Commonwealth v. Clancy

 2383CR00198 · Plymouth Superior

Commonwealth v. Clancy, August 28, 2026

FridayreporteddeliberationsDay 23 of 28

A second day of deliberating ended with no verdict, the jurors sent home shortly before four to come back on Monday. Before ten they had put their first question to the court, which the judge never disclosed; counsel later said they had asked for the medication bottles and the knife.

Key points
  • THE JURY CAME INTO FRIDAY HAVING ALREADY SAT ONE AFTERNOON. The twelve retired at about twenty-five minutes to one on Thursday, August 27, after the closing arguments and Judge William Sullivan's charge, and were excused late in the afternoon with no verdict returned on any of the three counts. CBS Boston and boston.com have them called back shortly after four, where the Boston Globe and Boston 25 both have them sent home shortly before half past. Boston Globe, August 27, 12:35 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.; NBC News, 4:09 p.m.; CBS Boston, 4:10 p.m.; boston.com, 4:10 p.m.
  • THE ACCOUNTS OF THE HOUR THE JURY WOULD COME BACK DIFFERED, AND IN THE EVENT IT WENT OUT A LITTLE AFTER NINE. CNN, ABC News and Hearst Connecticut's Friday file all put the resumption at nine o'clock, where an Associated Press story published on Friday morning had it at half past nine, and ABC7's Friday file carried both hours in the same account. Writing on Thursday evening, NBC News, CBS Boston and Fox News gave no hour at all, saying only that the deliberations would resume Friday morning. The jurors were in fact sent back out at about a quarter past nine. The Associated Press file, updated at 11:21 on Friday morning, still gives the hour as half past nine. A story NBC News filed on the date gives the resumption as 9:15, the third hour recorded for it. No account read for this index says how long they are to sit or what the court would do if they had not agreed by the end of the week. CNN, August 27, 4:11 p.m.; ABC News, 4:34 p.m.; Associated Press, August 28; Hearst Connecticut, August 28; ABC7, August 28; Boston 25, August 28, 9:12 a.m.; Boston Globe, August 28, 9:13 a.m.; NBC News, August 28
  • THE QUESTION IS CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE BURDEN IS THE COMMONWEALTH'S. The defense stipulated on August 4 to the acts, so what the jury has to decide is whether, as a result of mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she did or to conform her conduct to the law, and whether the Commonwealth has disproved that beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • THE JURY HAS THREE VERDICT SLIPS, ONE FOR EACH CHILD, WITH FIVE CHOICES ON EACH. Not guilty; not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility; guilty of murder in the first degree; guilty of murder in the second degree; guilty of manslaughter. Any verdict has to be unanimous. Boston Globe, August 27, 12:30 p.m.; CNN, 12:33 p.m.
  • THE SIX ALTERNATES ARE STANDING BY AND ONE OF THEM COULD STILL DECIDE THE CASE. They were not sent home when the twelve went out. They are being held apart from the deliberating jurors but staying nearby, and the judge told them not to discuss the case, since an alternate would have to take the seat of any juror who could not carry on. The Boston Globe, writing on Friday morning, describes the six as three men and three women, drawn by the judge's clerk from the eighteen-member panel seated in July, all of whom heard the evidence. On the Associated Press's account the six were brought into the courtroom with the twelve on Friday morning to be asked the judge's overnight questions, and answered them along with the deliberating jurors before the twelve went back out. East Idaho News, writing on Friday, describes the six instead as dismissed and so not deliberating, where the two accounts from inside the room on Friday morning have them kept on and brought in with the twelve. The conflict is recorded and not resolved here. Boston Globe, August 27, 12:58 p.m., and August 28, 8:45 a.m.; Associated Press, August 28; East Idaho News, August 28.
  • NO WITNESSES ARE EXPECTED. Both sides rested and the evidence closed on Wednesday, August 26, so there is nothing further for the jury to hear.
  • A VERDICT OF NO CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY WOULD NOT MEAN RELEASE. Judge Sullivan told the jurors in his charge that such a verdict would likely be followed by commitment to a state hospital for as long as a judge thought her a danger. On CNN's account of how that works, the court holds a hearing on whether she is mentally ill and on whether her release would risk serious harm; a first commitment runs six months and later ones a year, renewable without limit. She has been held at Tewksbury Hospital since 2023. CNN, August 27, 4:02 p.m.
  • THE ACCOUNTS OF HOW LONG THE JURY HAS SAT DIFFER. CNN puts Thursday's deliberation at just over three hours, NBC News and boston.com both put it at about three and a half, and the Friday files of Hearst Connecticut and Boston 25 at roughly four and at nearly four. boston.com, writing on Friday morning, puts the running total at about four and a half hours across the Thursday afternoon and the Friday morning together. Nothing came out of the room in Thursday's session — no note and no question until Friday morning. Fox News says the same on Friday morning: the twelve sent nothing out to the judge before they broke for the day. ABC News, writing at a quarter past eleven on Friday morning, put the time the jury had had the case at about five hours. At the lunch break the Boston Globe put Friday's deliberating on its own at close to four hours, and by half past three on Friday afternoon it put the two days together at about ten hours. Its closing figure, written as the jurors left, is more than ten hours in all: about seven on Friday and three and a half on Thursday. Boston 25, closing its own file a few minutes later, agrees on the seven hours for Friday and again puts Thursday at nearly four. CBS Boston, in a file updated after the jurors had gone, gives no split between the two days and puts the whole of the deliberating so far at about ten and a half hours. boston.com, closing its file at four, gives no split either and puts the two days at about ten hours. CNN's own file for Friday evening revises the figure it gave on Thursday: it puts Thursday at about three and a half hours and Friday at more than six and a half, the shortest Friday figure of any account read here, and says only one note came out of the jury room in the whole of Friday. CNN, August 27, 4:11 p.m.; NBC News, 4:09 p.m.; boston.com, 4:10 p.m.; Hearst Connecticut, August 28; Boston 25, August 28, 4:08 p.m.; boston.com, August 28, 10:20 a.m.; Fox News, August 28, 9:48 a.m.; ABC News, August 28, 11:15 a.m.; Boston Globe, August 28, 1:20 p.m., 3:41 p.m. and 4:01 p.m.; CBS Boston, August 28, updated 4:23 p.m.; CNN, August 28, 4:48 p.m.
  • NOTHING WAS LEFT PENDING FOR FRIDAY MORNING. Judge Sullivan asked both counsel, after the jurors had gone, whether there was anything to be taken up before Friday, and each said there was not. Boston Globe, August 27, 4:30 p.m.
  • COUNSEL WOULD NOT PREDICT HOW LONG THE JURY WILL TAKE, OR RULE OUT NEXT WEEK. Asked by Fox News as he left court on Thursday how long he thought the deliberations would run, Kevin Reddington said there was no way of knowing, pointing to the amount of evidence, the length of the trial and the number of exhibits. Asked whether everyone might still be at the courthouse on Monday, he said he did not know. The Boston Globe, which has him leaving the Plymouth courthouse among supporters and reporters, gives the same answer and adds that he described the wait as sitting and talking and waiting, and said of Jennifer Sprague's closing for the Commonwealth that she had done a nice job and marshaled the facts. The Associated Press has him speaking to reporters again as he arrived at court on Friday morning, putting the size of what the jury has in front of it at some two hundred and ninety exhibits and five weeks of testimony, and calling it obviously a lot of work. He said he was hoping for a verdict that day, while allowing that the jurors might need longer than that. CBS Boston, whose file was updated after the jurors were sent home, has him saying he had no idea how long they would need: on that account he told reporters they might be back within the hour or be out for a week, and that there is no telling. NBC Boston, in its own account of the day, has him saying much the same and adding that he thought the panel had been attentive throughout. NBC Boston also records that the prosecutors said nothing to the crowd of reporters outside the courthouse. The Boston Globe caught him again as he left the courthouse after the jurors had gone, ringed by reporters on the walk to his car. Asked whether he was confident of the outcome, he said he never is, because there is no knowing what a jury will do. He said he thought the jurors had been, in his words, “very, very focused.” Fox News, filing in the early evening on a set of remarks it puts outside court, has him again declining to say how long the twelve would need and saying he had no idea what they would do; it gives the same measure of the case the Associated Press had from him that morning, five weeks and roughly two hundred and ninety pieces of evidence; and it adds a line no other account read here carries, that the jurors had worked hard, that it had been a long trial and that he has faith in the jury system. The remarks were made outside the courtroom and are not a statement of the court's schedule. Fox News, August 27, 6:34 p.m.; Boston Globe, August 28, 9:00 a.m.; Associated Press, August 28; CBS Boston, August 28, updated 4:23 p.m.; NBC Boston, August 28; Boston Globe, August 28, 4:33 p.m.; Fox News, August 28, 5:16 p.m.
  • THE JURY WENT BACK OUT ON FRIDAY MORNING. Judge Sullivan took the bench, greeted the parties and had the twelve brought in, asked them whether they had kept away from coverage of the case overnight, and told them to resume. Boston 25 timed the jurors going back out at 9:12 and the Boston Globe at 9:13. The Boston Globe and Boston 25 are the only outlets running a live account of the date; ABC News has added two Friday morning entries to the blog it opened on Thursday: the first restates what the jury has to decide, the second, timed 11:15, carries defense counsel's account of what the jurors asked for. Several others have filed on the date without running an hour-by-hour account: boston.com, which had a page up carrying nothing from inside the room, added a Friday morning update timed 10:20 and closed the page at four in the afternoon with an account of the dismissal; NBC 10 in Providence updated its Friday file at 10:44 with a short account of the sidebar; and CBS Boston published a Friday piece, updated at 11:04, given over to commentary rather than to the proceedings. East Idaho News, which ran the fullest account of most sitting days, opened a second-day blog on Friday morning that so far carries only Thursday's proceedings. NBC Boston, which had a page up for the date carrying nothing from inside the room, closed it late in the afternoon with an account of the whole day. A Court TV report on the second day of deliberations and a NewsNation story on the same could not be read for this index. The Globe's other Friday entries so far set out what the jury has to decide, describe how the panel was divided on Thursday, and carry defense counsel's remarks to reporters outside court the evening before. Boston Globe, August 28, 8:00, 8:30, 8:45, 9:00 and 9:13 a.m.; Boston 25, August 28, 9:12 a.m.; ABC News, August 28, 9:17 and 11:15 a.m.; boston.com, August 28, 10:20 a.m.; NBC 10 in Providence, August 28, updated 10:44 a.m.; CBS Boston, August 28, updated 11:04 a.m.
  • THE JURY PUT A QUESTION TO THE COURT SHORTLY BEFORE TEN ON FRIDAY, AND NOBODY OUTSIDE THE ROOM HAS BEEN TOLD WHAT IT WAS. The first sign of anything happening was prosecutors being walked into a courtroom whose doors were still shut, with the press and the public waiting in line outside, which the Boston Globe reported at 9:55. The lawyers were called back in and Judge Sullivan took them to a sidebar at about ten. The Globe wrote at 10:03 that it was not clear whether a question had been presented and Boston 25 reported at 10:04 that one had; by 10:29 the Globe was describing the sidebar as having been called to take up the jury's question. The judge ended the session without saying what was asked, announced a recess, and the jurors were never brought in. boston.com, in an update timed 10:20, has it as the jury's first question, and reports the sidebar and the recess in the same terms: the judge conferred briefly with the lawyers and then called a recess without saying anything further in open court. On the Globe's account a question and the answer to it are ordinarily part of the public record, and withholding one is highly unusual. Not every account goes that far. The Associated Press, whose Friday file was updated at 10:46, later than the Globe's account of the sidebar, describes the same brief session and the same sidebar but reports its subject as undisclosed: on that account a question is only one of the possibilities, alongside a request to look again at an exhibit or some other matter altogether. Nothing about it was said in open court. A further update to that file, timed 11:21, carries defense counsel's account of what the jurors wanted, so the Associated Press now has a question as well. NBC 10 in Providence, filing on Friday morning, likewise reports that the question was not immediately clear, and adds that it appears to have been both discussed and answered at the sidebar rather than in open court. At 10:56 the Boston Globe reported Kevin Reddington describing what the jurors had asked for, which is set out below. Boston Globe, August 28, 9:55, 10:03 and 10:29 a.m.; Boston 25, August 28, 10:04 and 10:15 a.m.; boston.com, August 28, 10:20 a.m.; Boston Globe, August 28, 10:56 a.m.; Associated Press, August 28, updated 10:46 and 11:21 a.m.; NBC 10 in Providence, August 28, updated 10:44 a.m.
  • A JURY'S QUESTION IS A POOR GUIDE TO WHAT THE JURY IS DOING. Thomas Drechsler, a retired Superior Court judge with no part in this case, told the Boston Globe on Friday that the common mistake, among lawyers and the public alike, is to read an inquiry as a signal about what is going on behind the closed door, and that of the hundreds of jury questions he has seen none could be relied on to predict an outcome. He described what this jury has to work through — charges running from murder in the first degree down to manslaughter, and the defense of lack of criminal responsibility — as extremely complex. The remarks are general commentary from outside the courtroom. Boston Globe, August 28, 10:07 a.m.
  • ANOTHER LAWYER WITH NO PART IN THE CASE EXPECTS THE JURY TO BE OUT INTO NEXT WEEK. Jennifer Roman, a legal analyst for WBZ-TV, told CBS Boston on Friday that she would not look for a verdict before Monday or Tuesday. She read Thursday's session as showing that the twelve had not yet come together on any of the choices open to them, since nothing came back before they were sent home at twenty past four, and she pointed to the size of what they have to work through: testimony she counts at eighty-five witnesses, along with the medical records and the journals. The remarks are commentary from outside the courtroom, and the figure is hers. CNN, filing on Friday evening, carries a second lawyer to the same effect: Gary Galperin, a former prosecutor who teaches at Cardozo Law School and who also has no part in the case, said he expected a lengthy deliberation, pointing to the month or so of evidence the jurors sat through — the physical exhibits, the medical testimony and the competing psychiatric analysis — and to how much of it a conscientious juror has to weigh. CBS Boston, August 28, updated 11:04 a.m.; CNN, August 28, 4:48 p.m.
  • THE JURY ASKED FOR THE MEDICATION BOTTLES AND THE KNIFE, AND BOTH WENT BACK TO THE JURY ROOM. Judge Sullivan was seen passing a courtroom clerk two plastic bags of the defendant's prescription pills, exhibits from the five-week trial. On Kevin Reddington's account, given to the Boston Globe and published at 10:56, that was the answer to the jurors' question: they had asked to see the prescription bottles and the carving knife she used on her wrists and neck. Both were in evidence but had not gone back with the rest of the exhibits when the jury first retired, the pills being narcotics and the knife a weapon, and both were sent in once the jury asked for them. A jury may look at any of the evidence in the case. The knife was found still bloodied, on a nightstand in the upstairs bedroom of the Duxbury house, after she tried to take her own life. What she was taking, and how much of it, was contested throughout: the defense case is that she was overmedicated and deteriorating on a long list of prescriptions, the Commonwealth's that she was not taking much of what she had been prescribed, pointing to bottles found full or partly full. On the Boston Globe's account of where those bottles came from, investigators seized medication from a kitchen cabinet in the Duxbury house on the night and early morning after the killings; her husband and his attorney later gave police further medication prescribed for her that was in the console of his car; and Kevin Reddington told the jury he found more in a nightstand drawer beside her bed days afterwards, missed in the search. boston.com carries the observation about the two bags on Friday morning and credits it to WCVB, whose own account of the date could not be read for this index. The Associated Press, CBS Boston and Boston 25 all carry the same account from counsel in files updated later on Friday morning, each giving the request as the pill bottles and the knife; Boston 25 has it from Reddington through its own reporter at the courthouse, and goes further than the others on where the medication came from: on that account he traced one of the bottles to a nightstand, saying it had not been put in evidence, and another to the console of her husband's truck, handed over to the police. That last clause sits awkwardly against the Boston Globe, which has the bottles and the knife alike as exhibits in the case that had simply not gone back to the jury room with the rest. The difference is recorded and not resolved here. Fox News, reporting from inside the courtroom, gives the request in the same terms, two bags of pills and the knife, and has the judge's clerk waiting with a bag of the pill bottles as the room was reopened for the note. ABC News reports the request in the same terms in a post timed 11:15, having it from Reddington as he left the courthouse, and says the judge sent the lawyers away after the sidebar without giving a reason for it. None of those accounts says what became of the exhibits, and the Boston Globe is so far the only account read here that has them going in to the jury room. The Associated Press rewrote its file for the evening, and its account of what the jurors asked for, as the Washington Times carries it, describes the material a third way again: bags of empty prescription bottles taken from the house, rather than the two bags of the pills themselves the Boston Globe has the judge passing to a clerk. The descriptions differ and are not reconciled here. Boston Globe, August 28, 10:29 and 10:56 a.m.; boston.com, August 28, 10:20 a.m.; CBS Boston, August 28, updated 11:04 a.m.; Associated Press, August 28, updated 11:21 a.m.; Boston 25, August 28, updated 11:38 and 11:57 a.m.; Fox News, August 28, 10:39 and 10:57 a.m.; ABC News, August 28, 11:15 a.m.; Associated Press, August 28, evening file as carried by the Washington Times.
  • THE CHARGE LEFT THE JURY FREE TO WEIGH WHAT THE PRESCRIPTIONS DID TO HER. On the Boston Globe's account of Thursday's instructions, Judge Sullivan told the jurors they may take into account the effect the prescription drugs had on the defendant at the time of the killings. She had been prescribed dozens of medications for anxiety and depression over the four months before January 24, 2023, and the Globe puts the open question for the jury as how many of them she was in fact taking. Boston Globe, August 28, 10:41 a.m.
  • COUNSEL DESCRIBED THE DEFENDANT AS SAD AND FRIGHTENED WHILE SHE WAITED. Asked about her by reporters as he arrived at court on Friday morning, Kevin Reddington said she was very sad and scared, and had been since the children died. Asked why, he put a question back: what would you be scared of. Later in the morning he left the courthouse for a few minutes and, on the Boston Globe's account, declined to tell reporters where she was or how she was feeling. CBS Boston, in a file updated after the jurors had been sent home, adds nervous to the way he described her and has him saying she had been in that state ever since the children died. He also told reporters that her family had been visiting her regularly at Tewksbury Hospital, where she is held, and that the trial had made those visits hard. Speaking again after the jurors had been sent home, he told the Boston Globe she was “nervous, scared deep down, as usual,” and turned the question round on a reporter a second time, asking what anyone would feel shut in a locked room with three consecutive life sentences in prospect. boston.com, closing its own file after the dismissal, carries the same two remarks in different words: it renders the phrase as “nervous, scared, beat-down as usual,” where the Globe has “nervous, scared deep down, as usual,” and has him putting the locked-room question directly to the reporter he was answering. Fox News, filing in the early evening, gives the phrase as “Nervous, scared, beat down as usual,” which follows boston.com rather than the Globe, so two of the three accounts read for this index have beat down where the Globe has deep down. The wordings differ and the outlets are not reconciled here. All of it was said outside the courtroom. Associated Press, August 28; Boston Globe, August 28, 10:57 a.m.; CBS Boston, August 28, updated 4:23 p.m.; NBC Boston, August 28; Boston Globe, August 28, 4:33 p.m.; boston.com, August 28, 4:00 p.m.; Fox News, August 28, 5:16 p.m.
  • A COMMONWEALTH REBUTTAL EXPERT HAS LEFT THE HOSPITAL SYSTEM NAMED ON HIS TRIAL RESUME. Dr. Avram Mack, the forensic psychiatrist the Commonwealth called in rebuttal to say that the defendant was criminally responsible, is no longer employed by Nemours Children's Health. A spokesperson for that system's Delaware Valley division confirmed the departure on Friday to CT Insider, the Hearst Connecticut outlet that reported it, which adds that his page had come off the system's website by that morning. The resume Mack put in during the trial had him working there as a psychiatrist since 2023. That report does not say when he left or why. CNN put the same question to the health system and was told by email that he resigned, and that the resignation came on Monday — the day on which CNN has him finishing his testimony. Neither account ties his leaving to that testimony or to his exchanges with defense counsel on cross-examination, and CNN says it has asked him about the resignation. Nothing about it was said in court, the evidence having closed on Wednesday, August 26. Fox News picked the report up on Friday afternoon, crediting Hearst Connecticut for it and adding that the health system gave no reason for the departure and would not say whether it had anything to do with his testimony. CNN's confirmation came from the health system directly rather than from the Hearst Connecticut report. The Boston Globe, whose own story on the departure is bylined Nick Stoico, reports it the same way and puts a little more around it: Mack resigned from the behavioral health department at Nemours in Delaware, the resignation came on the Monday his testimony ended, the health system confirmed it on the Friday, and no reason for it was given. Two of the four accounts read here, CNN's and the Globe's, therefore have it expressly as a resignation, where CT Insider and Fox News say only that he has left; none of the four has the health system tying it to the trial. CT Insider, August 28; Fox News, August 28, 12:57 p.m.; CNN, August 28, 4:48 p.m.; Boston Globe, August 28.
  • LAWYERS WATCHING FROM OUTSIDE THE CASE POINT TO MOTIVE AND TO THE EXPERTS AS THE GROUND A VERDICT WILL TURN ON. In a piece published under Friday's date, the Boston Globe put the question to four people with no part in the proceeding. John Day, a defense attorney who once prosecuted in New Mexico, said that although the law does not require the Commonwealth to prove why a killing happened, jurors want to be told it anyway, and he did not think the prosecution had given them that. Janice Bassil, a Massachusetts defense lawyer who has tried insanity cases, said the Commonwealth's account of motive made no sense to her, and that it could leave the jury with psychosis as the only explanation on offer. Keith Halpern, who has represented mentally ill defendants charged with murder, said that of all the experts who testified he thought Dr. Phillip Resnick stood apart, and that juries watch the experts closely in cases of this kind. Jessica Salerno, a psychology professor who studies how juries reach decisions, said the defendant being a woman and a mother could cut either way with them. None of the four sat through the evidence and none speaks for the court. Boston Globe, August 28.
  • THE JURY DID NOT SIT INTO THE WEEKEND, AND COMES BACK ON MONDAY AT NINE. Fox News wrote on Friday morning that the deliberations were not scheduled to carry on into Saturday and Sunday, and in the event the jurors were excused shortly before four on Friday afternoon and told to return at nine o'clock on Monday. The Boston Globe, Fox News and ABC News all report the dismissal and the hour. Fox News, August 28, 9:48 a.m. and 4:02 p.m.; Boston Globe, 3:55 and 4:00 p.m.; ABC News, 3:58 p.m.
  • A RETIRED JUDGE HAS SET OUT WHAT A COMMITMENT WOULD ACTUALLY INVOLVE, AND SAYS ITS LENGTH CANNOT BE PREDICTED. Carol Erskine, a retired Massachusetts judge and child welfare advocate with no part in this case, wrote on X, in remarks Fox News carried on Friday afternoon and followed up with her, that a verdict of not criminally responsible would not amount to what she called a life sentence in a public mental hospital. The first step, she said, belongs to the trial judge, who may order a forty-day evaluation on a locked unit. After that she has the hospitalization lasting only while the legal criteria for civil commitment go on being met, with the question reopened about once a year, which is why she says nobody can say in advance how long it would run: it could be years, or have no end date at all. The remarks are commentary from outside the courtroom and describe the law in general terms, not an order of this court. Fox News, August 28, 12:32 p.m.
  • TWO ANALYSTS WITH NO PART IN THE CASE HAVE SET OUT WHAT EACH VERDICT WOULD MEAN FOR HER CUSTODY. CBS News, in a national piece updated on Thursday afternoon, put the possible outcomes to Caroline Polisi, one of its own legal analysts, and to Jennifer Roman, a legal analyst for WBZ-TV. Polisi said a verdict of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect would leave her committed indefinitely to a state mental health facility, the kind of place she is held in now, with periodic evaluations and a judge deciding at each turn whether she remains a danger to herself or to others; she offered Andrea Yates, who on her account is still in a psychiatric facility, as an illustration that confinement of that sort can have no end date. Roman said a conviction on something less than murder in the first degree would still mean a long prison term, though with the possibility of parole at some point, and that wherever she was held, her physical limitations and the round-the-clock suicide watch she is on now would shape how the prison system managed her. Neither lawyer has any part in the proceeding, and neither was predicting what the jury will do. CBS News, August 27.
  • THE SCENE OUTSIDE THE COURTHOUSE HAS BEEN A QUIET ONE WHILE THE JURY WORKS. Writing through the late morning and the early afternoon on Friday, the Boston Globe describes Plymouth Superior Court as far more subdued than it was on some days of the evidence, when crowds of supporters turned out: reporters standing about with their camera stands, a few people on the stone benches, and almost nobody in the bright pink that came to be associated with the case. Among the handful there were Michael Riddle, 69, a pharmacist from South Carolina on vacation in Massachusetts, who said he had followed the trial on television and that his own background helped him make sense of the medication testimony; and Christine Fernandes, 48, of Fall River, who came with her 15-year-old daughter and held up hand-lettered signs reading “1st Degree MURDER” and “Kidslaughter”, said she could not understand why the color was pink when green is the one usually worn for mental health, and objected that talk of women's mental health had drawn attention away from the three children. Two employees of a coffee chain with a drive-through across the street set up a table in the parking lot and gave away iced coffee to the press and to the people who have sat through the trial. Over the lunch recess the Globe described more people beginning to gather: Diane and Benjamin Russo, of Wareham, on a bench facing the building, Diane Russo, 54, a former emergency room nurse who said she had had postpartum depression after the births of her own daughters and who hoped for a verdict of not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility; and, on the grass, Renee Kimball, the organizer of last week's “Stand in Peace for Lindsay” demonstration, with three other women, none of them wearing pink. The press was kept at a distance from the jurors and, at the end of the day, from counsel: on the Globe's account state troopers had told the media earlier in the day that the court wanted photographers kept from shooting in the rear parking lot, which is where the jurors leave their cars, and when Kevin Reddington walked to his own car after the dismissal the troopers stopped reporters following him across the path into that lot. None of the scene outside is from inside the courtroom. Boston Globe, August 28, 11:13 and 11:50 a.m. and 12:54, 1:54 and 4:33 p.m.
  • TWO ANALYSTS WITH NO PART IN THE CASE READ THE JURY'S REQUEST AS AIMED AT THE MEDICATION AND AT THE WOUNDS. Fox News put the jurors' request for the pill bottles and the knife to its own senior medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, and to a contributor, the lawyer Joshua Ritter, on Friday afternoon. Siegel said the request brings the disputed medication question back to the front of the case, and gave his own reading of the prescriptions: that many of the bottles gathered in the case had never been opened, that she was taking fewer drugs by the time the children died, that only a few of them could conceivably bring on psychosis, and that he saw no direct evidence that the pills had done so here, a question he kept separate from whether she was psychotic at all. Ritter said the request for the knife might mean the jurors are testing the prosecution's argument that the wounds she gave herself were shallow and that she was of two minds about dying. Neither man has any part in the case, neither was speaking from the courtroom, and neither knows what the jurors are weighing. Fox News, August 28, 3:25 p.m.
  • A CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY SET OUT THE MECHANICS OF A JURY QUESTION AND WOULD PUT NO LIMIT ON HOW LONG A JURY CAN TAKE. Elyse Hershon, a lawyer with no part in this case, told Boston 25 News that questions from a deliberating jury are ordinary and show only that the twelve are working. The foreperson writes the question down and it goes up to the judge, who may read it out in the courtroom or instead bring the lawyers to sidebar to settle what the answer should be. On how long the deliberations might run, she said prediction is close to impossible -- “It could take an hour, a week, or even longer” -- and pointed to a homicide case in which the jurors were out for two weeks and the trial ended in a mistrial. Boston 25 News, August 28.
  • ABC NEWS BREAKS THE WITNESS TOTAL DOWN BY THE SIDE THAT CALLED THEM. Of the witnesses heard across the twenty-one days on which evidence was taken, seventy-four were the Commonwealth's and ten were the defense's, on the count ABC News published on Friday morning. The total is the same eighty-odd that the Boston Globe and CNN recorded as the case went to the jury; the split by party is what the Friday piece adds. ABC News, August 28, 9:53 a.m.

Procedural

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