After a mistrial split 11 to 1 in her favor, Lindsay Clancy’s legal team is now challenging whether prosecutors ever proved she committed the killings at all.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington made the argument during the first court hearing since a Plymouth, Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial on September 4, following a six-week trial.
The jury’s near-unanimous lean toward Clancy adds significant weight to Reddington’s renewed motion for a required finding of not guilty.
Reddington argued that the evidence presented at trial was legally insufficient for a rational jury to find Clancy guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of killing her three children.
The children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan, died in January 2023 in what prosecutors described as killings carried out by their mother.
During the original trial, the defense did not dispute that Clancy killed the children, instead arguing she was not criminally responsible due to a rare condition called postpartum psychosis.
Reddington told the court there was not a full investigation into the deaths, saying, “They just immediately assumed that this woman was guilty.”
Prosecutors dismissed the new line of argument, calling the allegation “laughable,” a sharp rebuke to what they view as a dramatic and contradictory shift in defense strategy.
The new approach appeared to conflict with Reddington’s own opening statement in July, in which he said Clancy “knows what happened to those kids.”
Massachusetts defense attorney Elyse Hershon offered context on the legal standard at play, telling CNN, “Whether or not a lawyer concedes, though, that their client did it as part of the defense, the commonwealth still has to prove it was her.”
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, never personally admitted to the killings throughout the trial proceedings.
Reddington had previously sought to bifurcate the trial into two separate phases, one to determine guilt and one to determine criminal responsibility, but the judge denied that motion earlier in the year.
That denial forced Reddington into a difficult strategic position, requiring him to address both guilt and mental state simultaneously before the same jury.
A possible plea agreement has not been ruled out, though both Clancy’s attorney and the Plymouth County district attorney have remained tight-lipped about any progress on that front.
The defense has formally asked the judge to dismiss the criminal case entirely, while prosecutors have not yet announced whether they intend to retry Clancy.
The next scheduled hearing in the case is set for November 2, when the court is expected to address the motion and potentially clarify the path forward.
