Defence lawyer Kevin Reddington's courtroom theatrics steal spotlight in Clancy trial
Defence attorney Kevin Reddington has drawn global attention during the Lindsay Clancy murder trial with a string of dramatic courtroom moments spanning decades.
Kevin Reddington: the showman defending Lindsay Clancy
Defence attorney Kevin Reddington has been one of the most commanding figures in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial — holding his client's hand, rubbing her shoulder, and gently escorting the 36-year-old mother across the courtroom in her wheelchair, bbc.com reports.
Standing before the jury, Reddington has argued with measured conviction that Clancy was a woman in desperate need of help, not a calculated killer who coldly took the lives of her three children. During closing arguments, he raised his voice and declared: "This is a prosecution that has ripped the soul out of this girl."
For those who have followed Reddington's career, such theatrics come as no surprise.
A career built on dramatic acquittals
Reddington first made national headlines in 1989, when he secured freedom for Therese Rogers, a woman accused of killing her boyfriend after stabbing his eyes out with a butcher's knife while he slept, according to the Cape Cod Times. During the case, Reddington threw a pair of ninja stars across the courtroom to demonstrate their lethality — scars in the wall reportedly remained for decades afterwards.
He mounted an insanity defence, telling the jury that Rogers had suffered years of abuse and developed Battered Woman Syndrome, which had resulted in a temporary bout of insanity at the moment she killed him. His successful use of that argument was the first of its kind, according to the New York Times.
Reddington deployed a similar strategy in 2007, when a woman stood accused of killing her husband with a single gunshot to the chest. He presented such compelling evidence of abuse that a grand jury failed to return an indictment at all — an outcome described by Boston-based attorney Rosemary Scapicchio as a remarkable feat. Scapicchio cited a well-worn adage in US legal circles: that the evidentiary bar for a grand jury indictment is so low, prosecutors could indict "a ham sandwich."
His profile peaked again around 2011, when he took on the defence of Catherine Greig, the girlfriend of notorious mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger — later portrayed by Johnny Depp in the film Black Mass. Greig accepted a plea deal after having harboured one of the FBI's then-Ten Most Wanted fugitives for years.
Clancy trial reaches breaking point
With the world watching the Clancy proceedings, Reddington's composure in court showed signs of strain in the trial's final days.
On Thursday, he raised his voice and slammed a stack of papers before sitting visibly agitated, adjusting his coffee mug after the judge declined to remove a juror at his request. Reddington had argued that the lone holdout was not applying the law correctly and was preventing the unanimous verdict required for a verdict.
A day later, he pleaded with the judge not to declare a mistrial, warning of the consequences of what he described as a juror who had "spurned the instructions of this court." He succeeded in securing a one-hour delay before the judge made a final ruling — time he used to appeal to the highest court in Massachusetts.
"If we come back here in a half an hour with a mistrial because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court," Reddington said, "it's a shame. It's a real shame."
The judge, who at one point responded "I'm not an actor," ultimately granted the delay but later declared a mistrial. A date has since been set for Reddington to argue for a not guilty finding in place of a retrial of the entire case.
Source: Google News IE — Crime (en)