By Nate Raymond
Sept 2 (Reuters) – Jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial reported on Wednesday that they remained deadlocked over whether to convict the Massachusetts woman for killing her three young children at her home in 2023, prompting the judge to instruct them a second time to keep deliberating.
Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, delivered special instructions, sometimes referred to as a “dynamite charge,” to encourage the 12 jurors to re-examine their positions and try to reach a unanimous decision. The trial is in its sixth week and its fifth day of deliberations.
The jury sent a similar note on Tuesday morning saying they were unable to make a unanimous decision. Sullivan had instructed them to keep deliberating, but they ended the day without reaching a verdict and returned on Wednesday to continue considering the case.
No one disputes that Clancy, 36, strangled her three children to death in 2023 with exercise bands in the basement of her home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-story window in an attempt to end her own life that paralyzed her.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought to convince jurors throughout the trial that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. He argued she was a loving mother who had been in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan on January 24, 2023.
POSTPARTUM MENTAL HEALTH IN FOCUS
The televised trial has revived long-simmering debates about how postpartum mental health in women is treated in the U.S. and how the country’s legal system addresses cases when mothers kill their children.
On Wednesday, before bringing in the jury, Sullivan warned everyone watching the trial that statutes and a court order forbid people from interfering with witnesses or jurors.
He issued the warning after Dawn Light of Sutton, Massachusetts, was arrested outside the courthouse on Tuesday following the jurors’ dismissal and accused of trying to record a video of jury members. A lawyer for Light during her arraignment on Wednesday said she had only been seeking to take a picture of Clancy.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Bario and Rod Nickel)
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