What happens if there’s a hung jury in Lindsay Clancy case as jurors send second note to judge

The jury in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial has once again told the judge that they are unable to reach a verdict on whether she is criminally responsible for killing her three children.

Jurors sent a note to Judge William Sullivan at around 2:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, their fifth day of deliberations , stating for the second day in a row that they have not been able to come to a unanimous decision.

Sullivan ordered them to keep trying, a common instruction in criminal trials when juries indicate they are having trouble reaching a verdict.

After court ended Tuesday, Clancy’s attorney said it was a good sign that the jury kept working.

“The fact that they have not said that they’re done is very, very heartening,” Kevin Reddington said. “Obviously, they’re working very hard.”

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.

Jurors heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how her mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital. Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state when she killed the children.

A mistrial will be declared and the case essentially goes back to the same status as before the trial, with the 36-year-old charged with murder and held at a psychiatric hospital awaiting resolution of the criminal case.

Prosecutors will decide whether to try again with a new jury. If they do, the jury selection process will begin again and a new trial will be scheduled. Prosecutors could also offer a plea deal to Clancy, said Brad Bailey, a Boston defense attorney and former prosecutor who is not involved in the case.

“Any time the threat of a retrial with murder one hanging over the client is re-interjected, defense lawyers will, at the very least, explore whether or not there’s any interest in a resolution,” Bailey said.

Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children at their home south of Boston but says postpartum psychosis led to her actions. After the killings, her husband found her badly injured in the yard, where she landed after jumping from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed from the waist down.

Though less likely, the district attorney’s office could decide to not retry the case.

“Sometimes they decide not to, because of the sense that there may be the same result each time they try it, and because of the expenditures involved in trying the case to begin with, particularly when you have expert witnesses,” he said. “Those are going to be expensive cases.”

Bailey expects her defense attorney to aggressively lobby against another trial, making a case to the district attorney’s office along the lines of: “‘Why are you doing this to this poor woman? She’s still clearly obviously suffering. She’s been punished with her paralysis and, worse than that, the loss of her three children.’”