Lindsay Clancy is going back to trial.
In a Plymouth, Massachusetts courtroom Monday, prosecutors announced they intend to retry Clancy for killing her three children, two months after her first trial ended in a hung jury.
"Your honor, this would be a retrial," Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told Judge William Sullivan. "As to what that looks like will depend."
Sullivan said he hopes to start the new trial in March.
Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Callan was 8 months old. On January 24, 2023, in the basement of the family's home in Duxbury, Clancy strangled each of them with exercise bands. Then she cut her own wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window.
She survived. Her children didn't.
Clancy never denied killing them. At her trial this summer, her lawyers argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and couldn't be held criminally responsible, Massachusetts' version of the insanity defense. The jury split 11 to 1. Eleven jurors were ready to find her not criminally responsible, which would have sent her to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. One juror held out. Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4.
Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has spent the two months since trying to make sure there's never a second trial. He's even called for a presidential pardon. And he's publicly said the other eleven jurors were "robbed" by the one who held out.
On Monday, the defense asked Sullivan to throw out the murder charges entirely. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg argued that the judge should have dug deeper after other jurors complained the holdout wasn't following instructions, and that trying Clancy again would violate double jeopardy. Her lawyers say a second trial would force her "to live with a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity."
Anxiety and insecurity, for a woman who strangled three small children.
Sullivan pointed out that he did question the jurors one by one before he declared the mistrial.
Prosecutors had a simple answer. "It's not for the trial judge to choose sides in a deadlocked jury and decide," Sprague said. A hung jury is a hung jury, even when the defense doesn't like the juror who held out.
Reddington then went after the holdout directly. He claims the man used his phone during deliberations to research "altruistic filicide," the idea of a parent killing their children because they believe it's for the children's good. He also says the juror lied about his criminal history on his jury questionnaire. He wants the man's phone and phone records, and he said the juror's name out loud in court until the judge told him to stop.
The juror now has his own lawyer, Heather O'Connor. She said all of those claims surfaced after the jury had already been sent home, and that her client "does not concede any of those allegations."
Prosecutors want Reddington to stop trying the case in the press. They've asked for a gag order, saying his public comments, including the pardon request and the "robbed" line, were "calculated to affect the public's perception of the case." The defense calls a gag order unconstitutional.
Here's what the insanity defense has to get around. Before the killings, according to prosecutors, Clancy sent her husband out to pick up takeout and medicine. That gave her a short window alone with the children. A woman too sick to understand what she was doing still made sure no other adult was in the house.
Prosecutors haven't said yet whether they'll bring the same three first-degree murder charges or something lesser. Reddington is pushing them to decide. "Why do we not know if the next trial will be murder in the first degree, or a lesser charge or no charge?" he asked.
Sullivan is weighing all of it: the motion to dismiss, the holdout juror and the gag order. The parties are due back November 16. If the judge rejects the motion to dismiss, they'll pick a trial date.
Reddington wants a pardon, a dismissal or a jury of eleven. Prosecutors want another chance to make the case for Cora, Dawson and Callan. If the judge sides with them, they'll get it in March.