Commonwealth v. Clancy

 2383CR00198 · Plymouth Superior

Commonwealth v. Clancy, August 31, 2026

MondayreporteddeliberationsDay 24 of 28

The jury deliberated a third day, passed roughly seventeen hours total, and was sent home Monday evening with no verdict on any of the three counts, to return Tuesday morning. Outside the courthouse, defense counsel criticized the television coverage of the case.

Key points
  • THE JURY WENT BACK OUT FOR A THIRD DAY AT A QUARTER PAST NINE. Judge Sullivan took the bench at about 9:15, greeted the parties, had the twelve brought in and put his usual question to them about staying away from coverage of the case before telling them to resume. The Boston Globe timed the start of the session at 9:14 and the jurors going out at 9:15; Boston 25's court reporter had said a couple of minutes before that they were about to go back out, and Fox News reported them deliberating again at 9:28. Boston Globe, August 31, 9:14 and 9:15 a.m.; Boston 25, August 31, 9:13 a.m.; Fox News, August 31, 9:28 a.m.
  • NOTHING HAS COME OUT OF THE JURY ROOM, AND THE TWELVE BROKE FOR LUNCH AT ONE. The Boston Globe's blog has carried nothing from inside the courtroom since the jurors went back out, and what it has posted since came from elsewhere: the defense lawyer on the pavement outside at 9:50, at noon a look back at a ruling from last week, at a quarter to one the scene on the benches outside the courthouse, and at 1:43 a supporter who had come from Texas thanking the defense lawyer on the sidewalk. At seven minutes past one it reported, on a court officer, that the jury had stopped for lunch at one o'clock and would resume at about two, and Fox News reported the same break, adding that the court had said nothing would be announced before two. No question from the jury, no further session and no verdict on any of the three counts has been reported on Monday. Boston Globe, August 31, 9:50 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 12:47 p.m., 1:07 p.m. and 1:43 p.m.; Fox News, August 31, 1:14 p.m.
  • COUNSEL CRITICIZED THE TELEVISION COVERAGE OF THE CASE ON HIS WAY IN. Kevin Reddington stopped outside the courthouse on Monday morning and told reporters that the weekend coverage by two Fox personalities had been wrong. Sean Hannity's he called “horrific”; of Nancy Grace he said she misrepresents facts, and he challenged her to show where his client had ever said or searched for “how to kill.” “And these things hurt,” he said. “These things hurt people.” He named the Boston Globe's Shelley Murphy and Boston 25's Bob Ward as reporters doing the job properly: “If you're going to be a journalist, do it right.” The accounts differ a little over what he attached the word “horrific” to: the Globe gives it to Hannity's coverage, boston.com has him using it of the weekend's coverage generally, and NBC News has him saying the weekend had been horrific and then naming Hannity and his panel, going over every detail of her symptoms, as what he meant. NBC also has him calling Nancy Grace, in his own phrase, “the queen of mean.” The remarks were made outside the courtroom, not in it. Boston.com’s fuller account of the same remarks has Reddington going further, naming the searches he says are actually on the record — “where is the carotid artery,” “how to slit your throat to die,” and whether the airbags could be switched off on the Kia Sorento she drove — and describing them as about her own death rather than anyone else’s. Boston Globe, August 31, 9:50 a.m.; boston.com, August 31, 10:30 a.m.; NBC News, August 31, 10:47 a.m.
  • THE DELIBERATING JURY IS NINE WOMEN AND THREE MEN, CBS BOSTON AND BOSTON.COM REPORTED. Both outlets described the twelve now weighing the case as nine women and three men, consistent with the eighteen-member panel of twelve women and six men seated at empanelment and the three men and three women among the six alternates recorded here on August 28. CBS Boston, August 31; boston.com, August 31, 10:30 a.m.
  • COUNSEL RECALLED HIS LONGEST PRIOR DELIBERATION AS TEN DAYS, ENDING IN AN ACQUITTAL. Asked by CBS Boston how long the jury might take, Kevin Reddington said it could be out for a week or done within a day and that he did not know, and added that the longest deliberation in a case he had tried ran ten days and ended in a not-guilty verdict. He pointed to the scale of this trial — five weeks of evidence and, on his count, 300 exhibits — as the reason it could take time. He was speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, not in it. CBS Boston, August 31.
  • COUNSEL SAID HE WAS NERVOUS AND WOULD NOT GUESS AT THE OUTCOME. Asked outside Plymouth Superior Court on Monday morning how he was feeling with the jury about to go back out, Kevin Reddington said he was nervous, as he typically is. Asked whether he had any sense of what was coming, he put the question back: nobody knows who is going to win the World Series either, and he had no idea. He was speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, not in it. NBC News, August 31, 10:47 a.m.
  • THE DEFENDANT SAT IN COURT ON MONDAY MORNING WITH HER FAMILY BEHIND HER. NBC News, reporting from Plymouth Superior Court, put Lindsay Clancy in the courtroom in a dark green long-sleeved blouse, with members of her family in the benches behind her waiting on the verdict. Kevin Reddington, who had described her on Friday as nervous, sad and scared, said nothing on Monday about how she was doing. NBC News, August 31, 10:47 a.m.
  • AN ANALYST WITH NO PART IN THE CASE SAID THE JUDGE'S HANDLING OF PUNISHMENT COULD PUSH THE JURY TOWARD A COMPROMISE. Cully Stimson, who is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said on Fox News on Monday that jurors in Massachusetts are ordinarily kept away from what a charge carries, and that Judge Sullivan instead gave them the maximum on each one. On his reading that invites what he called “sentence bargaining” — weighing the punishment rather than deciding the question actually put to them — and could end in a compromise verdict of manslaughter. “The fact that the judge threw this into the punch bowl disturbs me,” he said. He read the jurors' request on Friday for the knife and the medication as a sign they are working through the detail, and said he expected a verdict on Monday or Tuesday. Stimson has no part in the case and was not speaking from the courtroom, and the accounts of the charge in this index do not carry the instruction he describes: the judge is reported telling the jurors what a finding of no criminal responsibility would mean for the defendant, which is an instruction a defendant may ask for, and no account here has him telling them what any verdict of guilt would carry. Fox News, August 31, 11:56 a.m.
  • A RETIRED JUDGE SAID A HOSPITAL WOULD NOT BE THE EASY OUTCOME PEOPLE TAKE IT FOR. Jack Lu, who sat on the Massachusetts Superior Court and has no part in this case, told Fox News on Monday that the common assumption about what follows a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity does not hold once a serious prosecution is behind it. On his description a judge commits her at the outset, and from then on the staff of a maximum-security mental health facility have to keep going back and asking for her to be held again, on the ground that she is still a danger to herself or to others — something he said can run “year after year after year,” with release coming only if they stop asking. Those making that decision, he said, for all that they are dedicated to the work, tend to come at a case like this one with what he called a prosecutorial mindset, and the assumption of an easier path has “possibly some validity” only where no criminal case is involved. Lu has no part in the case and was not speaking from the courtroom. The instruction Judge Sullivan actually gave the jurors on commitment is recorded here on August 27. Fox News, August 31, 12:21 p.m.
  • THE JUDGE'S WRITTEN REASONS FOR REFUSING A MISTRIAL WERE PUBLISHED WHILE THE JURY SAT. With nothing to report from the jury room, the Boston Globe turned at noon to Judge Sullivan's written decision on the defense motion for a mistrial over Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's evidence, and quoted from it. The judge set out the ground of the motion as prejudice, and recited what he had struck: the expert's account that the defendant had spoken of expecting to be with her children in heaven with God after the killings and her own suicide, his own understanding that Catholic teaching does not necessarily hold that, and the question he had put to her about suicide being a mortal sin, which an objection cut off. On the law he wrote that it is settled that a witness's religious belief may not be used to attack their credibility. He gave two grounds for keeping the evidence out: it rested on the unsupported assumption that every Catholic accepts everything the church teaches, and the witness was not in a position to give an opinion on what the church teaches. He wrote that he had considered what else was open to him, and had chosen instead to strike the answer and tell the jurors to put the subject aside, having found the error short of what a mistrial requires. The refusal itself is recorded here on August 24; these are the written reasons for it, which the Globe does not date beyond last week. Boston Globe, August 31, 12:00 p.m.
  • THE JURY IS INTO A THIRD DAY WITH ABOUT TEN AND A HALF HOURS BEHIND IT. The twelve first retired at about twenty-five minutes to one on Thursday, August 27, sat for part of that afternoon and through Friday, and were excused twice without a verdict on any of the three counts. The Boston Globe, as they went back out on Monday, put the two days at about ten and a half hours in all; on Friday afternoon it had them at more than ten, about seven of those on Friday and three and a half on Thursday. Fox News gives the Friday figure exactly, as six hours and forty-four minutes. Boston Globe, August 28, 4:01 p.m., and August 31, 9:15 a.m.; Fox News, August 31, 8:32 a.m.
  • 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.
  • THE MEDICATION BOTTLES AND THE KNIFE ARE IN THE JURY ROOM, AND THE JURY'S QUESTION HAS NEVER BEEN MADE PUBLIC. On Kevin Reddington's account to the Boston Globe, the jurors asked on Friday morning for the prescription bottles and the knife she used on herself, exhibits that had not gone back with the others, and both were sent in. Judge Sullivan took the question up with counsel at a sidebar and ended it without telling the courtroom what had been asked, which the Globe describes as highly unusual. Boston Globe, August 28, 10:29 and 10:56 a.m.
  • THE SIX ALTERNATES HAVE NOT BEEN DISCHARGED. Three men and three women, drawn from the eighteen-member panel seated in July, they are being held nearby and apart from the deliberating twelve, because one of them would have to take the seat of any juror who could not carry on. Boston Globe, 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. Boston Globe, August 27.
  • COUNSEL WOULD NOT PREDICT HOW LONG THE JURY WILL TAKE, AND SAYS HE IS NEVER CONFIDENT. Leaving the courthouse on Friday afternoon once the jurors had gone, Kevin Reddington told the Boston Globe he is never confident about a verdict, because there is no telling what a jury will do, and told CBS Boston the twelve could be back within the hour or still out a week from now. Asked by Fox News the evening before how long the deliberations would run, he had pointed to the amount of evidence, the length of the trial and the number of exhibits, and said he could not rule out everyone still being at the courthouse on Monday. The last word before the weekend is Fox News's, filing on Friday evening: on that account he again would not say how long the twelve would need and had no idea what they would do, and he added that they had worked hard, that it had been a long trial and that he has faith in the jury system. All of those remarks were made to reporters outside the courtroom, not in it. Boston Globe, August 28, 4:33 p.m.; CBS Boston, August 28; Fox News, August 27; Fox News, August 28, 5:16 p.m.
  • THE CROWD OUTSIDE THE COURTHOUSE WAS THIN AND UNHURRIED ON THE THIRD DAY. The Boston Globe described the benches outside Plymouth Superior Court while the jury sat: a group of women sitting facing one another, one handing out water, another joking with the woman next to her. Mary Drysdale, who had retired on Friday after more than a decade as an intake director at Best of Care, said she had woken up thinking she might go to the beach and had come to Plymouth instead. “I expected more of a ‘Karen Read’ kind of chaos,” she said. “It’s kinda chill.” Dozens of supporters in pink had turned out on Thursday, the day of the closings; on Friday and again on Monday there were more reporters than supporters. Niurka De Jesus, a mental health provider in Boston, said she had a lot of questions about the case and felt compelled to support the defendant in whatever way she could. This was outside the courtroom, not in it. Boston Globe, August 31, 12:47 p.m.
  • A WOMAN WHO SAID SHE HAD BEEN THROUGH POSTPARTUM ILLNESS HERSELF THANKED DEFENSE COUNSEL ON THE SIDEWALK. While Kevin Reddington stood in a ring of reporters outside Plymouth Superior Court on Monday, a woman who gave her name as Hannah came up to him with her mother; the two of them, they said, had traveled to Plymouth from Houston to show their support for the defendant. Her mother moved in to hug him. “I wish someone would have helped my daughter,” she said. “God bless you.” She told him he was “the voice of so many moms.” Hannah said her own mental health had been “weaponized” against her in a family court case after she went through postpartum difficulties when her son was eight months old, and that she understood what the defendant had been through: “I feel it.” She offered to take him out for a steak dinner. This was outside the courtroom, not in it. Boston Globe, August 31, 1:43 p.m.
  • DEFENSE COUNSEL SAID HE WOULD ACCEPT WHATEVER THE JURY DECIDES. Asked by Fox News what a just outcome would look like, Kevin Reddington said, “I've been around long enough to know that whatever a jury says, we accept, and that's it. These people have devoted five weeks of their life.” Asked how much longer deliberations might run, he said, “If I knew that, I'd probably win the lottery.” This was said outside the courtroom, not in it. Fox News, August 31, 2:06 p.m.
  • THE JURY HAS NOW DELIBERATED FOR ROUGHLY FIFTEEN HOURS. The twelve resumed after their lunch break, and the Boston Globe reported that they passed the fifteen-hour mark at around 2:30 p.m. Monday. No question has been sent to Judge Sullivan on Monday. Boston Globe, August 31, 2:35 p.m.
  • THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM FILLED UP AS THE JURY PASSED FIFTEEN AND A HALF HOURS. By mid-afternoon Monday the Boston Globe found reporters, other media and some of the defendant's supporters crowded into the corridor outside the courtroom, the bench space taken up and several people sitting on the floor or standing, with the noise carrying off the courthouse's tall ceilings. Boston Globe, August 31, 2:38 p.m.
  • THE GLOBE SET THE LENGTH OF THIS DELIBERATION AGAINST OTHER RECENT MASSACHUSETTS TRIALS. With the jury at about sixteen hours and no verdict, the Boston Globe compared it to four other high-profile cases: the second Karen Read jury deliberated about twenty-two hours before acquitting her in June 2025, after her first trial ended in a hung jury; Brian Walshe's jury took five and a half hours to convict him of first-degree murder in the killing and dismemberment of his wife; and Emmanuel Lopes's jury, in a case that also turned on an insanity defense, deliberated over six days before convicting him of second-degree murder in February 2024, after his first trial ended in a hung jury following nearly two weeks of deliberating. Boston Globe, August 31, 3:24 p.m.
  • THE GLOBE PUT WHAT IS IN FRONT OF THE JURY AT 84 WITNESSES AND NEARLY 300 EXHIBITS. As the third day of deliberating went on, the Boston Globe noted that the twelve had heard from 84 witnesses over 21 days of testimony, including conflicting assessments of the defendant's mental state from experts on both sides, and that they have nearly 300 exhibits to work through, among them crime-scene photographs and thousands of pages of her medical records and related investigatory reports. Boston Globe, August 31, 3:30 p.m.
  • THE THIRD DAY ENDED WITH NO VERDICT, AND THE JURY WAS SENT HOME UNTIL TUESDAY. Judge Sullivan took the bench shortly before four to say the twelve had asked to go home for the evening, with roughly seventeen hours of deliberating behind them over the three days. He brought them in, told them to "stay the course" and repeated his standing instruction not to discuss the case or take in any outside coverage overnight, then adjourned court with no verdict returned on any of the three counts. CBS Boston separately reported the jury's request to leave and the Tuesday return. Boston Globe, August 31, 3:46 and 3:51 p.m.; CBS Boston, August 31.
  • CBS BOSTON GAVE A DIFFERENT COUNT OF WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE THAN THE GLOBE'S. Where the Boston Globe put the trial at 84 witnesses and nearly 300 exhibits, CBS Boston's own account put it at 85 witnesses and more than 200 pieces of evidence. Neither outlet describes how it counted, and this index does not resolve the difference. CBS Boston, August 31.
  • TWO ANALYSTS WITH NO PART IN THE CASE, SPEAKING TO WBZ, CAUTIONED AGAINST READING THE DELIBERATION'S LENGTH. Jennifer Roman, a legal analyst, said the surge of public and media interest in the case was unusual for arriving this late in the trial, and put it down to how many subjects the case touches that affect people's everyday lives. Laura Niemi, a psychologist and jury consultant, said jurors face a genuinely difficult task and that a long deliberation should not be read as a sign the jury is deadlocked, given how much information they have to work through. Neither has a part in the case, and neither was speaking from the courtroom. CBS Boston, August 31, carrying remarks made to WBZ-TV.
  • A PSYCHOTHERAPIST WITH NO PART IN THE CASE ARGUED THAT SOME SUPPORTERS ARE EXTENDING “FALSE EMPATHY.” Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist not involved in the case, told Fox News on Monday that postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are distinct conditions, and argued that some of the defendant's supporters are misapplying sympathy meant for the former to a case that the defense has framed around the latter. He said he worries the trial's outcome could make women who genuinely have postpartum depression more reluctant to disclose it, for fear of being seen as a danger to their children. Alpert has no part in the case and was not speaking from the courtroom. Fox News, August 31, 5:55 p.m.

Procedural

Sourcesglobe-day-23 fox-day-23 abc-day-23 cbs-day-23 boston-day-23 fox-day-22 globe-day-22 cbs-day-23-reddington cnn-day-23-wrap globe-day-24 nbcboston-day-24 fox-day-24 ledger-day-24 boston25-day-24 boston-day-24 abc7-day-24 courttv-day-24 ap-day-24 boston25-day-24-yahoo fox17-day-24 ein-day-24 ein-day-24-explainer nbcnews-day-24 cnn-day-24 cbs-day-24
◀ August 28, 2026 Open in the index September 1, 2026 ▶