Lindsay Clancy back in court after mistrial in children murder case
Lindsay Clancy, charged with killing her three children in Massachusetts, returns to court Tuesday as her lawyers push to have the case dismissed.
Clancy murder case returns to court amid double jeopardy claim and juror dispute
Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three young children in January 2023, is set to appear in court on Tuesday for the first time since a mistrial was declared — a hearing that could determine whether she faces a second trial, abcnews.com reports.
The mistrial was declared on 4 September after the jury deadlocked when one holdout juror refused to vote with the others. Three weeks on, Clancy's defence attorneys are now pushing to have the case thrown out entirely and to scrutinise the conduct of that juror.
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not publicly indicated whether his office intends to retry the case. Speaking at the time of the mistrial, Cruz said no decisions would be announced immediately: "I'm going to be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time in the context of an official court proceeding."
The charges and the night in question
Clancy pleaded not guilty to three murder charges for the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter Cora, her 3-year-old son Dawson, and infant son Callan. The three children were strangled at the family's home in Duxbury, a suburb of Boston, on 24 January 2023. Clancy, a former nurse, attempted suicide that same night, leaving her paralysed and dependent on a wheelchair, according to state prosecutors.
Her defence attorney argued at trial that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis — classified as a psychiatric emergency by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — and was overmedicated at the time of the killings. Prosecutors countered that she was criminally responsible for her children's deaths and capable of understanding the severity of her actions.
The trial drew national attention to the subject of postpartum mental health.
The holdout juror
Following the mistrial, several jurors who spoke publicly alleged the deadlock resulted from one juror — later identified as Michael Desronvil — refusing to follow the court's instruction on reasonable doubt. Desronvil has disputed that characterisation. In a statement dated 18 September, he said: "I didn't have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented."
His attorney argues Desronvil is being harassed for holding firm to his convictions and has vowed to submit a bar complaint against Clancy's lead attorney Kevin Reddington.
"Kevin Reddington's disgusting motion to investigate Michael is worthy of nothing but universal condemnation," Desronvil's attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik said.
Defence motions ahead of Tuesday's hearing
In a motion filed last week, Clancy's attorneys Martin Weinberg and Reddington argued that retrying the case would amount to double jeopardy, on the grounds that the judge had other viable options before declaring a mistrial. They wrote that there was "no manifest necessity" for the mistrial declaration given what they described as an absence of judicial inquiry into repeated reports that one juror was refusing to apply the court's instructions.
Reddington separately requested the judge question Desronvil regarding his truthfulness during the jury selection process and his conduct during deliberations. He also asked the court to preserve the original questionnaires for the twelve jurors and six alternates, all jury notes, recordings of sidebars, court-officer logs, sign-in sheets for jurors' mobile devices, and corridor video footage from the deliberation period.
In an additional motion, Reddington renewed his request that the judge enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility on each count, arguing prosecutors had not presented sufficient evidence. "The government did not present evidence that allows a juror earnestly seeking the truth to determine that the defendant's guilt on the crime was proved on each element of the offense," he wrote.
Tuesday's hearing is expected to address some or all of these motions, though no final decision on a retrial is anticipated.
Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)