Lindsay Clancy returned to court on Tuesday for the first time since her murder trial ended with a deadlocked jury.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan for an acquittal, arguing that there was not enough evidence to prove that the 36-year-old former nurse killed her three young children.
“This entire case is based on speculation,” Reddington said. “Where is the admission? Where does she say that she did this?”
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham called the argument “laughable.”
Sullivan did not immediately rule. The next hearing in the case is set for Nov. 2.
During the trial, Clancy’s attorneys did not dispute that she fatally strangled her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands at their Duxbury, Mass., home in January 2023. She had been charged with three counts of murder in the first degree.
Her lawyers argued that she could not be held criminally responsible for the killings because she was suffering from the rare mental illness that they said made her unable to understand the wrongfulness of her actions.
Prosecutors contended that Clancy, who was never formally diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, carefully planned the killings and bears full responsibility for her children's deaths.
The trial hinged largely on discussions of Clancy's mental state. Over nearly five weeks of testimony, a series of family members and medical professionals took the stand to describe the mental and emotional struggles she endured in the months leading up to the killings.
During deliberations, the 12-member jury informed the judge that the panel was deadlocked: 11 members believed Clancy was not guilty, but one juror refused to apply the legal standard of reasonable doubt, preventing the jury from returning a unanimous not-guilty verdict.
The case finally ended on Sept. 4 following nearly 40 hours of deliberation after the jury came to the judge for a third time to inform him that they were deadlocked, which triggered an automatic mistrial under Massachusetts law.
Advocacy groups and researchers said the mistrial highlighted how little the medical field knows about postpartum psychosis, a rare illness estimated to affect one to two per 1,000 women after delivery.
Clancy, who is paralyzed from the waist down since jumping from a second-story window after strangling her children, is expected to remain at a psychiatric hospital where she's been held for the last three years until her case is resolved.
Clancy's attorneys have also asked the judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that the holdout juror should have been removed.
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to retry Clancy, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told reporters after the hearing. They could choose to retry her on first-degree murder charges, seek to try her on lesser charges, negotiate a plea deal or drop the case altogether.
“We are going to do what we can for the children,” Cruz said. “That is what this case is about.”
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This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/article/lindsay-clancy-returns-to-court-for-first-time-since-murder-case-ended-in-mistrial-143656285.html<small>Source: Yahoo News — read the original story there.</small>