Judge Rejects Lindsay Clancy's Bid To Dismiss Homicide Charges

A mistrial, then a motion to dismiss

In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan — inside the family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. She has never disputed killing them.

Her trial opened in Plymouth Superior Court in July 2026, with jury selection beginning July 22. The defense argued Clancy could not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, including, her lawyers said, a voice in her head demanding she kill the children and herself. Prosecutors say she deliberately planned the killings amid months of documented mental health struggles, and that she understood her actions were wrong.

The jury deliberated more than 38 hours over seven days before Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4, 2026. The panel had split 11-1, with the majority leaning toward finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity — until one holdout juror refused to go along, deadlocking the panel for good.

Clancy's lawyers then asked Sullivan to dismiss the murder charges outright, arguing a second trial would violate her constitutional protection against double jeopardy — the rule that bars prosecuting someone twice for the same crime. On November 9, 2026, in a 17-page ruling, Sullivan said no.

Who's in the courtroom

Clancy, 36, is the defendant. She remains the only person charged in her children's deaths.

Judge William Sullivan presided over the first trial and is deciding the retrial motions. He's due to retire from the bench in June 2027 — a timeline defense attorney Kevin Reddington has cited in pushing for a fast retrial date.

Clancy's defense team includes Reddington, who has handled much of the public-facing argument, and Martin G. Weinberg, an appellate specialist who argued the double jeopardy motion and has signaled plans to appeal Sullivan's ruling.

Plymouth County prosecutors are represented in court by Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague. District Attorney Tim Cruz's office has not said whether it will pursue first-degree murder again or bring lesser charges. Forensic psychologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrun has testified in pretrial proceedings about Clancy's mental state at the time of the killings.

The holdout juror from the first trial has been identified as Michael P. Desronvil. The jury's foreperson was Roni Carlson, whose notes to Sullivan during deliberations are now central to the appeal.

"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 ruling actually says

Double jeopardy normally stops a case from being retried once a jury has been empaneled and sworn. But a hung jury is a recognized exception — if the judge had "manifest necessity" to declare a mistrial, meaning he exhausted the reasonable alternatives before giving up on a verdict.

The deadlock traced back to two notes the foreperson sent Sullivan during deliberations. The first said one juror couldn't "follow instructions regarding reasonable doubt"; the second said that same juror acknowledged having doubt about Clancy's guilt but refused to apply it the way the law required. Sullivan responded by polling each juror individually and reinstructing the panel on reasonable doubt before the group stayed stuck and he called the mistrial.

Sullivan ruled that he met the manifest-necessity bar. He wrote that questioning the holdout juror further, as the defense wanted, "would have been impermissibly coercive," because "deadlocked juries are particularly susceptible to coercion."

In a second order, Sullivan denied the defense's request for Desronvil's cellphone records and juror questionnaire, saying that information wasn't relevant to the dismissal motion and that Clancy's team hadn't shown it would matter to a retrial in front of a different jury.

In a third order, Sullivan denied a prosecution request to bar Reddington from speaking to the press, finding that prosecutors hadn't shown his public comments posed a serious threat of prejudicing a future jury pool — though he left the door open for prosecutors to ask again if circumstances change.

The fight over the holdout juror

After the mistrial, reporting surfaced that Desronvil had an active restraining order against him during the trial and had been charged with domestic violence in 2021, a case that was later dismissed — details the defense says he should have disclosed on his juror questionnaire. Reddington also alleged Desronvil used his phone during deliberations and researched "altruistic filicide."

Sullivan rejected the defense's push to investigate any of it, writing that a probe "would be an improper intrusion into this juror's privacy and would serve to discourage citizens from being willing to serve as jurors in the future." He also noted that anything learned after the mistrial "cannot serve to undermine" his decision to declare one.

Desronvil has since spoken publicly about his vote, saying he "didn't have any doubts" during deliberations and that, based on "all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents," he believed Clancy "knew exactly what she was doing and planned" the killings.

Foreperson Roni Carlson told NBC10 she thought the panel had reached a verdict before Desronvil pulled back. "He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited," she said. "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.'"

What each side has said

Sullivan, acknowledging how hard the case has been on everyone involved, wrote: "The court understands the frustration of the defendant and the jurors that despite the utmost diligence, the jury ultimately was unable to reach a verdict in this emotionally grueling and complicated case."

Weinberg told Boston.com he expects to take the double jeopardy question to the state's highest court soon: "Because the Double Jeopardy Clause is such a primary protection of defendant's rights, interlocutory pre-retrial appeals to the state's highly respected supreme judicial court are possible."

At a hearing the week before the ruling, Reddington accused prosecutors of "[spinning] everyone in the breeze" over their refusal to say whether — or on what charges — they'll retry his client. In court, he has also pushed for speed: "I am not going to have this woman sit incarcerated for the next year or two or three," he said, adding, "I want a trial and I want it with you and I want it this spring."

Prosecutors, through Sprague, have argued the law is squarely on their side. Double jeopardy, they said in court filings, "does not bar the commonwealth from seeking justice on behalf of the three victims."

What happens next

The parties are due back in Plymouth Superior Court on November 16, 2026, for a hearing expected to set a retrial date and finally clarify whether prosecutors will seek first-degree murder again or pursue lesser charges. Sullivan has floated a March 2027 trial date; Reddington has said he's pushing for spring, possibly April. Weinberg has also signaled the defense will appeal the double jeopardy ruling to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court before any retrial moves forward.