EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Gray News/AP) — A judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial on Friday after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether she was criminally responsible for killing her three young children.

The mistrial, on the seventh day of deliberations, leaves the case unresolved and allows prosecutors to take the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse to trial again.

EN ESPAÑOL | Declaran juicio nulo en el caso de Lindsay Clancy tras jurado no alcanzar veredicto

The deliberations took a dramatic turn late in the week when the judge said he was going to declare a mistrial Friday before suddenly changing course and giving her defense attorney a chance to appeal to the top court in Massachusetts. But the court denied the emergency appeal to stop the judge from declaring a mistrial.

The trial has generated intense interest for more than a month, deeply dividing the public and drawing attention to issues around maternal mental health after childbirth. Clancy’s attorney said she was suffering from a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids, the youngest just 8 months old, then tried to take her own life.

Prosecutors, who said Clancy knew what she was doing, now must decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges or try to negotiate a plea deal with her lawyer.

Prosecutors said Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, acted deliberately when she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023. They said she contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.

Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, never disputed that she killed the children but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

Over 21 days of testimony, jurors heard how Clancy’s mental health had collapsed after Callan’s birth.

Deeply anxious about a planned return to work, unable to sleep and experiencing what she described as a disturbing brain fog, Clancy sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders, who prescribed multiple psychiatric medications.

Clancy’s family members testified that she expressed concern about her mental health decline. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, described her as a “very nurturing, very loving mother” who was “begging for help.”

In early January, she checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital for more intensive treatment, but her stay was short. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged, leaving their bodies in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window immediately after and remains paralyzed from the waist down.

Prosecutors conceded that Clancy had severe mental illness, but insisted she was able to understand and control her actions. They emphasized that although she claimed to have heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children, she never disclosed hearing voices to her mental health providers before the killings.

In its latter stages, the trial became a battle of medical experts.

Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist hired by prosecutors to evaluate Clancy, testified that he didn’t believe her story about having heard voices. And he said he didn’t believe she had acute psychosis when she killed the children, but rather took their lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself.

Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defense, said that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” and was not in control of her actions.

“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” said Resnick, who spent hours interviewing Clancy after the killings. He said she was also likely experiencing bipolar disorder.

At the start of the trial, Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his children. Prosecutors played a seven-minute 911 call in which he could be heard finding the bodies.

In interviews, he has said he has forgiven her and believes her actions were the result of mental illness.

Lindsay Clancy case on the verge of a mistrial

The judge and Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, went back and forth after the judge signaled that he would declare a mistrial and said he would summon the jury to break the news. The judge suddenly gave Clancy’s lawyer time to seek an appeal to stop that order.

“What I’m asking for is time to file a single-justice appeal for this travesty,” Reddington said. He was upset over Sullivan’s earlier refusal to remove a juror.

“I’ll hold off for an hour,” the judge said.

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the judge first signaled he would declare a mistrial.

Emergency request for relief

Reddington filed a motion with the Supreme Court Friday asking for its power to “inquire into the ability of the identified juror to apply the law.”

The emergency appeal also requests that the Supreme Court “prohibit the further deliberations of a juror identified by the jury foreperson as biased and refusing to follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt unless and until the court determines by individual vior dire that the juror is willing and able to follow the court’s instructions.

The jury’s foreperson told the judge Thursday that a single juror wouldn’t follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt. The extraordinary disclosure, made in the form of a note delivered to the judge, offered the clearest glimpse yet of what may be keeping jurors from reaching a verdict.

Reddington argued in the appeal filed with the Supreme Court that a “juror’s refusal to follow the law is always personal, and not a matter of protected deliberative privilege, and requires removal.”

On Thursday, Sullivan brought in each juror individually and questioned them in private. The judge then reread his instructions, telling them proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean proof beyond all possible doubt.

He reminded jurors that the burden of proof is on the prosecution before sending them back to continue deliberating.

Lindsay Clancy has never denied killing her children

Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home before using multiple methods to try to end her life. According to her defense, she had bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis that, ultimately, led her to believe she heard a voice telling her to kill the children so she could kill herself.

Postpartum psychosis is more serious and less common than postpartum depression, afflicting 1 to 2 out of 1,000 women after delivery, according to estimates by researchers.

The prosecution argues Clancy deliberately sent her then-husband on errands to get him out of the house, and prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt.

What happens next?

A mistrial means the case essentially goes back to the same status as before the trial, with the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse charged with murder and held at a psychiatric hospital awaiting a resolution of the criminal case.

Prosecutors would have to decide whether to try again with a new jury. If they do, the jury selection process would begin again and a new trial would be scheduled.

Prosecutors could also offer a plea deal to Clancy, said Brad Bailey, a Boston defense attorney and former prosecutor who is not involved in the case.

“Any time the threat of a retrial with murder one hanging over the client is re-interjected, defense lawyers will, at the very least, explore whether or not there’s any interest in a resolution,” Bailey said.

Though less likely after a first trial ends without a verdict, the district attorney’s office could decide to not retry the case.

“Sometimes they decide not to, because of the sense that there may be the same result each time they try it, and because of the expenditures involved in trying the case to begin with, particularly when you have expert witnesses,” Bailey said. “Those are going to be expensive cases.”

Bailey expects her defense attorney to aggressively lobby against another trial if a mistrial is declared, making a case to the district attorney’s office along the lines of: “‘Why are you doing this to this poor woman? She’s still clearly obviously suffering. She’s been punished with her paralysis and, worse than that, the loss of her three children.’”

A conviction could mean life in prison for Clancy, while an acquittal might lead to confinement in a mental health facility.

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