The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended on Friday in a mistrial, after the jury failed to come to a unanimous agreement on whether she should be held criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
A mistrial is neither an acquittal nor a conviction. The murder charges against Ms. Clancy remain, and it is possible that prosecutors will try their case all over again.
Here is what we know about what happens next:
Who decides what to do?
The Plymouth County district attorney, Timothy J. Cruz, will now decide whether to try Ms. Clancy again in front of a different jury, for first-degree murder or less serious charges. It could take a week or more for prosecutors to consider their options, experts have said.
The prosecutors’ decision will hinge on several factors, including what they learn about the jury’s deliberations. If more jurors were leaning toward an acquittal, a retrial on the same charges might be less likely.
If prosecutors lower the charges against Ms. Clancy — by charging her with second-degree murder, for example — that would open the door to a bench trial, in which the judge delivers a verdict without a jury. It could also lead to a plea deal.
Mr. Cruz is a hard-charging prosecutor who has served in the position for almost 25 years and is now running unopposed for re-election.
Kevin Reddington, Ms. Clancy’s lawyer, said that he “absolutely” expected the district attorney to try her for first-degree murder again, based on Mr. Cruz’s history and reputation.
What will happen to Ms. Clancy?
Even though she was not convicted, Ms. Clancy is not likely to go free.
Her lawyers have claimed that she is not criminally responsible for killing her children because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she used exercise bands to strangle them, and some experts at the trial have argued that she had bipolar disorder.
She is currently held at Tewksbury Hospital, a state-run facility with inpatient psychiatric care, and she will almost certainly remain there, or at a similar facility in Massachusetts.
If she is not retried in criminal court, experts say that she will probably face civil commitment proceedings, which could keep her at the facility for the foreseeable future.
Mr. Reddington has said that he doesn’t think Ms. Clancy is emotionally prepared to endure another trial, but that he would continue to represent her.
What happens to the members of the jury?
The 12 jurors and six alternate jurors, who have not been publicly named, will be free to go home now that the trial is over. If there is a retrial, they would not be called to serve again; instead, the court would have to find a new group of jurors.
That will be challenging, since Ms. Clancy’s trial has attracted national attention and prompted demonstrations at the courthouse in Plymouth, Mass. Any jurors too familiar with the particulars of this case are likely to be dismissed.
When would a new trial begin?
Mr. Reddington has said that if prosecutors try Ms. Clancy again, he would expect a retrial to begin in six months to a year.
Prosecutors could use that time to review their legal strategy and possibly change it. They may need to enter more evidence, volley with defense lawyers over disclosures and pretrial motions, select new witnesses and prepare those witnesses for the stand.
Another recent, closely observed murder case in Massachusetts resulted in a mistrial and eventually a new trial. That case involved a woman, Karen Read, who was accused of killing her boyfriend, a Boston police officer, by hitting him with her vehicle in 2022. She was charged with murder, but the trial ended with a hung jury in July 2024.
It took nine more months for Ms. Read’s retrial to begin, in April 2025. She was ultimately found not guilty of murder.
What happened during this trial?
Ms. Clancy does not deny that she killed her three children at her home in Duxbury, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb, on Jan. 24, 2023.
But she pleaded not guilty to murder, pursuing an insanity defense. Her lawyer maintained that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and had hallucinated a man’s voice ordering her to kill her children and then herself.
Prosecutors argued that Ms. Clancy plotted to get her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house on the day of the killings. Mr. Clancy said during testimony that he had returned home from running errands to find the children in the basement with exercise bands around their necks. Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3, were dead. Callan, 8 months, died days later.
After listening to four weeks of emotional and sometimes harrowing witness testimony, jurors deliberated for nearly 40 hours. They twice told the judge, William Sullivan, that they were deadlocked, and he urged them to continue.
But on Friday, they said one last time that they could not come to a unanimous agreement, and Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial.
