The criminal case against Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her three children in 2023, will not be dismissed. A judge in the US state of Massachusetts has rejected a request filed by her defense team.
The ruling leaves open the possibility of a second trial. The first trial ended without a verdict because the jury could not agree. Clancy’s lawyers sought to have the charges dismissed, arguing that a retrial would violate the legal prohibition against being tried twice for the same crime.
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Judge William Sullivan rejected that argument. He found that the first trial had been declared a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. According to the BBC, the proceedings ended on September 4, when the 12 jurors could not agree on whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty.
Clancy does not deny causing the deaths of her three children. Her defense team says, however, that at the time she was suffering from a severe form of postpartum psychosis that had seriously affected her mental state. Prosecutors, for their part, insist the killings were intentional and want the prosecution to continue.
Sullivan also rejected the defense’s request to question under oath the sole juror who had opposed reaching a verdict. The judge called such a step inappropriate and an intrusion on the jury’s independence.
In explaining his ruling, he stressed that the jurors’ failure to agree was sufficient reason to declare a mistrial. In his view, holding a new trial does not violate Clancy’s constitutional rights.
A hearing has been scheduled for November 16, when the timetable for the retrial is expected to be discussed. The judge had previously mentioned March as a possible month for the second trial to begin.
