By Nate Raymond
Sept 4 (Reuters) – Jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial will begin a seventh day of deliberations on Friday after repeatedly hitting an impasse over whether to convict the Massachusetts woman of killing her three young children, a tragedy her lawyer says was driven by postpartum psychosis.
The 12 jurors are expected to reconvene in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a day after Judge William Sullivan rejected a request by Clancy’s lawyer to remove a lone juror who he said refused to listen to the judge’s instructions on what constitutes “reasonable doubt.”
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington requested the juror’s removal shortly after the judge received a jury note that prompted him to re-instruct them on the concept. Jurors can only find Clancy guilty of first-degree murder if the prosecution proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Jurors sent notes to the judge on Tuesday and Wednesday saying they were unable to come to a unanimous decision, but the judge each time instructed them to continue deliberating.
TRIAL FEATURED OVER 80 WITNESSES
If the jury does not reach a verdict and Sullivan declares a mistrial, prosecutors would need to decide whether to retry the case, which has featured over 80 witnesses and over 300 exhibits.
Clancy, 36, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If found not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, or reason of insanity, she could be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
She has admitted to strangling her three children to death on January 24, 2023, with exercise bands 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 that left her paralyzed.
During the six-week trial, Reddington sought to convince jurors that Clancy was in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.
Testimony from family members, including Clancy’s now ex-husband Patrick, detailed how she had struggled with her mental health in the months after the birth of her third child, repeatedly seeking treatment from healthcare providers who prescribed her a myriad of drugs.
Prosecutors do not dispute that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been dealing with mental health issues.
But they argued she was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of killing her children and intentionally chose to do so anyway, because she had decided to kill herself and was convinced they would suffer without her.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Bario and Rod Nickel)
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