The jury weighing the fate of Lindsay Clancy could not agree, so on Tuesday Judge William Sullivan did what judges do when deliberations stall on a case this grave: he read them a Tuey-Rodriguez charge and sent them back in. It is the legal system’s way of saying, without saying it, that a decision needs to come.
Then came Wednesday: They still could not agree. Now we’re looking at either a mistrial or a verdict of some sort, though the latter seems distant at this point. What a national disgrace.
The underlying facts are not in dispute, and they are almost unbearable. In January 2023, Clancy strangled her three young children with exercise bands in the family home. She then cut her own wrists and jumped from a second-story window, surviving with injuries that left her paralyzed from the waist down. What the jury is deciding is not whether she did it, but what it means under the law — first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty by reason of insanity, or not guilty. The insanity defense is the whole ballgame, and it is why twelve people have struggled to agree.
? BREAKING: The Lindsay Clancy jury has ONCE AGAIN sent a note to the judge saying they're DEADLOCKED
The judge is now reading them a Tuey-Rodriguez charge, and will send them BACK to deliberate again
Here's what a Tuey-Rodriguez charge entails, as read by the judge:
– A jury… pic.twitter.com/dnkoTlJzSe
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 2, 2026
A Tuey-Rodriguez charge — Massachusetts’ version of what other states call an Allen charge, or less politely a “dynamite charge” — is a carefully worded nudge. The judge reminds jurors that a verdict is the ordinary way criminal cases get resolved, that absolute certainty is never required, and that no future jury is likely to be smarter, fairer, or better-informed than this one. He also reminds them of the limits: each juror must hold to their own honest conviction rather than cave to the majority, and the Commonwealth still carries the full burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It presses toward a verdict without dictating which one.
If the deadlock holds even after that, the likely outcome is a mistrial — which would not end anything. It would simply reset the clock, forcing prosecutors to decide whether to try the entire wrenching case over again from the beginning, in front of a new panel, with the same evidence and the same impossible question at its center.
The case has drawn intense public attention, and not the dispassionate kind. Reporting that some jurors appeared in pink — a color adopted by Clancy’s sympathizers — set off alarms about whether the panel could weigh the evidence rather than the sentiment around it. That reaction points at the real fault line here: a genuine and unresolved national argument about where severe postpartum mental illness ends and criminal responsibility begins.
Whatever the jury returns, it will satisfy no one completely. A conviction will strike some as punishing an illness. An insanity finding will strike others as excusing the killing of three children. A hung jury just defers the reckoning. There is no verdict that makes this whole, because nothing can.
For now, twelve jurors are back behind a closed door, carrying a decision most people would give anything not to have to make. The judge has asked them to try once more.
