying they remained deadlocked over whether Clancy was guilty of murdering her three young children in December 2023.

The final note read: ”It is with a heavy heart that we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to.’

Clancy’s defense filed a last-ditch, Hail Mary motion on Friday, which was presented to Associate Justice Dalia Argaez Wendlandt of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court at around 2 p.m. ET.

The brief hearing was held over Zoom shortly before 2 p.m., with Wendlandt presiding. After hearing arguments from both sides, she said she would take some time to consider the matter and issue a ruling as quickly as possible.

However, now, a mistrial has officially been announced.