By Nate Raymond
Sept 1 (Reuters) – A jury weighing whether Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy should be convicted of killing her three young children was sent home on Tuesday after telling the judge it was deadlocked, with deliberations set to resume on Wednesday.
Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, had instructed the 12 jurors to keep deliberating after they sent him a note saying they were at an impasse after four days of deliberations in a trial that began nearly six weeks ago and featured more than 80 witnesses and over 300 exhibits.
Her lawyer has urged jurors to find her not guilty of first-degree murder, putting on an insanity defense based on the contention that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three young children.
“After many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision,” the jury said in the note, according to Sullivan.
After five more hours of deliberations, jurors asked to go home and return on Wednesday morning.
“I just want to thank you for all your hard work and commitment so far in this case,” Sullivan said as he dismissed them for the evening.
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.
The jury’s note on Tuesday was only the second from the jury since deliberations began. On Friday, jurors asked to see prescription pill bottles and a knife that Clancy had used to cut herself, according to her attorney. They asked no questions on Monday.
No one disputes that Clancy, 36, strangled her three children to death in January 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 left her paralyzed.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought during the trial to convince jurors that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that 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.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, 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.
Prosecutors during the trial focused on evidence showing how shortly before the killings, Clancy had sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out to pick up a food order and go to a pharmacy after mapping on her phone the time it would take for him to return home.
Upon his return, he discovered her lying on the ground in the backyard with cuts on her wrists and neck. After first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy said he ran to the basement, where his wife said the children were, and discovered them with exercise bands tied around their necks.
He and other witnesses testified that Clancy later told them that she had heard a man’s voice tell her that if she did not act, she would lose her chance. Reddington argued that was evidence she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the moment of the tragedy after months of struggling with her mental health.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Bario, Nick Zieminski and Howard Goller)
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