A judge on Friday declared a mistrial in the high-profile case of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children, after jurors failed to reach a verdict.
Judge William Sullivan, however, put the ruling on hold for one hour to allow Clancy’s defence team to appeal his decision to a higher court.
The jury was reportedly deadlocked 11-1, with the majority apparently favouring a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Clancy, 36, does not deny strangling her children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, at the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. She has argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and therefore should not be held criminally responsible.
The jury told the judge earlier Friday that, with a “heavy heart”, it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, had repeatedly asked the judge to replace the dissenting juror with an alternate, but Sullivan rejected the request.
Prosecutors argued that Clancy deliberately planned the killings and understood the consequences of her actions, rejecting the defence’s claim that postpartum psychosis caused her to hear a voice ordering her to kill her children.
The five-week trial featured more than 80 witnesses, including psychiatrists, relatives and Clancy’s estranged husband, who testified about her mental state before the killings.
Following the deaths, Clancy jumped from a second-floor window in an apparent suicide attempt, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.
If convicted of first-degree murder, the former nurse faces life imprisonment without parole. A verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity would instead result in her confinement in a psychiatric facility.
The case has renewed debate over maternal mental health in the US and drawn comparisons with that of Andrea Yates, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006 after drowning her five children in Texas.