A Massachusetts jury spent a third day weighing the fate of Lindsay Clancy on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, without reaching a verdict in the murder trial over the deaths of her three young children.
Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2023 deaths of her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. She has pleaded not guilty. Both the prosecution and the defense agree that Clancy caused her children’s deaths, by strangling them with exercise resistance bands at the family’s Duxbury home. What the jury has to decide is whether she is criminally responsible for what happened.
Key facts
- Defendant: Lindsay Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts
- Charges: three counts of first-degree murder
- Victims: her children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, who died Jan. 24, 2023
- Plea: not guilty
- Undisputed: both sides agree Clancy strangled her children with exercise resistance bands
- Jury’s question: whether Clancy was criminally responsible, given her mental state
- Possible verdicts: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, or not guilty
- Jury: 12 people — nine women, three men
- Status: third day of deliberations as of Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, no verdict yet
Timeline
- Jan. 24, 2023: Clancy’s three children die at the family’s Duxbury home.
- May 2023: Defense expert Dr. Phillip Resnick evaluates Clancy.
- Late July 2026: Trial begins at Plymouth County Superior Court.
- Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026: Closing arguments conclude; the jury begins deliberating.
- Friday, Aug. 28, 2026: Deliberations continue without a decision; jurors ask to review Clancy’s pill bottles and the knife from her suicide attempt.
- Monday, Aug. 31, 2026: Jury enters a third day of deliberations, with no verdict yet.
The dispute at the center of the case
Prosecutors argue Clancy planned the killings and understood that what she was doing was wrong. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors Clancy was a “functioning mom” whose actions showed a level of planning she says is inconsistent with genuine psychosis. Sprague also argued Clancy moved between medical providers to “get better on her own terms.” Prosecution expert Dr. Avram Mack, who evaluated Clancy at Tewksbury Hospital, testified that she was able to understand her actions were wrong at the time of the killings.
The defense argues the opposite: that Clancy was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness that can follow childbirth and cause a new mother to lose touch with reality, sometimes through hallucinations or delusions. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has pointed to what he called “lousy medical care” in the weeks before the killings — Clancy had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital less than three weeks before her children died, according to the defense. Defense expert Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Clancy in May 2023 and also testified for the defense in the 2006 Andrea Yates trial, told jurors Clancy was “frankly psychotic” at the time, describing what he called a command hallucination and a delusion of influence. Those were Resnick’s descriptions; the available reporting does not independently corroborate them.
Neither side disputes what happened on Jan. 24, 2023. The disagreement is entirely about Clancy’s state of mind at the time — and under Massachusetts law, that question decides which of five possible verdicts the jury can return: guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of manslaughter, not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, or a full not guilty. Those last two are separate outcomes — the first would mean the jury found Clancy caused the deaths but was not criminally responsible for them because of her mental state, while the second is a complete acquittal.
How deliberations have gone so far
The 12-person jury — nine women and three men, with an older woman serving as foreperson, according to CBS News Boston — began deliberating after closing arguments concluded on Thursday, Aug. 27. Jurors deliberated part of that day, continued into Friday, Aug. 28 without reaching a decision, were excused for the weekend, and resumed Monday, Aug. 31 for a third day. By Monday afternoon, the cumulative deliberation time stood at roughly 15 hours, according to Boston Globe and CNN reporting from Monday afternoon.
On Friday, jurors asked to review two pieces of physical evidence that had not automatically been sent to the jury room: Clancy’s prescription pill bottles and the knife she used during her own suicide attempt after the killings. Because the items involved narcotics and a weapon, they required a separate request; both were then provided to the jury. CBS News and NewsNation have reported that Clancy was seriously injured in that suicide attempt: she jumped from a second-story window, an injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down, and she has appeared in court in a wheelchair throughout the trial.
What each possible verdict would mean
The trial began in late July and ran roughly five weeks at Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts, before testimony wrapped up in late August. Legal analysts cited by CBS News have laid out, in general terms, what the different verdict categories carry under Massachusetts law. First-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence: life in prison, with no possibility of parole. Second-degree murder or manslaughter would mean a lengthy prison term, but with the possibility of parole. And a verdict of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility would not set Clancy free — it would mean commitment to a state mental health facility for an indefinite period, subject to periodic judicial review.
Deliberations were continuing as of Monday afternoon, with no indication of when the jury might reach a decision.