Clancy never disputed killing her children, defense cited postpartum psychosis
The jury foreperson in the Lindsay Clancy trial said in a Tuesday interview with Boston’s NBC10 that a single holdout juror had acknowledged doubts about Clancy’s guilt during deliberations but still would not vote to acquit. The interview aired four days after a judge declared a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three young children in 2023.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, never disputed that she killed the children. Her defense attorney argued at trial that she had lost control of her mind because of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness her lawyer tied to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
Prosecutors offered a competing account. They said Clancy knew what she was doing and acted deliberately when she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy with exercise bands. They told jurors she had contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of the children and dinner for the family.
The case turned on whether Clancy bore criminal responsibility for the deaths. The foreperson’s NBC10 interview, four days after the judge declared a mistrial, gave a public account from inside the jury room of how the panel had deadlocked.