Killer mom Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer is asking for a Hail Mary million-to-one ruling to protect his client after the sensational mistrial in her triple-murder case, experts told The Post.
Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington said Friday that he will ask Massachusetts Judge William Sullivan to set aside the hung-jury outcome that capped Clancy’s high-stakes six-week trial and rule from the bench that she is not criminally responsible for fatally strangling her three young kids.
If granted, the move would protect her from a possible second trial and potential conviction.
But Boston lawyer, Peter Elikann, who is not connected to the case, said it would be “rare to the extreme” for this particular type of motion to succeed.
“Kevin Reddington has to be commended for leaving virtually no stone unturned,” Elikann said. “It’s commendable that he’s bringing this motion forward.
“The granting of [such] a 25(b)(2) motion is rare in the extreme.”
Reddington is expected to argue for the motion at Clancy’s next hearing Sept. 29.
The legal move can only prevail if Reddington can prove that the jury screwed up so badly that a judge has no choice but to set the deadlock result aside, Elikann explained.
“It would be used if it was genuinely believed that the jury got it totally wrong and that their decision was not based on sufficient evidence whatsoever,” the veteran Boston criminal-defense lawyer said.
“However, most judges go through their entire career without even granting one of those once,” Elikann said.
Elikann said he only remembered one such motion winning in the Bay State, when a judge in 1997 reduced the conviction of British au pair Louise Woodward from second-degree murder to manslaughter in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.
“We don’t undo what juries did. We really respect juries,” Elikann explained of the judicial system.
“It would have to be something that the jury got totally, totally wrong, and I don’t think anybody is accusing the jury of that here.”
The 12-person Clancy panel — made up of nine women and three men — deliberated for more than 38 hours over the course of seven days.
The jury sent out a total of three notes informing Sullivan they were deadlocked — on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
After the last note Friday, as the jurors were about to brought back into the courtroom, Reddington dramatically asked Sullivan to hold off declaring a mistrial so that he could seek an emergency appeal based on one of the notes.
Sullivan gave Reddington an hour to file an appeal with Massachusetts’ highest court.
The defense’s legal maneuver — which ultimately didn’t succeed — was based on the female foreperson Thursday sending out a note saying that a single holdout juror was refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt.
Sullivan had questioned each juror individually and under oath and re-read his instructions on reasonable doubt to try to address the foreperson’s concerns.
But Reddington called for the holdout, a man, to be grilled further by the judge alone, which Sullivan denied and Clancy’s team used as the basis for its ultimately doomed appeal.
The panel was finally released Friday afternoon, after the appeal judge shot down Clancy’s 11-hour bid to block the declaration of a mistrial.
The names of the panelists are set to be released Sept. 18, and lawyers on both sides are likely to be looking out for any media interviews the jurors may give about what they thought about the case, Elikann said.
“They kind of want to know the thinking of the jury, what impressions the jury had … because you might change your whole strategy,” Elikann said.
Still, Elikann noted, Reddington “said he clobbered the prosecution and would likely do the exact same defense he did this time.”
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz was meanwhile mum Friday about what his office’s next move would be in the case.
The DA can retry the case on the same charges, downgrade the charges, try to reach a plea deal with Clancy or dismiss the case altogether.
The office is likely to reveal its hand at the hearing later this month, if not before then, Elikann said.
A new trial date could also be set at that hearing.
On Friday, Reddington asked for a second trial to go forward in two weeks, but Sullivan said they could try to aim for a new trial in the late fall, at the earliest.
Elikann noted that even late fall would be an extremely fast turnaround, given retrials usually take place between eight and 12 months after a mistrial.
At trial, Reddington asked the jurors to find the 36-year-old Duxbury, Mass., mom not guilty by reason of temporary insanity on the grounds she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis and heard a hallucinatory voice commanding her to carry out the killings and to kill herself.
But prosecutors claimed she was lucid enough to carefully plan the exercise-band stranglings of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan, 8 months, on Jan. 24, 2023, before she tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists and neck, downing prescription meds and throwing herself from a window in her upstairs bedroom.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, injured her spine in multiple places after the fall and is now paraplegic and wheelchair-bound.
She is currently being held at Tewksbury Hospital pending her case.
If she were to be found not guilty by reason of insanity at a second trial, she would be indefinitely committed to a mental institution and only freed once doctors and a judge found she was no longer a risk to herself and to others.
If she were convicted on first-degree murder, she would be imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
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