Eleven of the twelve jurors in the trial of Lindsay Clancy were reportedly prepared to acquit the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three young children.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on Friday after seven days and more than 38 hours of deliberations. According to defence attorney Kevin Reddington, 11 jurors voted to acquit, while a single male juror refused to join them. The jury consisted of nine women and three men, and The New York Times reported that most were white. If Reddington’s account is correct, all nine women were therefore among the 11 jurors prepared to acquit Clancy.
Clancy, 36, does not deny killing five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan at the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on 24 January 2023. She strangled the children with exercise bands while her husband was collecting medicine and takeaway food, before jumping from a second-storey window and leaving herself paralysed.
Her lawyers argued that postpartum psychosis meant she was not criminally responsible. Prosecutors maintained that Clancy was depressed but not psychotic and deliberately created an opportunity to be alone with the children before killing them. The central question was therefore never whether Clancy killed her children, but whether she should be held criminally responsible for doing so.
The reported 11–1 comes after weeks of an bizarre public campaign of women identifying with Clancy online. As previously reported by Hungarian Conservative, mothers posted ‘Same, Lindsay’ videos on TikTok, sometimes while holding their own children, while hundreds of mostly female supporters dressed in pink gathered outside the courthouse. The phenomenon was criticized by conservatives for shifting sympathy away from three murdered children and towards the woman who killed them.
After the mistrial, social media erupted. Clancy supporters, many of them women and mothers who had also rallied around her online, expressed outrage over the lone male holdout and vowed to return ‘in bigger numbers’ if prosecutors stage a second trial. Outside the courthouse, demonstrators interrupted Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz’s press conference with cries of ‘Shame!’, ‘Vote him out!’, and accusations that he was ‘corrupt’.
Cruz nevertheless returned attention to the victims, saying: ‘Children were murdered, and it’s our job to seek justice.’ Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to retry Clancy. Her next hearing is scheduled for 29 September.
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