A juror in the closely watched Massachusetts murder trial of Lindsay Clancy said she believes the panel “let down Lindsay,” describing the difficulty of keeping the deaths of the children separate from the legal question jurors were asked to decide.
Clancy was tried in the January 2023 strangling deaths of her three young children. Prosecutors said she sent her then-husband, Patrick, to get medication and takeout before the children were found unconscious in the basement. When Patrick returned home, he discovered Clancy injured outside following an apparent suicide attempt. Two of the children died that night, and the third was flown to a Boston hospital, where the child died days later.
The case ended in a mistrial last week after jurors could not reach a unanimous decision. Eleven members of the panel supported finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility — Massachusetts’ equivalent of an insanity defense — while a single holdout believed she should be found criminally responsible.
“Everybody says you’re not supposed to feel like you failed, but you have a task to come out unanimous. And we tried everything we could to get to that end. And I feel like we let down Lindsay,” Paula, 65, one of the jurors in the majority, told WCVB.
A juror in Lindsay Clancy’s high-profile Massachusetts trial said she feels the jury “let down Lindsay.” (Greg Derr/Pool The Patriot Ledger via AP)
Clancy’s legal team did not dispute that she killed her children but argued that she should not be found criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Clancy also admitted in court filings to killing her three children, but claimed that severe mental illness left her not criminally responsible.
Paula said the jury’s majority believed that Clancy needed help and that the healthcare system failed her, adding that she thinks the medical community should do more to support women with postpartum mental health issues.
“There was a clear indication that the medical community failed her and not just her, but her whole family, because something like that affects the whole entire family. And if everybody can be educated in a better way, then it will help the whole family unit,” Paula said.
After attorneys made their arguments, Paula said the jurors were sent to deliberate with 297 pieces of evidence, including Patrick’s emotional 911 call, which she said some jurors had trouble listening to during deliberations.
“We all tried to help each other. It was hard to separate the children from what our task was, and it was very emotional,” she said.
The jurors polled themselves at the start of deliberations, at which point eight believed Clancy was not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, two thought she was guilty and two were undecided, Paula said.
The majority eventually came to the belief that Clancy was not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility.
Lindsay Clancy’s legal team did not dispute that she killed her children but argued that she should not be found criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. (Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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Prosecutors argued during trial that Clancy was criminally responsible for the killings despite evidence that she suffered from mental illness.
“We did not start out 11 to one,” Paula said. “Everybody had different opinions and different reasons and different ways that they got there.”
Paula said the majority had a hard time understanding why the one holdout wanted to vote to convict Clancy.
“We did not feel that he was following the law because he admitted that he had doubt at different times, that he had doubt about the case that was presented, and the way that the rule read to all the rest of us is if we had doubt, then we could not convict her of first-degree murder or second-degree murder or manslaughter,” Paula said.
The foreperson then sent a note to the judge saying the jury could not reach a verdict and accusing the holdout of refusing to apply the law on reasonable doubt.
Judge William Sullivan called up each of the jurors and individually asked them if they could apply the law as he had explained it, and they reportedly answered in the affirmative.
“The judge has to believe that people are telling him the truth. And so, you know, 11 people told the truth and one maybe didn’t. And I will never know why,” Paula said.
Paula said she believed it would have been worth restarting deliberations with an alternate if the court had removed the holdout.
Lindsay Clancy was on trial for strangling and killing her three young children in January 2023 after sending her then-husband, Patrick, out to pick up medication and takeout. (Pool)
“If our holdout juror had given us evidence to support his reasoning, we would have felt differently about what we told the judge,” Paula said.
Other jurors have also spoken out in recent days to take issue with the holdout’s position.
“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children,” juror Kellie Farina previously told NBC10 Boston.
On Thursday, Clancy’s defense filed a motion arguing the prosecution failed to meet its burden and asked the judge to enter a required finding of not guilty, which the defense argues would prevent a retrial.