Lindsay Clancy returned to court on Tuesday, as her lawyers sought to head off a retrial by having a judge find the Massachusetts woman not guilty of murder for the killing of her three young children in 2023. Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, took up the issue after declaring a mistrial on 4 September, which occurred after a single juror prevented the 12-member jury from reaching a unanimous verdict on whether to convict Clancy or find her not guilty by reason of insanity. The office of the Plymouth county district attorney, Timothy Cruz, has in the weeks since been silent on whether it plans to retry Clancy, 36, on first-degree murder charges, which carry a life sentence.
No one at Clancy’s trial disputed that she strangled her three children with exercise bands on 24 January 2023 in the basement of their 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, which left her paralyzed. Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington during her first trial sought to convince jurors that she did not understand what she was doing was wrong and that she had been in the throes of postpartum psychosis when she killed Cora, five; Dawson, three; and eight-month-old Callan.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Reddington told Sullivan that there was a “total and complete lack of evidence” at the trial to prove she killed the children and knew what she was doing was wrong. He said non-lawyers had trouble understanding the idea that someone could admit culpability while maintaining a lack of criminal responsibility. That was leading many members of the public to call Clancy a “demon” and call for her execution, he said.
Several jurors have in televised interviews stated that but for the one holdout juror, they had been prepared to find her not guilty by reason of insanity, known in Massachusetts as lack of criminal responsibility. If found not guilty on those grounds, she would be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation. Her commitment would then be subject to regular review by the court.
Prosecutors have several options before them, including trying to reach a plea deal or retrying Clancy on lesser second-degree murder charges, which would give her the option to waive a jury trial and proceed before a judge. Clancy’s lawyers have filed a series of motions seeking to head off the possibility of a retrial, by urging Sullivan to declare her not guilty and bar a retrial on the grounds that there was no reason to declare a mistrial and that it would as a result violate her right to avoid being tried twice for the same crime, known as double jeopardy. They say jurors had been clear in notes delivered to the judge that the holdout had been refusing to apply the court’s instructions on how to determine if prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the juror should have been dismissed rather than allowing the case to be retried.
Her attorneys have also asked Sullivan to allow them to review normally confidential records about the jury and the holdout and question him about his truthfulness during the jury selection process and his cellphone use. Sullivan said he would take up that issue and several other motions during a 2 November hearing. The holdout’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, told Fox News in an interview that aired on Monday that his client Michael Desronvil “had zero doubt” and “rigidly applied the reasonable doubt standard”.
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