The jury weighing murder charges against Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother accused of killing her three young children, told the judge for a second time this week that it cannot reach a unanimous verdict.
Jurors sent a note to Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan on Wednesday afternoon saying they remained deadlocked, a day after sending a similar note revealing the panel of nine women and three men could not agree. On Tuesday, Sullivan sent them back to keep deliberating and let them leave early. On Wednesday, he took a different step: he issued what is known in Massachusetts as a Tuey-Rodriguez charge, sometimes called a “dynamite charge,” and sent the jury back to the deliberation room.
The Tuey-Rodriguez instruction is a Massachusetts-specific charge meant to help a stuck jury break its impasse without pressuring anyone into a verdict they don’t believe in. Retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Thomas Drechsler said a judge only issues it after concluding jurors have deliberated in good faith but simply cannot agree.
The charge encourages the jurors to rethink their own feelings in light of what other jurors feel, while reminding them that no one is in a better position to decide the case than the jurors who heard all the evidence, Drechsler said.
Drechsler said that once a jury reports deadlock after receiving the instruction, “there’s a higher likelihood” the case ends in a mistrial — though he noted he has personally seen juries return a verdict after getting the charge.
It is not publicly known how the jury is divided, whether there are one or several holdouts, or which way any holdouts are leaning.
Clancy is charged with three counts each of murder and strangulation in the January 24, 2023, deaths of her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She has admitted to killing the children but says she was in the grip of a psychotic episode at the time and did not understand what she was doing.
Jurors have the option of convicting her of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter, or finding her not guilty, including on the grounds that she lacked criminal responsibility. A first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Deliberations are expected to resume Thursday morning.
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