Judge Clears Way For Lindsay Clancy Retrial, Rejects Double Jeopardy Claim

The night in Duxbury, and the three years since

On the evening of Jan. 24, 2023, inside her family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old — with exercise bands, according to prosecutors and court filings. She then threw herself out of a second-floor bedroom window in a suicide attempt.

The fall left her paralyzed from the chest down. She has been held at Tewksbury Hospital since 2023, using a wheelchair, according to WBUR.

A Plymouth County grand jury indicted her on three counts of murder and on strangulation charges. Her trial opened in Plymouth Superior Court in the summer of 2026 before Judge William Sullivan.

The jury deliberated more than 38 hours over seven days and told the judge three times that it could not reach a verdict. On Sept. 4, 2026, Sullivan declared a mistrial.

Nearly three years after the killings, the case is still unresolved. On Nov. 2, 2026, Clancy was back in Plymouth Superior Court, this time with her lawyers trying to get the charges thrown out for good.

Who's involved

Lindsay Clancy, 36, is accused of murdering her three children. Her lawyers say she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis when it happened.

Patrick Clancy, her ex-husband and the children's father, testified for the prosecution at the first trial, describing what he found when he came home that night. He has separately sued several of Lindsay Clancy's healthcare providers, arguing inadequate treatment contributed to the children's deaths; a judge took a motion to dismiss that suit under advisement in late October.

Judge William Sullivan is presiding over the case. He faces mandatory retirement when he turns 70 next June, a fact both sides raised while arguing over how soon a retrial should happen.

Martin Weinberg and Kevin Reddington represent Clancy. Weinberg also represented Karen Read in her own double-jeopardy fight before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2025. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague is arguing the case for the Commonwealth; the Plymouth County District Attorney's office, led by Tim Cruz, will ultimately decide whether to retry Clancy.

The lone holdout juror from the first trial, identified in later coverage as Michael Péguy Desronvil, said he wanted to convict Clancy of first-degree murder. Jury foreperson Roni Carlson has said the other 11 jurors believed Clancy should not be held criminally responsible because of her mental state.

"There were three forms I had to fill out and I started filling them out, I wrote my signature on each one, and then he said: 'But I'm still not going to say that she's not guilty by reason of insanity.'" — Roni Carlson, jury foreperson, to NBC10

What the charges and rulings actually mean

Clancy faces three counts of murder — one for each child — plus strangulation charges tied to the same incident. Prosecutors have never argued she didn't kill her children; the dispute is whether she's criminally responsible for it.

At trial, her defense argued she was experiencing postpartum psychosis so severe she couldn't control her actions or understand right from wrong. Prosecutors countered that she was aware of what she was doing, had planned it, and was not in psychosis at the time she acted.

On Oct. 1, 2026, Sullivan denied the defense's renewed request for a required finding of not guilty — a motion arguing prosecutors hadn't proven enough even for a jury to convict. He ruled the Commonwealth had presented sufficient evidence for a jury to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, both that Clancy killed the children and that she was criminally responsible.

The bigger fight, argued Nov. 2, was over double jeopardy — the rule against trying someone twice for the same crime. Clancy's lawyers said Sullivan should have questioned the lone holdout juror more deeply before declaring a mistrial, which might have let deliberations continue instead of ending them. Prosecutors said further questioning would have risked coercing that juror and intruding on the jury's private deliberations.

Sullivan sided with prosecutors. He ruled the mistrial met the "manifest necessity" standard — the legal bar that must be cleared before a second trial is allowed — because the jury's deadlock, not any flaw in his handling of it, forced the mistrial. He also denied Clancy's request for the holdout juror's cellphone records and jury questionnaire, and declined to question that juror under oath.

Sullivan separately denied the prosecution's request for a gag order on attorneys and investigators, though he reminded Clancy's defense team of their ethical obligations and said prosecutors could renew the request if circumstances change.

What the jury said once it was over

The jury split 11 to 1. Eleven jurors believed Clancy should not be held criminally responsible because of her mental state; one did not.

That juror, Desronvil, said afterward he never wavered. "Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she [Clancy] knew exactly what she was doing and planned," he said in a statement reported by The Guardian. He added that he "didn't have any doubts."

Foreperson Roni Carlson gave a different account of how close the jury came to a verdict. "He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited," Carlson told NBC10. "There were three forms I had to fill out and I started filling them out, I wrote my signature on each one, and then he said: 'But I'm still not going to say that she's not guilty by reason of insanity.'"

In his written ruling denying the dismissal motion, Sullivan found that the foreperson's notes "did not plausibly suggest that Juror Doe refused to consider the trial evidence or disagreed with the law as explained by the Court in its instructions," CNN reported. Prosecutor Sprague put it more bluntly in court, telling The Guardian the holdout juror "did not refuse to deliberate. He refused to agree."

What each side is arguing now

Clancy's lawyers want this resolved, one way or another. "I am not going to have this woman sit incarcerated for the next year or two or three," Reddington told Sullivan on Nov. 2, according to The Guardian, pushing for a retrial as soon as this spring and arguing it should happen before Sullivan rather than a new judge after his retirement.

Weinberg told the court the judge's options before declaring the mistrial were the heart of the legal question. "A probing voir dire could have disclosed that the 12th juror was not following instructions," he said, according to CBS Boston.

Prosecutors have not publicly committed to retrying Clancy, but their own filings say they intend to "pursue justice" for Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy. Sullivan indicated at the hearing that he's inclined to set a trial date in March 2027 if the case proceeds.

The case has also drawn online conspiracy theories claiming Patrick Clancy, not his ex-wife, killed the children. His attorneys called that a "campaign of misinformation" built on "outright falsehoods," and said "every appropriate measure will be pursued to hold them accountable, including legally," adding that "law enforcement has been notified," NBC News reported.

Reddington has rejected those theories on his client's behalf. "She knows and it's readily apparent that Patrick has been set upon and his life has been turned upside down into a nightmare that he doesn't deserve. Period. Full stop," he told NBC News. He has also said Clancy remains on "24/7, one-on-one suicide watch."

What happens next

The next hearing is set for Nov. 16, 2026, when Judge Sullivan is expected to rule on the remaining motions, including the prosecution's bid for a gag order on attorneys and investigators, and to address whether and when a retrial will proceed. Sullivan has indicated he's inclined toward a March 2027 trial date if the Plymouth County District Attorney's office decides to retry Clancy, though that office has not yet publicly committed to doing so.