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Plymouth County Superior Court, Massachusetts · No. 2383CR00199

Commonwealth v. Clancy

A first‑degree murder prosecution in which the defence disputed almost none of what happened, and contested only whether the defendant was criminally responsible for it. After seven days the jury could not agree, and on 4 September 2026 the judge declared a mistrial. Nothing was decided.

Indicted
15 Sept 2023
Before
Sullivan, J.
Tried
20 Jul – 4 Sept 2026
Status
Mistrial

01 · Chronology

The whole case, in order

Every substantive step, from the events the case is about through to the last filing in the public record. The rail sets the page’s rule: one side on the left, the other on the right, the court down the middle.

  1. Before the charges

    None of this is disputed. The defence has never contested any of it — which is what makes the rest of the case unusual.

  2. Autumn 2022

    She stops sleeping

    Lindsay Clancy, a labour and delivery nurse in her early thirties, is under treatment for anxiety and insomnia that began after the birth of her third child. Over some five months she is seen by a psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner, is briefly hospitalised, and is moved through a succession of medications.

    She keeps notebooks throughout, tracking doses and symptoms. The warrant affidavits describe them as documenting “her mental state and her feelings about her children, in addition to keeping track of her medications.” At trial the defence used the handwriting itself as evidence: legible in November, close to illegible by January.

    Search warrant affidavits, unsealed Oct 2023

  3. 23 Jan 2023

    The last appointment

    A virtual appointment with her psychiatrist. She denies both suicidal and homicidal thoughts. The Commonwealth would return to this exchange repeatedly; so would the defence, for opposite reasons.

  4. 24 Jan 2023

    Duxbury

    In the course of an ordinary day — a paediatrician appointment, a snowman, art projects — Lindsay Clancy asks her husband to go out for takeaway and a prescription. While he is gone she strangles their three children in the basement with exercise bands. Cora was five, Dawson three, Callan eight months. She then cuts her wrists and neck and goes out a second‑storey window, sustaining spinal injuries that leave her paralysed from the waist down.

    Her husband returns shortly after six and calls 911 at 6:11pm. Two of the children are pronounced dead that evening; the youngest is removed from life support three days later. Clancy later described a commanding male voice telling her it was her last chance. Whether that account is a symptom or a construction is, in the end, the entire case.

    The clinical and forensic detail is extensive and is in the public record. It is cited here and not reproduced.

  5. Charges, and three years of paper

    From the arrest warrant to the eve of trial. Almost all of it is argument about what a jury would be allowed to hear.

  6. 25 Jan 2023

    Arrest warrant

    Two counts of murder, three of strangulation, three of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. A third murder count is added on 27 January, after the youngest child dies.

  7. 7 Feb 2023

    Arraigned from a hospital bed

    Plymouth District Court, by video link. She pleads not guilty. She has been in hospital since the night of the killings and will not appear in a courtroom in person for a long time.

  8. 15 Sept 2023

    Indicted

    A Plymouth County grand jury returns three counts of first‑degree murder and three of strangulation. The case moves to the Superior Court as No. 2383CR00199.

  9. 26 Oct 2023

    Arraigned again, at Tewksbury

    The Superior Court arraignment is held at the hospital where she is being held. Not guilty again.

  10. Oct 2023

    299 pages are unsealed

    Eleven search warrants, applied for in the weeks after January, become public. They are the most substantial primary document in the case and the closest thing to a narrative the investigation ever filed.

    They also carry an assertion that six separate applications repeat word for word: that Clancy used her phone and journal for “researching ways to kill.” It appears each time as the premise for searching one more device. Nothing in the 299 pages establishes it, and at trial the Commonwealth’s own forensic examiner testified he had found no such searches.

    Search warrant affidavits ¶¶40, 42 (repeated); Tr. Day 13

  11. Nov 2025

    Move the trial to Boston

    The defence argues the Plymouth jury pool has been saturated by local coverage and asks for Suffolk. Denied: the judge finds a fair jury can be seated where the case arose.

  12. Dec 2025

    Notice of a lack‑of‑criminal‑responsibility defence

    Kevin Reddington files formal notice. From this point the case is not about what happened.

  13. Mar – Apr 2026

    Two attempts to take the acts off the table

    The defence asks first to split the trial in two — did she do it, then was she responsible — and then, when that fails, offers to stipulate in writing to her involvement in the deaths. The Commonwealth declines the stipulation and elects to put the evidence in.

    Bifurcation denied 31 March, on the ground that the evidence and witnesses overlap almost entirely. The stipulation rejected 22 April. Both rulings had the same practical effect: a jury deciding a question about her mind would first sit through weeks of evidence about the deaths of three children. Whether that was prejudice or simply the Commonwealth’s case is contested, and is one of the things the defence has continued to litigate since.

  14. Jul 2026

    The strangulation counts go

    Days before the trial is due to start, the Commonwealth dismisses all three strangulation counts as duplicative of the murder counts. Three charges remain: first‑degree murder, three times.

  15. The trial

    Six weeks, more than eighty witnesses, some three hundred exhibits — almost none of it directed at whether she did it.

  16. 20 Jul 2026

    Jury selection

    Eighteen jurors seated, six of them alternates. Openings follow on 27 July.

  17. Jul – Aug 2026

    The Commonwealth’s case

    First responders, the scene, the medical examiner, the digital evidence, and then the clinicians who treated her. The through‑line is choice: that she selected the place, the method and the moment, and sent her husband out to create it.

    The treating clinicians are the heart of it. Her psychiatrist testified across two full days and the nurse practitioner for a third; neither had recorded observing psychosis, and both confirmed she had denied homicidal thoughts. The Commonwealth’s position is that the people who actually saw her, saw no psychosis.

    Tr. Days 9–11

  18. Aug 2026

    The investigation, on cross

    The defence spends much of its cross‑examination not on the mental health evidence but on the quality of the police work: what was looked for, what was not, and how long it sat.

    The clearest example: a State Police forensic examiner agreed there were no “ways to kill” searches on the computer, and that he had not encountered any such searches attributable to either Clancy. The one suicide‑methods page in evidence was on the husband’s laptop, reached through a Wikipedia hyperlink in August 2022, five months before the deaths — and that laptop was not examined until 2025.

    Tr. Day 13

  19. Aug 2026

    The defence case

    Family, the family’s nanny, and the experts. The account offered is of a woman misdiagnosed and over‑medicated by clinicians who never spoke to one another, whose psychosis was invisible to them because none of them was looking.

    The forensic psychiatrist called by the defence put it at its highest: that she was frankly psychotic that day, acting not out of malice but out of a suicidal conviction that the children could not survive without her. A second defence expert concluded she could neither appreciate the wrongfulness of the act nor conform her conduct to the law.

    Tr. Days 15–18

  20. Aug 2026

    Rebuttal

    Three forensic experts for the Commonwealth close the evidence. The core of it: a major depressive episode, yes — but no mania, no hypomania, and so no bipolar diagnosis and no psychosis. A voice heard once, they said, is not how psychosis usually presents.

  21. 27 Aug 2026

    Closings, and the charge

    Sullivan, J. instructs the jury on criminal responsibility before the elements of the offence, and tells them the burden of proving it is the Commonwealth’s, beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant, he says, has none.

    “The defendant has no burden to prove a lack of criminal responsibility.” He also instructs them on what a verdict of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility actually produces: a petition to commit, Bridgewater State Hospital, review at intervals, and commitment renewable without limit — possibly, he tells them, for the duration of her life.

    Tr. Closing Arguments, 07:36 and 12:10

  22. Seven days

    Thirty‑eight hours of deliberation, three notes, and no verdict.

  23. 27 Aug 2026

    Twelve of eighteen

    The twelve deliberating jurors are drawn at random from the eighteen. Five verdicts are available to them: first‑degree murder, second‑degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.

  24. 1 – 2 Sept 2026

    Deadlocked, and told to keep going

    On the fourth day the jury reports it cannot agree. On the fifth the judge delivers the Tuey‑Rodriguez charge, asking them to re‑examine their positions without surrendering any conscientiously held belief.

  25. 3 Sept 2026

    The foreperson’s note

    The foreperson writes that one juror has acknowledged doubt but will not apply it as the law requires. The judge questions the jurors and declines either to remove the juror or to inquire further, citing the privacy of deliberations.

  26. 4 Sept 2026

    An hour at the Supreme Judicial Court

    With a mistrial about to be declared, the judge grants a one‑hour stay for an emergency interlocutory appeal. The defence petitions the SJC as No. SJ‑2026‑0402, asking it to order the trial court to examine the juror. A single justice denies it.

    The petition argues that a juror’s refusal to follow the law is never protected by the privacy of deliberations, and that this juror’s stated reasoning disclosed a bias against the mentally ill. Filed inside the hour, it prints the docket number a digit short.

    Emergency request for relief, SJ‑2026‑0402, citing Commonwealth v. Swafford, 441 Mass. 329 (2004)

  27. 4 Sept 2026

    Mistrial

    A third note. Thirty‑eight hours over seven days, and no unanimity. The judge discharges the jury. Nothing is decided: the charges stand, and she is presumed innocent of them.

  28. Still open

    Where the docket actually is, rather than where the coverage left it.

  29. Sept 2026

    The jurors talk, and the juror list is sealed

    Several jurors describe the deliberations publicly; the holdout gives his own account and disputes theirs. On 14 September the judge impounds the juror list indefinitely after the holdout is identified online.

    These accounts are not evidence and are not on the docket. They are here because the motions now pending turn on what happened in that room, and because the accounts conflict: the foreperson says the holdout acknowledged reasonable doubt and would not return the verdict it pointed to; the holdout says he had no doubt at all.

  30. Sept 2026

    Three motions, none of them a retrial

    The defence moves under Rule 25 for a finding of not guilty on the ground the evidence was legally insufficient; separately to dismiss on double jeopardy; and separately again for further questioning of the holdout juror.

  31. 29 Sept 2026

    The first hearing since

    Reddington argues the Rule 25 motion, attacking the exercise bands, the DNA, the fingerprint work and the investigation. It is taken under advisement. No retrial date is set. The next hearing is 2 November; the district attorney has not said whether he will try the case again.

  32. Open

    Where it stands

    Three counts of first‑degree murder, undecided. A defendant presumed innocent of them. Two motions that could end the case without a second trial, and no date for one if they fail. This entry is the honest end of the page, and it will change.

Skip to 02

02 · The whole thing at once

How it actually resolves

Every question the jury was actually asked, drawn once so the shape is visible without reading the chronology twice.

What the jury in Commonwealth v. Clancy was actually asked A decision tree showing what the jury was actually asked. Two things had to be proved by the Commonwealth, not by the defendant: the elements of murder, which the defence conceded and offered to stipulate to, and that the defendant was criminally responsible, which was contested and took up almost the whole trial. Both had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and the defendant carried no burden to prove a lack of criminal responsibility. To prove criminal responsibility the Commonwealth had to establish at least one of two things: either that she had no mental disease or defect at the time, a legal rather than a medical term, or that if she did have one she nonetheless retained the substantial capacity both to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct and to conform that conduct to the law, both rather than either. If the Commonwealth proved one of those, she was criminally responsible and the jury went on to the counts, where it could return first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter or not guilty. If it proved neither, the verdict was not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, which is not a release: the district attorney petitions to commit, to Bridgewater State Hospital, subject to review at intervals and renewable without limit, possibly for life. In the event the jury reached none of this. It split eleven to one over thirty-eight hours and seven days, sent three notes, and the judge declared a mistrial on the fourth of September 2026. Nothing was decided. The Commonwealth must prove The elements of murder Not contested. The defence conceded the conduct and offeredto stipulate to it; the Commonwealth declined and proved it. The Commonwealth must prove That she was criminally responsible Contested, and contested alone. Six weeks of evidencewent to this and almost nothing went to the counts. Before anything else Whose burden is it? The Commonwealth’s, beyond a reasonable doubt, on both. “The defendant has no burden to prove a lack ofcriminal responsibility.” This is the point most arguments about the case get backwards. To carry it The Commonwealth must prove at least one of these two things Either No mental disease or defect That at the time of the killings she had none. It is alegal term, not a medical one, and need not match anyformal diagnosis. Or Substantial capacity retained That if she did have one, she kept the capacity both toappreciate the wrongfulness of the act and to conform herconduct to the law. Both, not either. either or The question Proved, beyond a reasonable doubt? Yes Criminally responsible No Not criminally responsible proved not proved Then the jury reaches the counts Four ways it can land First-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter,or not guilty. Only here does the evidence about the actsstart doing any work. Then the verdict is Not guilty by reason of insanity Not a release. The district attorney petitions to commit;Bridgewater State Hospital; reviewed at intervals andrenewable without limit — possibly for life. What actually happened Neither. The jury never answered the question Eleven to one, thirty-eight hours, seven days, three notes. Mistrial on 4 September 2026.Nothing below the second box on this diagram was ever reached, and nothing was decided. never reached

The burden runs the opposite way to the intuition: the Commonwealth had to prove she was responsible, not the defence that she was not. Nothing on this diagram asks whether she killed her children, because by the time the jury was empanelled nobody was arguing about it.

03 · Side by side

Six questions, two answers each

Positions as each side has actually argued them, in its filings and at trial, not as the other side characterises them. On this page the court line is usually empty, because on almost every question there is still no answer.

1Was she psychotic on 24 January?

Commonwealth

No. Depressed, severely and genuinely — but depression is not psychosis. There was no mania and no hypomania, so no bipolar diagnosis, and a commanding voice heard once and never before is not how psychosis presents.

Defence

Yes. Bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis, in a woman five months into a collapse nobody treating her had correctly identified. On the day itself she was frankly psychotic and acting on it.

CourtNot resolved. This is the question the jury could not answer.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

A major depressive episode explains everything in the record without requiring psychosis. The bipolar diagnosis was constructed after the fact, by experts retained for the defence, out of material the treating clinicians had already seen and read differently.

Rests on

Three forensic experts called in rebuttal; the absence of any contemporaneous clinical note recording psychotic symptoms; the singularity of the reported voice.

Tr. Days 18–20

Authority

None needed. This is a pure question of fact for the jury.

Where it is weak

Postpartum psychosis is known to be episodic, to fluctuate, and to be concealed by those experiencing it — which makes its absence from a clinical note weaker evidence than it first appears.

Defence

The argument

The illness was there and was missed. Her own notebooks track the deterioration in real time, and the handwriting degrades with it. What the clinicians did not see is a fact about the clinicians.

Rests on

Two expert witnesses, one of them among the more experienced forensic psychiatrists in the field; the notebooks; the testimony of her family; the sheer implausibility of the act as a rational one.

Tr. Days 15–18

Authority

None needed, and none available — the legal test does not require a recognised diagnosis at all.

Where it is weak

Both defence experts were retained and examined her long after the event. Neither saw her on or near 24 January; the people who did, did not describe what the experts concluded.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    Did she have a mental disease or defect on 24 January? The Commonwealth must prove she did not.

  2. Commonwealth

    Nobody treating her recorded psychosis, and she denied homicidal thoughts the day before.

  3. Commonwealth

    The contemporaneous record is the best evidence of her state, and it is silent.

    Defence

    A record kept by people who were not looking for psychosis is silent either way.

  4. Defence

    The act itself is evidence. No account of it as a rational choice survives contact with the facts.

  5. Where it lands

    Nowhere. Eleven jurors reportedly accepted the defence account and one did not, which under the law is the same as none of them accepting it.

2Does the planning show she knew what she was doing?

Commonwealth

Yes. She chose the place, the method and the moment, and she sent her husband out of the house to create the moment. Those are decisions, made in sequence, by someone tracking what she was doing.

Defence

No. Sequencing is not sanity. Psychosis does not remove the ability to act in order; it removes the ability to understand what the order is for. A delusion can be executed methodically and still be a delusion.

CourtNot resolved. Put to the jury as a question of fact.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

Every step narrows the alternatives deliberately. The basement rather than anywhere else. Exercise bands rather than anything to hand. A takeaway order and a prescription that put the one other adult in the house on the road for an hour.

Rests on

The phone records and call timings; the scene; the sequence of that afternoon reconstructed minute by minute in the warrant affidavits and again at trial.

Authority

The instruction permits the jury to consider conduct before and after the act in deciding capacity.

Where it is weak

It proves organisation, which nobody disputes. The legal test is not organisation but appreciation and control, and the Commonwealth has to reach those separately.

Defence

The argument

The same facts read the other way. A woman intending to die that afternoon, convinced her children could not survive without her, would do exactly these things in exactly this order. The planning is evidence of the delusion’s content, not of its absence.

Rests on

Expert evidence on how postpartum psychosis presents; the fact that she made no attempt to escape, conceal or explain; the near-fatal injuries she inflicted on herself within minutes.

Authority

Mass. Model Jury Instr. 9.200 — “appreciate” means to understand, not merely to know.

Where it is weak

It is unfalsifiable in the shape it is usually put. If order is consistent with psychosis and disorder is too, the argument stops doing work and the jury is left with the experts.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    Did she retain substantial capacity to appreciate wrongfulness and to conform her conduct?

  2. Commonwealth

    She made a sequence of choices that only make sense if she understood what she was doing.

  3. Defence

    Understanding the mechanics is knowing. The instruction requires appreciating, which is more.

  4. Commonwealth

    Removing the only witness who could stop her shows she knew it was wrong.

    Defence

    Or shows only that she knew he would stop her, which is not the same thing.

  5. Where it lands

    Unresolved, and this is the gap the closing arguments were really fought over.

3What do the treating clinicians’ records establish?

Commonwealth

That the professionals who actually saw her in the months and days beforehand saw no psychosis, and recorded none. She denied homicidal thoughts repeatedly, including at a virtual appointment the day before.

Defence

That she was misdiagnosed, medicated on a moving target, and treated by people who never spoke to one another. The records show the failure of her care, not the absence of her illness.

CourtNot resolved. The same evidence now underpins civil suits in Norfolk County.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

Clinical records made at the time, by people with no stake in the outcome, beat expert reconstruction made years later by people retained to reach a conclusion.

Rests on

The testimony of her psychiatrist across two days and her nurse practitioner across a third — the single largest block of evidence in the trial.

Tr. Days 9–11

Authority

Ordinary weight-of-evidence reasoning; no legal rule is in play.

Where it is weak

Both witnesses testified they relied on Clancy to tell them how her other treatment was going, and one did not know the other was still treating her. That damages the records as a record of anything but what she chose to report.

Defence

The argument

A patient reporting her own symptoms to two prescribers who are not talking to each other is not being monitored. The notes are a record of an uncoordinated treatment, and cannot bear the weight the Commonwealth puts on their silence.

Rests on

Admissions drawn out on cross: reliance on the patient for updates, no request for complete records, no contact between prescribers.

Tr. Days 9–11

Authority

None. It is an attack on weight, not admissibility.

Where it is weak

It cuts both ways. If she concealed symptoms from her clinicians, she was capable of judging what to conceal — which is a point about capacity, and the Commonwealth made it.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    How much does the clinical silence prove?

  2. Commonwealth

    Trained professionals saw her and found nothing to record.

  3. Defence

    They were not looking, were not coordinating, and were relying on her to tell them.

  4. Commonwealth

    Concealment implies judgement, and judgement implies capacity.

    Defence

    Concealment of shame is a symptom, not a demonstration of insight.

  5. Where it lands

    Unresolved here, and being litigated again in the civil courts on the opposite assumption.

4Was the suicide attempt real?

Commonwealth

Argued both ways at different points. That the cuts to her neck and wrists were superficial and not bleeding, and that she may have slid rather than jumped — and elsewhere, that the attempt was sincere and she killed the children first because she would not leave them behind.

Defence

Unambiguously real. She went out of a second-storey window and broke her back. She is paralysed. The suicide was the plan, and the children died because the delusion made them part of it.

CourtNot resolved.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

The injuries she inflicted with the knife were not consistent with a serious attempt, and the fall is open to an account other than a jump.

Rests on

The observations of first responders and the emergency clinicians who treated her; the physical evidence at the window.

Authority

None. Pure fact.

Where it is weak

The two positions are in tension. A prosecution that argues the attempt was staged, and also that it was sincere and motivated the killings, gives the jury a choice of theories rather than one. It was the sharpest criticism made of the Commonwealth’s presentation.

Defence

The argument

Nothing about the outcome is equivocal. She sustained spinal injuries that ended her ability to walk, within minutes of the deaths, in a house she knew her husband was about to return to.

Rests on

Her injuries; the timing; the absence of any attempt to leave, conceal or account for what had happened.

Authority

None.

Where it is weak

A genuine suicide attempt is consistent with despair as well as with psychosis, and despair is not a defence. The attempt does not by itself reach the legal test.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    Does the suicide attempt tell the jury anything about capacity?

  2. Defence

    It establishes that she was not acting to benefit herself, which removes the ordinary motive analysis.

  3. Commonwealth

    Staged, it is consciousness of guilt.

    Defence

    Real, and it is the one part of the plan that went as intended.

  4. Where it lands

    Unresolved — and the Commonwealth having argued both branches at different moments made it harder, not easier, to resolve.

5Was the investigation sound enough to rely on?

Commonwealth

Eleven warrants, a scene processed thoroughly, DNA from the bands, and more than eighty witnesses. Whatever the defence says about individual gaps, the facts it complains about were never the facts in dispute.

Defence

Investigators settled on a conclusion early and stopped testing it. The affidavits asserted things they never substantiated, a key device sat unexamined for two years, and the gaps run in one direction.

CourtDeclined to instruct the jury that it could acquit on the basis of a faulty investigation.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

The defence concedes the conduct. An attack on the investigation of a set of facts nobody contests cannot bear on the only question the jury has to answer.

Rests on

The scope of the forensic work; the concession itself, offered in writing in April 2026.

Authority

The judge’s refusal of the faulty-investigation instruction.

Where it is weak

Credibility is not compartmentalised. A jury told the affidavits asserted something six times that the Commonwealth’s own examiner could not find may discount other things it is told.

Defence

The argument

The clearest instance is the assertion that she was “researching ways to kill.” It appears in six warrant applications in identical words, each time as the reason to search one more device. Nothing in 299 pages supports it.

Rests on

The affidavits themselves, and the cross-examination of the Commonwealth’s forensic examiner, who agreed there were no such searches and had encountered none.

Search warrant affidavits ¶¶40, 42 (repeated); Tr. Day 13

Authority

Advanced again in September 2026 as part of the Rule 25 motion.

Where it is weak

A warrant affidavit is not evidence and was never put to the jury as evidence. The point is real but it is aimed at a document the jury was not asked to believe.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    Can the quality of the investigation reach a case where the conduct is conceded?

  2. Defence

    An investigation that asserts what it cannot support should not be trusted on what it can.

  3. Commonwealth

    The disputed question is clinical, and no amount of police work was ever going to settle it.

  4. Where it lands

    The instruction was refused, so it reached the jury as argument only. It is now back before the judge as a sufficiency point.

6Did the Commonwealth carry a burden it may not have known it had?

Commonwealth

Yes. The evidence of deliberate, sequenced choices, combined with an unbroken clinical record showing no psychosis, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that she appreciated what she was doing and could have done otherwise.

Defence

No, and it is not close. On a question this contested, with qualified experts on both sides, a jury cannot be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of a proposition about someone else’s mind. That is what the Rule 25 motion says.

CourtUnder advisement since 29 September 2026. Next heard 2 November.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Commonwealth

The argument

Sufficiency is a low bar. The question is not whether the jury agreed but whether a rational juror could have convicted on the evidence, and eleven jurors reaching the opposite view does not answer it.

Rests on

Three rebuttal experts; the treating records; the conduct on the day.

Authority

Mass. R. Crim. P. 25, and the ordinary standard for a required finding.

Where it is weak

Nothing legally. Practically, a hung jury after thirty-eight hours is an awkward platform from which to argue the case was clear.

Defence

The argument

The Commonwealth had to disprove a mental disease or defect, or prove capacity retained on both limbs. It did neither to the standard required, and the physical evidence it leaned on — the bands, the DNA, the fingerprint work — does not speak to her mind at all.

Rests on

The Rule 25 motion argued on 29 September 2026.

Authority

Mass. R. Crim. P. 25; Mass. Model Jury Instr. 9.200.

Where it is weak

Rule 25 asks whether a rational juror could convict, not whether this jury did. One juror who would have is awkward for the motion, and the Commonwealth will say so.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks
  1. Test

    Could a rational juror have found criminal responsibility proved beyond a reasonable doubt?

  2. Defence

    No. Qualified experts divided, and division at that level is reasonable doubt by definition.

  3. Commonwealth

    Expert disagreement is ordinary and juries resolve it every day.

    Defence

    Not when the burden of disproof sits on the side with the weaker experts.

  4. Where it lands

    Undecided. If it succeeds the case ends in an acquittal the jury declined to return; if it fails, there is no retrial date and the defence says it cannot try again before June 2027.

Skip to 04

04 · Notes

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Source

Built from the 299 pages of search warrant affidavits unsealed in October 2023, the emergency petition to the Supreme Judicial Court of 4 September 2026, the Massachusetts model jury instruction on criminal responsibility, and transcripts of the televised trial.

A caution about those transcripts. They are transcripts of the broadcast, not of the court reporter, so they carry no page and line numbers — citations here are to the trial day, which is why they look unlike the citations on the other pages in this series. They also misspell names, including the judge’s. Every name on this page has been checked against something other than the transcript.

What is sealed

Sealed throughout: the defendant’s medical and psychiatric records beyond what was put in evidence, and material concerning the surviving family. Parts of the expert litigation were heard in camera. Since 14 September 2026 the juror list has been impounded indefinitely, after the identity of the holdout juror was circulated online.

Names

Three children died, aged five, three and eight months. They are named in the public record; they are named here once, in the entry for the day it happened, and are not used as illustration anywhere else on the page. The clinical and forensic detail in the medical testimony is cited and summarised, not reproduced. That is a deliberate limit and it costs the page something: readers who want that detail will have to go to the record for it.

What this is not

Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict — here least of all. A mistrial decides nothing. It leaves the charges live, the defendant presumed innocent of them, and every contested question exactly where it stood before the trial began. This page does not supply the answer the jury declined to give, and the reporting of an eleven-to-one split is not that answer either: under the law an eleven-to-one split is not a verdict, and a juror who will not join eleven others has done nothing wrong by refusing.

Tell me what I got wrong

If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.

Type of issue

No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.

This case is live and this page will go out of date. Record reviewed through 29 September 2026 — the first hearing after the mistrial, at which the Rule 25 motion was argued and taken under advisement. The next hearing is 2 November 2026.

Terms

Plain English

Words this page uses because the court uses them. Nothing here is special to this case.

The paperwork

Docket
The court’s numbered list of everything filed in a case. Entry 42 is the forty-second thing filed.
Indictment
The formal charge that starts a felony case in the Superior Court. It replaces the complaint the district court began with.
Grand jury
A jury that decides only whether there is enough evidence to charge someone, not whether they are guilty. It hears one side.
Transcript
The word-for-word record of a proceeding. A court reporter’s transcript is cited by page and line; a transcript of a televised proceeding, as here, has no line numbers and is cited by day.
Exhibit
A document, object or record put in evidence. This trial had roughly three hundred.
Under seal
Filed with the court but kept off the public record. Both sides and the judge can read it; nobody else can. Material is unsealed when that is lifted, as the search warrants were in October 2023.
Impounded
Withheld from public inspection by order. The juror list in this case was impounded indefinitely after the trial.
Affidavit
A sworn written statement. A search warrant affidavit is the officer’s account of why there is reason to search. It is not evidence at trial.

How a case moves

Arraignment
The hearing where the charges are read and the defendant pleads. It happens once in the district court and again after indictment.
Motion
A formal request that the court do something. The other side files an opposition; the moving side may then file a reply.
Stipulate
To agree formally that something is true so it need not be proved. The other side does not have to accept the offer, and here it did not.
In camera
Heard in private, in the judge’s chambers rather than in open court.
Rebuttal
Evidence one side puts in to answer the other’s case, after that case has closed. It cannot open new ground.
Interlocutory appeal
An appeal taken in the middle of a case rather than at the end of it. They are rare, and usually urgent.
Under advisement
Argued, but not yet decided. The judge will rule later.

The ones that can end it

Mistrial
A trial ended without a verdict. It decides nothing: the charges stay live and the case can, in principle, be tried again.
Hung jury
A jury that cannot reach the required unanimity. Eleven to one is not a verdict, and is worth no more than nothing to one.
Tuey-Rodriguez charge
What a Massachusetts judge tells a deadlocked jury: reconsider, but surrender no conscientiously held belief. Elsewhere it is called an Allen charge, or a dynamite charge.
Rule 25
A motion asking the judge to enter a finding of not guilty because no rational juror could convict on the evidence. It is about legal sufficiency, not about whether this jury was persuaded.
Double jeopardy
The rule against being tried twice for the same offence. A mistrial usually does not trigger it, which is why it has to be argued.

The test this case turned on

Burden
Which side has to prove a thing. If they do not, they lose that point, even if the other side proves nothing either.
Beyond a reasonable doubt
The criminal standard, and the highest one the law uses. It is not proof beyond all possible doubt.
Criminal responsibility
Whether the defendant can be held answerable at all. In Massachusetts the Commonwealth must prove she was responsible, beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant proves nothing.
Mental disease or defect
A legal term, not a medical one. It need not match any formal diagnosis, and a jury decides whether there was one.
Substantial capacity
The second limb. Even with a mental disease or defect, a person is responsible if she could both appreciate that what she was doing was wrong and conform her conduct to the law. Losing either is enough.
Appreciate
To understand, rather than merely to know. Knowing an act is illegal is not the same as grasping what that means.
Not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility
Often shortened to NGI. It is not an acquittal in effect: it ordinarily leads to a petition to commit, and commitment is reviewed at intervals and renewable without limit.
Postpartum psychosis
A rare and serious illness arising after childbirth. It is a clinical term and carries no legal consequence by itself — the legal test is the one above.