Lindsay Clancy double jeopardy motion dismissed, she will face 2027 retrial on charges of strangling her kids

Lindsay Clancy’s six-week trial for strangling her children was one of the most high-profile murder trials in recent years, and it ended dramatically. After much deliberation, the jury announced that they were deadlocked. 11 jurors had voted to acquit on the grounds that she was in psychosis at the time of the killings, with one holdout refusing to budge.

Since that moment, Clancy’s future has been unclear. She remains detained in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility and her defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington, attempted to argue that there should be no retrial on the grounds of double jeopardy: the principle that an accused person cannot be tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction.

Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan has now denied this motion (per IB Times), saying that double jeopardy does not apply in this case. In a ruling handed down on Monday, he said: “Because the Court concludes that there was a manifest necessity for a mistrial based on the jury’s deadlock, a retrial on the murder indictments does not violate Clancy’s right not to be placed in double jeopardy.” Judge Sullivan also denied the defense’s request to investigate the one hold-out juror, and the prosecution’s gag order request to block defense attorneys from discussing the case in public.

“Where is the evidence that she did this?”

There will reportedly be a case management hearing on Nov. 16 to decide where the case goes from here. Judge Sullivan will hit the age limit for his position in June 2027 and must retire from the bench, so current indications are that Clancy will be back in court for trial no. 2 sometime in the spring of 2027.

But, as seems to be a trend in this case, even that is up in the air. Reddington initially said the defense couldn’t be ready before June, with prosecutors still mulling over whether to pursue the same charges at the first trial or file new ones.

Current indications are that a second trial could prove as dramatic as the first. In September, Reddington made the eyebrow-raising move of arguing to the court that he may argue that Clancy isn’t responsible for her children’s deaths, despite that agreed fact being at the heart of his insanity defense at the first trial.

He asked the judge, “Where is the evidence that she did this?”, argued that the forensic evidence was “woefully flimsy,” that the timeline the prosecutor had presented was “ridiculous,” and that the investigation had been botched by cops. He concluded: “In this case, there was no investigation. They just immediately assumed that this woman was guilty.”

Reddington addressed Clancy’s apparent confessions, saying, “This entire case is based on speculation. She was told what happened. She had no memory of what happened. … There’s no evidence that she admitted that she did this.” Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham described this argument as “laughable.”