Clancy returns to court as defence seeks to end murder case

Lindsay Clancy is back where criminal cases often end up after the theatre has faded: before a judge, with both sides now arguing over whether the case should survive at all. Her murder trial collapsed into a mistrial earlier this month, and on Tuesday her defence pushed to have the case dismissed altogether.

Clancy, 36, is accused of killing her three children in 2023: Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months old. She does not deny the killings. Her lawyers say she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis at the time, while prosecutors maintain the deaths were intentional.

The defence used Tuesday’s hearing to press a different route as well. Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan to find Clancy not guilty under Rule 25, a Massachusetts motion that allows such a ruling if prosecutors have not effectively made their case. He also argued that the evidence was not sufficient to prove Clancy killed her children at all. That is quite a pivot from the trial, where the defence focused on mental health and asked the jury to find her not criminally responsible.

Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham rejected the new argument and said the state had already met its burden. She told the court that prosecutors had presented numerous pieces of evidence showing Clancy was in a healthy mental state at the time of the killings. In her view, the case had been made clearly enough.

Judge Sullivan, perhaps sensing that everyone would prefer not to let this drift endlessly through the calendar, pushed both sides to be ready to discuss possible retrial dates at the next hearing on 2 November. He was not impressed when neither side agreed to a date in advance, saying he wanted to get the matter moving. Reddington said he would not be available for a retrial until at least June.

Outside court, District Attorney Timothy Cruz said prosecutors have not yet decided whether to try Clancy again on murder charges. He said they were still doing their due diligence and would continue to do so. He also said the case remained centred on the children.

The mistrial itself came after a week of deliberations, when a Massachusetts jury told Sullivan on 4 September that it could not reach a verdict because of a lone holdout juror. That left the prosecution with a choice it has not yet made and the defence with a familiar hope: that a case this grave can be ended by motion rather than by another trial.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com