High-Stakes Hearing Tuesday Will Determine if Lindsay Clancy Faces a Second Trial

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz is expected to formally announce on Tuesday, September 29, whether his office will pursue a second murder trial against Lindsay Clancy. The highly anticipated status conference comes just over three weeks after Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in the polarizing case.

If prosecutors choose to retry Clancy, they must also decide whether to pursue the original three counts of first-degree murder or drop to lesser charges, such as second-degree murder or manslaughter. However, legal experts note that reducing the charges will not resolve the core dispute that deadlocked the first jury: her criminal responsibility and sanity at the time of the killings.

A Shocking 11-1 Split and a “Holdout” Juror

The first trial ended on September 4 after the jury deliberated for roughly 38 hours over seven days without reaching a unanimous verdict. It was later revealed that the jury deadlocked in an 11-to-1 split, with eleven jurors voting to acquit Clancy by reason of insanity, and one lone holdout juror refusing to acquit.

The identity and background of that holdout juror has now become the centerpiece of the defense’s strategy to block a second trial entirely.

The Defense Strategy: Double Jeopardy and Acquittal

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, recently joined by veteran attorney Martin Weinberg, is fighting on multiple legal fronts to ensure a retrial never happens.

• The “Unlawfully Constituted” Jury: On September 21, Judge Sullivan granted a defense motion to unseal the holdout juror’s questionnaire and conduct a limited inquiry. Court records indicate the holdout juror, a 48-year-old Bridgewater man, allegedly failed to disclose a 2021 arrest for domestic violence involving his then-wife. The defense is building a “double jeopardy” argument: if the holdout juror lied during jury selection, the jury was never lawfully constituted in the first place, meaning the mistrial is invalid and Clancy cannot be tried again.
• No “Manifest Necessity”: The defense is also arguing that Judge Sullivan made a legal error by calling a mistrial too quickly without adequately questioning the foreperson about the holdout juror’s alleged refusal to follow the court’s legal instructions. If an appeals court agrees there was no “manifest necessity” to end the trial, double jeopardy protections would prevent the state from prosecuting her again.
• Motion for Required Finding of Not Guilty: Reddington has filed a separate motion demanding the judge explicitly enter a finding of not guilty. He argues that the District Attorney’s office fundamentally failed to present sufficient evidence that Clancy retained the legal capacity to understand her actions, noting that “all six experts agreed [she] was mentally ill”.

Tuesday’s hearing will set the immediate trajectory of the case. Even if DA Cruz announces his intention to retry Clancy, the defense’s aggressive post-trial motions regarding the holdout juror and double jeopardy will likely spark a lengthy appeals process before a second trial could ever begin.