Lindsey Clancy lawyer drops retrial update - says ‘no rational jury’ could convict his client
Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer has asked a judge to find her not guilty after her case ended in a mistrial.
After five weeks of testimony and almost 40 hours of deliberations, the jury in the Clancy case could not reach a unanimous vote and Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.
Prosecutors have yet to say if they plan to retry Clancy following the mistrial.
But her lawyer Kevin Reddington has made a bombshell new filing in which he calls on the judge to declare her not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
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In the motion, filed today (Thursday 10 September), Reddington argued that Plymouth County District Attorney's Office should not be allowed to try the case for a second time claiming that the prosecution does not have sufficient evidence to prove his client is criminally responsible for the killings of her three children.
Reddington argued that even the prosecution's expert witnesses agreed Clancy suffered from a serious mental illness at the time.
"No rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she had no mental disease or defence when the Commonwealth's own proof established that she did," Reddington wrote in the motion.
The new filing also claims that 11 out of the 12 jurors had been prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, but one ‘holdout’ juror had prevented the jury from reaching a unanimous verdict despite allegedly admitting he had ‘reasonable doubt’ about the case.
During the trial, Reddington became irate in court as he demanded the judge remove the juror for 'refusing to listen to the law'.
The judge denied the request and the following the day, the jury said they were deadlocked for a third time and the mistrial was declared.
The defence lawyer has asked the judge to hear his arguments in the motion at a hearing scheduled for 29 September.
Reddington's new filing comes after jurors on the case have spoken out for the first time.
Speaking to NBC 10 Boston, the foreman revealed more details on the 'holdout' juror.
She said: “He admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms.
“I was so excited. There were three forms I had to fill out and I started filling them out. I wrote my signature on each one and then he said, ‘But I’m still not going say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.’”
One of the jurors branded the ‘holdout’ as ‘arrogant’ and said he refused to talk to other jury members.
“We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan’s instruction,” she said.
“He actually said one day in the end, ‘Why don’t we have the judge come in and read it again?’ And we were like, ‘No. We have it in front of us. We don’t need that.’ And we would highlight it and, you know, so and so, this is the definition of reasonable doubt. But he had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
Another juror, Nick Dargie, told Good Morning America that the same juror (who has not been publicly identified) refused to ‘engage’ with the rest of the jury.
He also believes that if a second trial were to go ahead, a not guilty verdict would be found.
"I think if they tried the trial again the way they did, I think nine times out of 10, I think a jury would come back with not guilty by reason of insanity," he said.
"No doubt in my mind."
Topics: Lindsay Clancy, US News, Crime, True Crime
Claire Reid