Commonwealth v. Clancy

Chronological View

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, at p. 105

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.

   Her psychiatrist testified that her mood that day was depressed and her affect “depressed and flat,” that she saw no sign of psychosis, and that Clancy answered no when asked about suicidal or homicidal thoughts. The plan was to slow the Valium taper and raise the amitriptyline to 20 milligrams. On cross she agreed she had not recommended a hospital evaluation. Asked whether the higher dose “pushed her over the edge,” she answered, “I don’t think so.”

   Tr. Day 9, 4:44:24–4:49:06; Tr. Day 10, 2:59:07–3:01:43 and 3:37:43

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 follows after the youngest child dies on 27 January.

   The warrant issued out of Plymouth District Court the day after the deaths. The investigation was already running: the affidavits record a trooper attending the first autopsies at about nine that morning. By the arraignment on 7 February the complaint carried three counts each of murder, strangulation, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

   Plymouth County District Attorney, press release of 7 Feb 2023; Search warrant affidavits at p. 105; reporting: WHDH, 25 Jan 2023

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.

   Judge John Canavan presided, and she appeared over Zoom from a hospital bed in Boston. He ordered her held in a medical facility until her treatment was complete, with bail to be taken up after that. She was moved to Tewksbury State Hospital that May. Her first appearance in a courtroom in person came on 20 February 2026, three years later.

   Plymouth County District Attorney, press release of 7 Feb 2023; reporting: Duxbury Clipper, 1 Nov 2023; NBC10 Boston, 2 Mar 2026

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.

   The district attorney’s announcement gives the medical examiner’s findings: asphyxia for the two older children, and complications of asphyxia for the youngest. A psychiatrist retained by the Commonwealth had spoken to the grand jury. She was being held without bail in a medical facility.

   Plymouth County District Attorney, press release of 15 Sept 2023; reporting: Duxbury Clipper, 1 Nov 2023

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.

   Sullivan, J. presided, and the public could watch over Zoom. She sat in a wheelchair between Kevin Reddington and a psychiatrist retained by the defence. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague appeared for the Commonwealth. The judge ordered that she stay at Tewksbury State Hospital, held without bail.

   Plymouth County District Attorney, press release of 26 Oct 2023; reporting: Duxbury Clipper, 1 Nov 2023

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 at pp. 105, 139, 173, 208, 236, 264; 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.

    Decided at a hearing on 18 November 2025, which she attended by Zoom. At the same hearing the judge moved the trial from 9 February to 20 July 2026. It was the third postponement, and both sides agreed to it, calling the case “discovery intensive.” How she would be brought into a courtroom, in a wheelchair and from a hospital, was discussed and left open.

    Reporting: NBC10 Boston, 18 Nov 2025

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.

    The ground had been prepared well before the notice. In January 2025 the court had ordered her to be examined by the Commonwealth’s experts, and a further forensic evaluation was fixed for 10 to 12 April 2026. Early in 2026 a malpractice suit was filed in her name in Norfolk Superior Court, alleging that her providers failed to diagnose bipolar disorder and put her through a “disorganized, uncoordinated course of polypharmacy.”

    Reporting: NBC10 Boston, 14 Jan 2025; NBC10 Boston, 2 Mar 2026; NBC10 Boston, 31 Mar 2026

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 in an order reported on 31 March, on the ground that the evidence and witnesses overlap almost entirely: “These are overlapping issues that do not require bifurcation.” 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.

    Reporting: NBC10 Boston, 2 Mar 2026; NBC10 Boston, 31 Mar 2026; WHDH, 31 Mar 2026; Boston Globe, 7 Apr 2026; Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, 26 Apr 2026

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.

    The district attorney’s office said the counts “would be subsumed into the murder charges indicted and are therefore redundant.” Around the same time the judge ruled that the jury could hear the 911 calls made after her husband found the children.

    Reporting: Boston 25 News, 10 Jul 2026

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.

    Six alternates is a large number. The judge told the jurors why at the end: it was “a lengthy case over the summer.” On 31 July the jury was taken by bus along the route her husband drove that evening and then through the house in Duxbury, in groups of six. On 4 August she answered the judge’s questions about a stipulation covering the blood, the bands and the DNA, which spared the jury days of chain-of-custody witnesses.

    Tr. Closing Arguments, 2:50:38; reporting: ABC7, 1 Aug 2026; Boston.com, 4 Aug 2026

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, 10, 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, 16, 17, 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.

    The last of the three told the jury it was unusual that she had never reported a voice to any clinician before that day, and “very unusual” that it stopped once the youngest child had been strangled. Asked whether it is typical in psychosis to hear a voice once, never before and never after, he answered no. When the Commonwealth rested, the judge agreed to put manslaughter to the jury and refused the defence’s request for an instruction on a faulty investigation.

    Tr. Day 20, 6:54:31 and 7:00:13; Tr. Day 21, 3:14:20 and 3:47:31

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.

    The clerk drew the alternates at random, with the foreperson kept out of the draw. Nine women and three men were left to deliberate. There was a verdict slip for each child, with a box for every outcome, and the foreperson was to tick one, sign it and date it.

    Tr. Closing Arguments, 2:50:38 and 2:54:12; reporting: NBC News, 2 Sept 2026

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.

    The first report came about an hour into Tuesday 1 September, and the judge sent the jury back without the formal charge. That afternoon a woman was arrested outside the courthouse, accused of filming jurors as they left. She pleaded not guilty. The next morning the judge spoke to each juror and alternate one at a time before deliberations resumed. The second note came at about 2pm. A Massachusetts judge may send a deadlocked jury back only twice unless the jury itself agrees to go on, so a third report would end the trial.

    Reporting: NBC News, 2 Sept 2026; Tr. Mistrial, 18:43

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.

    The note came after lunch. The judge had each juror brought in and asked whether they could follow his instructions, and all said they could. He then read the reasonable-doubt instruction again. Reddington asked for the juror to be removed. The Commonwealth answered that there was “no way to determine what the deliberations are.” The judge said it was not proper for him “to side with one side or the other of the deliberations.” The next morning he refused a further inquiry. Read strictly, he said, the note “does not indicate that this is a person who has refused to follow the law.”

    Reporting: NBC News, 3 Sept 2026; Tr. Mistrial, 07:23–10:00

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); Tr. Mistrial, 24:02–26:40

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.

    The note read: “It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to.” The Commonwealth said a mistrial was now required. Reddington asked first for the jury to be sent back once more, then for it to be polled on any charge it had agreed on, citing the Karen Read decision. The judge refused both: “I don’t feel I have any choice but to declare a mistrial at this time.” The clerk continued the case to 29 September.

    Tr. Mistrial, 18:08, 19:37, 20:08 and 37:08; reporting: WBUR, 4 Sept 2026

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.

    Reporting: PBS News, 28 Sept 2026

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.

    The juror motion came first, around 18 September. It asks the court to preserve the questionnaires, courthouse video and phone sign-in sheets for all eighteen jurors, and to make a “limited inquiry” into the holdout, including his phone records for each day of deliberations. The double jeopardy motion followed on 21 September from co-counsel Martin Weinberg. It argues there was no “manifest necessity” for a mistrial, “given the absence of judicial inquiry regarding repeated reports” about one juror. The Commonwealth filed a motion of its own, for an order limiting what Reddington says in public. WBZ and the Boston Globe opposed it.

    Reporting: Fox News, 21 Sept 2026; CBS Boston, 29 Sept 2026

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.

    Only the Rule 25 motion was argued. Reddington said there was a “total and complete lack of evidence.” Shanan Buckingham, for the Commonwealth, answered that this was the first time the defence had questioned the evidence that she did it. The double jeopardy motion, the juror motion and the Commonwealth’s request for a gag order were all put over to 2 November. A lawyer appeared for the holdout, who is “Juror Doe” in the filings. The judge said his goal was to have the case tried “as soon as possible.” Reddington said he could not try it before June. Afterwards the district attorney said his office was preparing as if a second trial were coming but had not decided.

    Reporting: CBS Boston, 29 Sept 2026

32. 1 Oct 2026

    Rule 25 denied

    In a five‑page order the judge holds that the evidence was enough for a jury to convict. The first of the three motions is gone, and the other two are still to be argued.

    He wrote that the evidence would “permit a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the charge of murder,” and that “there was evidence introduced, both physical and circumstantial.” Whether she could appreciate the wrongfulness of what she did was a question for a jury, he held, because the experts disagreed. The order does not find her responsible. It decides only that the question was properly a jury’s.

    Reporting: ABC News, 1 Oct 2026; CBS Boston, 1 Oct 2026; PBS News, 1 Oct 2026

33. Open

    Where it stands

    Three counts of first‑degree murder, undecided. A defendant presumed innocent of them. One motion left that could end the case without a second trial, another that would reopen what happened in the jury room, and no date for a retrial if both fail. They are due to be argued on 2 November. This entry is the honest end of the page, and it will change.