A Massachusetts judge on Thursday rejected a defense motion to declare Lindsay Clancy not guilty of murder, ruling that prosecutors had presented enough evidence for a jury to find her criminally responsible for killing her three young children in 2023. It was the fourth failed attempt by Clancy's lawyer to have the murder charges thrown out.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, 75, argued the motion in court on Tuesday, September 29, claiming there was a "total and complete lack of evidence" that Clancy killed her children. "Where is the evidence that she did this?" he asked the court, insisting the case was "based on speculation." In a written decision issued Thursday, October 1, Judge William Sullivan of Plymouth Superior Court denied the request, finding the prosecution's evidence sufficient on both the identity of the killer and criminal responsibility to be decided by a jury.
"There was evidence introduced, both physical and circumstantial, that would permit a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the charge of murder," Sullivan wrote. The evidence included medical examiner testimony, computer records, phone records and crime scene photos. Addressing the defense's postpartum-psychosis argument head-on, the judge wrote that "mental illness alone does not preclude a finding of criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt." He cited prosecution expert witnesses who testified that Clancy did not lack "substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct."
According to the New York Post, this was Reddington's fourth attempt to get the three first-degree murder charges dismissed. Clancy's six-week trial ended in a mistrial on September 4 after jurors deadlocked 11-to-1. The 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse is accused of strangling her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023, then cutting herself and jumping from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt that left her paralyzed. She has pleaded not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility; prosecutors argue the killings were deliberate and that she was not psychotic.
The case returns to court on November 2, and prosecutors have not yet decided whether to pursue a second trial. District Attorney Timothy Cruz said: "We're going to do what we can for the children. That's what this case is about." Legal experts note the prosecution must weigh the odds of a retrial against its cost, while the case's national profile makes seating an impartial jury difficult.