Judge takes Lindsay Clancy's bid to dismiss murder indictments under advisement
Her lawyers say the mistrial was not necessary and bars a second trial. Prosecutors say the jury was deadlocked and the case should go on.
SOUTH COAST A Plymouth Superior Court judge on Monday took under advisement Lindsay Clancy's motion to dismiss the murder indictments against her, after her lawyers argued that trying her a second time would violate her constitutional protection against double jeopardy and prosecutors asked that the case go forward.
Judge William Sullivan heard about 45 minutes of argument on the motion, which says he ended Clancy's first trial in September without questioning the lone holdout juror closely enough to show the mistrial was necessary. "I'm going to take this under advisement and I'll get this out as soon as I can," Sullivan said at the end of the argument. He did not rule from the bench or say when his decision would come.
The defense: a closer look at the holdout juror
Martin G. Weinberg, the lawyer Clancy added to her defense in September to handle the double jeopardy motion, NBC 10 WJAR reported, asked Sullivan to "reconsider the trial decisions and to grant the motion to dismiss" on jury trial and double jeopardy grounds under the federal and state constitutions. He said the judge made his rulings on Sept. 3 and 4 "in the heat of battle," as the jury deliberated and sent out notes, without the extensive briefing the court now has.
Weinberg read from the two notes the jury foreperson sent the judge on Sept. 3. The first said a member of the jury was unable to follow the instructions on reasonable doubt and asked how the jury should proceed. The second, which the judge took up the next morning, said a juror had acknowledged doubt but refused to apply it to the verdict as the law states, and that this was why the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. Those notes, Weinberg said, called for a "probing voir dire," closer questioning of the jurors to learn whether the 12th juror was deliberating in good faith and could follow the law.
Sullivan pressed him on that point. "Didn't I bring the jurors in? Didn't I swear them in? Didn't I ask each individual one," the judge said. "So you say you should have done it a second time." Weinberg answered that "a single question" that drew an assurance from all 12 jurors "is simply constitutionally insufficient to probe what was going on in that jury room."
Weinberg said the law puts a heavy burden on prosecutors to justify a mistrial, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Arizona v. Washington, and that closer questioning was a viable alternative that could have led to the juror being replaced and deliberations continuing "with an alternative juror." He said Kevin Reddington, Clancy's trial lawyer, objected to the mistrial and asked for that questioning while the jurors were still together. "Nobody here wants to chill jury deliberations or extinguish the right of a holdout juror," Weinberg said.
When Weinberg compared it with the questioning of prospective jurors before a high-profile trial, Sullivan said an inquiry during deliberations is a different matter, "where I have to be careful, right, not to delve into the jurors' subjective reasoning or deliberative content."
The prosecution: a deadlocked jury
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, who wrote the Commonwealth's opposition to the motion, WBUR reported, told the judge a deadlocked jury is the traditional example of the manifest necessity that allows a mistrial, and that the court explored the alternatives each time a note came out. The notes described a disagreement over the evidence and over whether there was reasonable doubt, she said. "That's for the jury to decide, not for us to decide, not for the court to decide," Sprague said. "It is clear from the record that this juror did not refuse to deliberate. He refused to agree."
Sprague said Sullivan questioned each juror individually under oath and then instructed the whole jury on reasonable doubt, which answered the foreperson's concern without singling out the holdout. "I can't think of a single question the court could have asked either the foreperson or the holdout juror or anyone else that wouldn't have gotten into the deliberative process," she said. She told the judge the jury deliberated for six days, including 26 to 27 hours before it was given the instruction judges use for a deadlocked jury, and that she could not find a case in which a mistrial was followed by a dismissal on double jeopardy grounds.
"The remedy is not a dismissal of the indictments entirely, thereby foreclosing any pursuit of justice for the victims," Sprague said. "The defendant's motion to dismiss should be denied." In a short rebuttal, Weinberg said, "If there was no manifest necessity, the remedy is that there's no second trial. The law is completely clear about that."
Sullivan then took up a defense motion to preserve records and for a limited inquiry of the juror, whom the court calls Juror Doe. The defense argued that information that surfaced after the mistrial, including claims about the juror's conduct during deliberations, raised questions about whether Clancy received due process. When a defense lawyer began to say the juror's name, Sullivan stopped him and said there was no need to use it in the courtroom. In his Oct. 21 order, the judge wrote that evidence that came to light only after the mistrial "simply is not relevant" to whether the mistrial was necessary, ABC News reported.
A lawyer who appeared for Juror Doe asked the judge to deny the motion as it relates to the juror. "We are here because Juror Doe did not vote the way that the defense needed," she said. Sullivan took that motion under advisement as well, just before 11 a.m., and called a short recess before arguments on the last motion on Monday's list, a prosecution request for an order limiting what lawyers on both sides may say about the case outside court.
During the records argument, a defense lawyer noted that District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz was in the courtroom and asked whether the court could learn that day whether he intends to try Clancy again. Sullivan said he wanted to get through the motions first. "Then we can talk about where we go in regards to this case," he said. The court was in recess when this story was filed late Monday morning, and no trial date had been set.
How the case got here
A Plymouth County grand jury indicted Clancy on three counts each of murder and strangulation in the deaths of her three children, a 5-year-old girl, a 3-year-old boy and an 8-month-old, at the family's Duxbury home, District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz announced in September 2023. The 911 call from the home came on Jan. 24, 2023, the office said.
Clancy's trial this summer ran seven weeks. Sullivan declared a mistrial after the jury, split 11 to 1 in favor of finding her not guilty by reason of insanity, could not reach the unanimous verdict the law requires, ABC News reported. The trial ended Sept. 4, The Associated Press reported. Her lawyers argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not be held criminally responsible; prosecutors argued she was responsible for the killings.
On Oct. 1, Sullivan denied a defense motion to find her not guilty for lack of evidence, the AP reported. On Oct. 21, he refused a defense request for an evidentiary hearing into the holdout juror, writing that any further judicial inquiry into the jury was inappropriate, according to his order as ABC News quoted it. Our earlier report covers that ruling. In a filing last week, Sprague asked the judge to deny the motion to dismiss and "allow the Commonwealth to continue to pursue justice" for the children, WBUR reported.
What comes next
Sullivan will rule on the motion to dismiss in writing. If he finds the mistrial was not a manifest necessity, Weinberg told him, there can be no second trial; if he denies the motion, the indictments stand. The district attorney's office has not said publicly whether it will try Clancy again, WBUR and NBC Boston reported.
The case is prosecuted by the Plymouth County district attorney's office, which handles Superior Court prosecutions across the county, including the South Coast towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, Rochester and Wareham. Clancy has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.
Notes
Everything said in court Nov. 2 comes from the Courts desk's own watch of the hearing on the Court TV broadcast of the pool camera, from 9:18 a.m., followed through a text transcript of the broadcast audio that the desk kept as notes; quotes are used only where the wording was clean, and the rest is paraphrased. Sullivan's words taking the motion under advisement are from our watch at 10:06 and 10:07 a.m. The docket number, session and lawyers of record come from the court's Nov. 2 daily list. We name the lawyers who argued from the record, not from their voices: Weinberg is a lawyer of record on the daily list, the judge called on him to argue the motion first, and NBC 10 WJAR reported in September that he joined the defense to handle it; Sprague was named in court as appearing for the Commonwealth, the only prosecutor named, and WBUR and NBC Boston reported that she wrote the opposition. The charges, the date of the 911 call and the children's ages come from the Plymouth County district attorney's Sept. 15, 2023 release. The trial history and the Oct. 21 order are as ABC News reported them; the Sept. 4 end of the trial and the Oct. 1 ruling are as The Associated Press reported them; Sprague's filing is as WBUR reported it, with NBC Boston as a second newsroom. The three children are not named; ages only. The holdout juror is not named. We checked each date and weekday against a calendar. Not heard yet: we asked the Plymouth County district attorney's office, Clancy's lawyers and the Trial Court's public information office for comment and the docket on Nov. 2, and will add any answer.
Corrections
No corrections to this story. If something here is wrong, tell us. Every correction is dated on the story and listed in our public log.
Sources (8)
- Court TV live broadcast of the Nov. 2, 2026 motion hearing in Commonwealth v. Lindsay Clancy, Plymouth Superior Court (pool camera)Everything said in the courtroom: the motions listed, the appearance of Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague for the Commonwealth as read in court, the order of argument the judge set, the arguments on each side, the judge's questions, and the judge taking the motion under advisement at 10:06 a.m. Watched live by the Courts desk from 9:18 a.m. EST through the transcript the desk kept as text (no audio or video saved); quotes used only where the wording is clean. Watched Nov. 2, 2026.
- Plymouth County Superior Court daily list for Monday, Nov. 2, 2026 (printed Nov. 1, 2026, 9:18 p.m.; linked as "View daily list (PDF)" on the court's mass.gov location page)Docket 2383CR00198, Clancy, Lindsay Marie; attorneys Laura B. McConnell, Kevin Joseph Reddington and Martin G. Weinberg; Motion Hearing, 9 a.m., Criminal 4, Plymouth. Read Nov. 1, 2026, 10 p.m. EST (sources/daily-lists-1102/plym-sup-1186.pdf).
- WBUR: Lindsay Clancy is due in court Monday. The hearing may settle if she'll face new trial, Oct. 30, 2026Sprague's filing and its quoted line, the motions before the judge, and that the district attorney's office has not revealed whether it will seek a new trial. Read Nov. 2, 2026, 7:53 a.m. EST (sources/clancy-1102/wbur-2026-10-30-status-hearing.html).
- NBC Boston: New motions in Lindsay Clancy case. Here's the latest ahead of Monday hearing, Oct. 29, 2026Second newsroom on the filings, Judge William Sullivan, and the district attorney not announcing whether the office will retry the case. Read Nov. 2, 2026, 7:53 a.m. EST (sources/clancy-1102/nbcboston-new-motions.html).
- NBC 10 WJAR: Lindsay Clancy adds attorney to her defense team, Sept. 16, 2026That Martin Weinberg joined the defense to handle the double jeopardy motion to dismiss. Read Nov. 2, 2026, 10:44 a.m. EST (sources/clancy-hearing-1102/verify-1040/wjar-0916.html).
- ABC News: Lindsay Clancy murder trial: Judge denies request to question holdout juror, Oct. 21, 2026The Oct. 21 order as quoted, the 11 to 1 split and the seven-week trial. Re-read in full Nov. 1, 2026, 1:52 p.m. EST (sources/clancy-ruling-1102/abcnews-2026-10-21-holdout-juror.html).
- PBS NewsHour (The Associated Press): Judge denies motion asking for Lindsay Clancy to be found not guilty due to lack of evidence, Oct. 1, 2026The Sept. 4 end of the trial and the Oct. 1 ruling. Read Nov. 1, 2026, 1:52 p.m. EST (sources/clancy-ruling-1102/pbs-ap-2026-10-01-required-finding.html).
- Plymouth County District Attorney: Duxbury woman indicted on charges that she murdered her three children (Sept. 15, 2023)Three counts each of murder and strangulation; Duxbury; the 911 call on Jan. 24, 2023; the children's ages; District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz. Re-read Nov. 1, 2026, 1:53 p.m. EST (sources/clancy-ruling-1102/plymouthda-2023-09-15-indictment.html).