Lindsay Clancy’s attempt to have a judge declare her not guilty has been rejected, leaving the Massachusetts mother facing unresolved murder charges nearly a month after her first trial ended without a verdict.
In a five-page decision issued Thursday, October 1, Plymouth Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan found that prosecutors had presented enough evidence for a jury to decide whether Clancy killed her three children and was criminally responsible for their deaths.
The ruling keeps the case open, but it does not amount to a conviction. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will seek a second trial.
Why the judge rejected Lindsay Clancy’s motion
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had asked Sullivan to enter a required finding of not guilty, challenging both the evidence identifying Clancy as the person responsible for the killings and the prosecution’s case concerning her criminal responsibility.
“Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington asked during Tuesday’s hearing, according to The Associated Press.
Sullivan rejected that argument. As ABC News detailed, he concluded that the evidence could “permit a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the charge of murder.”
The judge considered the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the standard governing this request. His task was to assess whether the evidence could support a conviction, rather than resolve the competing accounts himself.
According to WJAR’s account of the decision, Clancy was alone with the children while her husband, Patrick, picked up takeout and medication on January 24, 2023. Surveillance footage supported his account of those errands.
When Patrick returned, he found his wife injured outside the home and later discovered the children in the basement with exercise bands around their necks. Medical examiners testified that Cora and Dawson died from asphyxia, while Callan died from complications of mechanical asphyxia.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is charged in the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan at the family’s Duxbury home.
Mental-health dispute remains unresolved as another hearing approaches
Throughout the trial, the defense argued that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis and should be found not criminally responsible. Prosecutors maintained that she understood her actions.
Sullivan’s order addressed that disagreement directly. Both sides presented expert evidence of serious mental illness, but he wrote that “mental illness alone does not preclude a finding of criminal responsibility,” according to Boston 25 News.
Three prosecution experts testified that Clancy retained the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct and conform her actions to the law. Defense experts disagreed. Sullivan said deciding how much weight to give those opinions belonged to a jury.
The repeated jury deadlocks in Clancy’s first trial ultimately led to a mistrial on September 4. Several jurors subsequently said the panel had split 11–1 in favor of a finding of not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility.
A further hearing is scheduled for November 2 to address additional motions, PEOPLE confirmed. Reddington told the court he could not consider a new trial date before June 2027. No retrial date has been set.
For now, Thursday’s decision leaves the charges standing and the question that divided the first jury unresolved.
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