Clancy Team Suffers a Court Setback

A Massachusetts judge says questions surrounding a lone juror in the Lindsay Clancy case will stay unanswered for now. Judge William Sullivan on Wednesday rejected a bid by Clancy's lawyers to question the holdout juror whose refusal to join 11 others in backing a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity forced a mistrial in her triple-murder case earlier this month, per ABC News. Clancy's attorneys had sought an evidentiary hearing to probe whether the juror lied on a questionnaire about prior involvement with the criminal justice system, used a phone during deliberations, or ignored the judge's instructions.

Sullivan wrote that courts are barred from digging into a juror's thinking or the jury's deliberations, adding that "post-trial information potentially affecting Juror Doe's impartiality cannot be used to attack the determination that a mistrial was manifestly necessary," per People. Clancy's lawyers have argued there were grounds to remove the juror during deliberations. That would have eliminated the "manifest necessity" for a mistrial, a finding that would prevent Clancy from being tried again. The defense continues to press the double jeopardy issue as Clancy, a former nurse accused of killing her three young children in their Duxbury home in January 2023, is set to return to court on Nov. 2.