A Massachusetts jury deadlocked Tuesday on whether a mother who strangled her three young children with exercise bands is a murderer or a mental health casualty—proving that the insanity defense industrial complex has made it nearly impossible to hold child killers accountable.
Lindsay Clancy doesn't deny the killings. She admits she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan in the basement of her Duxbury home in January 2023. The only question the jury of nine women and three men must answer is whether her claimed postpartum psychosis erases criminal responsibility. After four days and roughly 18 hours of deliberations over 80 witnesses and 300 exhibits, they can't agree.
Judge William Sullivan instructed the jury to keep deliberating rather than declare a mistrial. If they deadlock again, Sullivan could issue a "Tuey-Rodriguez charge"—known colloquially as the dynamite charge, which, as Boston attorney Peter Elikann explained to the New York Post, "really pushes the jury and urges them to try to come to a unanimous decision." If that fails, a mistrial would follow.
Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, told reporters he would "absolutely" retry the case if the jury hangs. The New York Post noted that Reddington has been labeled a "feminist icon" by supporters calling him the "voice of so many moms"—a revealing glimpse into whose suffering the establishment press chooses to center.
The defense hinges on the claim that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, "lost her grip on reality" due to postpartum psychosis and heard a voice commanding her to kill. Her attorneys emphasized that she had been prescribed 13 different sleep and anxiety medications in the months before the killings, arguing the cocktail may have worsened her condition. She had sought treatment, including a psychiatric hospital stay.
Prosecutors countered that Clancy was not in psychosis but was "depressed and tired of living," and made a conscious choice to murder her children before attempting suicide. Her husband Patrick was out running errands when she killed the kids. He returned to find her outside beneath a second-story window after a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
Under Massachusetts law, a defendant must retain "the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of their conduct" to be found guilty. The jury can convict of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter—or find her not guilty or not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. Even an acquittal wouldn't mean freedom: a judge could still confine her to a mental health facility.
Notably, both Lindsay and Patrick Clancy have filed civil litigation against her medical and mental healthcare providers for malpractice—claiming they failed to properly diagnose and treat her. The follow-the-money trail doesn't end at the criminal courtroom. The mental health industry that may have failed these children is now the subject of lawsuits by the very people at the center of their deaths.
The jury resumes deliberations Wednesday. The question hanging over Duxbury—and over every American who expects the justice system to protect children—is whether a diagnosis is now a license to kill.
