Lindsay Clancy back in court to ask for murder charges to be dismissed | Court News

The defense says juror misconduct and the judge’s questioning impacted Clancy’s trial for strangling his three children.

Lindsay Clancy, the American mother accused of murder for the killing of her three young children, has returned to court to try to have the charges dropped.

Clancy’s lawyers on Monday urged Judge William Sullivan to dismiss first-degree murder charges against her in the US state of Massachusetts, saying retrying her for the killing of her three young children would violate her constitutional rights.

Prosecutors have said they intend to retry Clancy if the case moves forward, but have not decided whether she will face the same first-degree murder charges.

Monday’s hearing was his second court appearance since September, when jurors failed to reach a verdict during his trial.

Clancy strangled her three children with elastic bands in 2023 at her home in Duxbury, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Clancy then attempted suicide by cutting herself with a knife and was paralyzed after jumping from a second story window.

During Monday’s hearing, defense attorney Martin G Weinberg argued the judge should have investigated more thoroughly after the jury foreman sent two notes indicating a juror was not following the rules. Further questioning could have revealed grounds for dismissing the juror, identified as Michael Desronvil, and continuing deliberations, he said.

After receiving the notes, Sullivan spoke with each juror, reminding them of their duties and explaining what constitutes reasonable doubt in a court case. He asked if they could apply the law to this matter, and everyone said yes.

But Weinberg argued that Sullivan didn’t go far enough. A juror who claimed he could follow the law could have been lying, Weinberg said, and the situation warranted questioning the president separately to learn more about what was happening during deliberations.

Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague argued that there was no indication that the holdout juror’s disagreement came from personal bias or an inability to deliberate, rather than a different evaluation of the evidence.

Sprague said the judge handled the jury deadlock appropriately, saying that just because one juror dug in his heels didn’t mean Sullivan should risk interfering with deliberations by questioning him.

“It’s clear from the record that this juror did not refuse to deliberate,” Sprague said. “He refused to accept.”

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington accused the lone holdout juror of using a cell phone to search terms related to the case and questioned whether he told the truth during jury selection.

Clancy never contested the murder of her three young children in 2023, but her lawyer argued that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and was unable to control her behavior. Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy, now 36, suffered from mental health problems, but said she acted deliberately and understood her actions were wrong.

Sullivan did not immediately comment on the motion to dismiss. He scheduled another hearing for Nov. 16 and suggested a new trial could begin in March.

Another motion expected to be discussed is the State of Massachusetts’ request to impose a silence barring attorneys and their supporters “from making out-of-court statements to the media that would have a high probability of materially harming the criminal proceeding.”