A Massachusetts Jury Deadlocked 11-1. One Holdout Was Enough to Force a Mistrial.
The Mental-Health Gaps That Preceded Three Children's Deaths Are Still Open.
On September 4, 2026, a Plymouth Superior Court jury told Judge William F. Sullivan it could not reach a verdict in the case of Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother charged with strangling her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — in January 2023. Eleven of twelve jurors were prepared to find her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, according to the foreperson's note to the court. One was not. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied an emergency request to remove that holdout juror, Sullivan declared a mistrial.
Clancy has not been convicted of anything. She is presumed innocent, and after nearly forty hours of deliberation over seven days, a supermajority of the jury that sat through five weeks of testimony from more than seventy witnesses believed prosecutors had not proven she was criminally responsible for what happened. What the trial did establish, largely unchallenged by either side, is a specific, traceable sequence of gaps in the psychiatric care Clancy received in the weeks before the killings.
Those gaps have not closed. A bill written to address them has sat on Beacon Hill for two years without a floor vote.
- 11-1 — the jury's vote in favor of finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility when Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial · Source: WBUR
- 3 — children who died — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — on January 24, 2023 · Source: PBS NewsHour
- 5 weeks — of trial testimony from more than 70 witnesses before the case reached the jury · Source: ABC7
- Nov. 2, 2026 — date Judge Sullivan will hear arguments on the defense motions and may set a new trial date; prosecutors had not decided on a retrial as of Sept. 29 · Source: WBUR
- 2 years — how long a bill mandating a 48-hour mental-health evaluation for postpartum defendants has stalled in the Massachusetts legislature · Source: WBUR
A Plymouth County grand jury indicted Clancy on September 15, 2023, on three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation. The trial that followed, before Judge Sullivan — appointed to the Superior Court bench by then-Gov. Deval Patrick (D) in 2014 — ran five weeks and drew testimony from more than seventy witnesses. The defense built its case largely on the state's own evidence, arguing Clancy was in the grip of a severe postpartum psychosis on January 24, 2023, and lacked the criminal responsibility Massachusetts law requires for a conviction.
The jury of nine women and three men deliberated roughly 38 to 40 hours across seven days. On the seventh day, the foreperson sent Judge Sullivan a note.
“It is with a heavy heart that we report we are unable to come to a unanimous decision, and we will not be able to.”
Jury foreperson's note to Judge William F. Sullivan, Sept. 4, 2026
The defense made an emergency bid to the Supreme Judicial Court to remove the single holdout juror and let the remaining eleven return a verdict. The SJC denied it. Sullivan declared a mistrial and set a status hearing for September 29, 2026, where prosecutors were due to indicate whether they would retry Clancy, offer a plea, or drop the charges.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz (R) — the only Republican district attorney in Massachusetts, in office since 2001 — framed the mistrial as unfinished business, not a defeat: “This was, and has always been, about getting justice for those three little babies.” Defense attorney Kevin Reddington placed the blame squarely on the single dissenting juror: “They know that they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors.”
NEW: Statement from Patrick Clancy on Lindsay Clancy's mistrial.
Clinicians who treated Clancy testified to a fragmented timeline of psychiatric care in the months before the killings: a private clinician evaluated her in September 2022; she was admitted to McLean Hospital, a leading Massachusetts psychiatric facility, from January 1 to January 5, 2023; and she had a final telehealth visit on January 23, 2023 — one day before her children died. According to testimony, the providers on that final call were unaware of an earlier call Clancy had made to a suicide hotline, and were not coordinating with the outpatient clinicians who had also been treating her.
That fragmentation is not unique to Clancy's case. Massachusetts has no dedicated mother-baby inpatient psychiatric unit — a specialized model used in several countries that keeps a new mother and infant together while she receives intensive treatment. New mothers in Massachusetts typically receive a single postpartum medical check-up, at six weeks, unless they or a provider flag a specific concern sooner. Postpartum psychosis, a rare but severe condition distinct from postpartum depression, can develop rapidly and often within the first two to four weeks after birth — a window a single six-week check-up is not designed to catch.
Advocates, led by the Mind the Gap Coalition's Jessie Colbert, have spent two legislative sessions pushing a bill on Beacon Hill, S1171, written directly in response to gaps like the ones the Clancy trial exposed. The bill would require a 48-hour mental-health evaluation for any new mother charged with a crime within a year of giving birth, and would make perinatal psychosis an explicit mitigating factor at sentencing. It has not gained traction in the legislature.
The state's main legislative response so far came from a different direction. On August 23, 2024, Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) signed H.4999, a maternal-health bill establishing a statewide postpartum home-visiting program and a maternal mental-health grant fund, alongside expanded access to midwifery care, birth centers, and doulas. It is a genuine expansion of maternal-health infrastructure — and it predates the Clancy trial's specific findings by more than a year, and does not address the mental-health-evaluation gap for postpartum defendants that S1171 targets.
Does: funds a statewide postpartum home-visiting program and a maternal mental-health grant fund; expands access to midwifery care, birth centers, and doulas.
Does not: mandate any mental-health evaluation for a postpartum mother charged with a crime, or address perinatal psychosis as a sentencing factor — the specific gap S1171 was written to close.
Status: S1171 remains before the legislature, without a floor vote, two years after it was first filed.
Postpartum Support International issued a statement on September 4, 2026, the day of the mistrial, arguing the outcome reflects a deeper structural problem: the United States, the organization said, “continues to prosecute mothers for the consequences of a severe, poorly understood, temporary, and treatable” condition. The statement noted that England, Canada, and Australia each maintain distinct infanticide-law frameworks that treat postpartum mental illness as a category of its own in criminal law — a framework the United States has no equivalent of, leaving cases like Clancy's to be litigated entirely through the ordinary insanity-defense standard.
None of that resolves the criminal case. Prosecutors still control whether Clancy faces a second trial, and a jury — not a legislature — will still decide any question of criminal responsibility. But the officials with authority over the systems that surrounded this case, before and after January 24, 2023, are identifiable by name.
Judge William F. Sullivan — Appointed to the Superior Court by then-Gov. Deval Patrick (D) in 2014. Presided over the five-week trial, saw the Supreme Judicial Court deny the defense's bid to remove the holdout juror, and declared the mistrial.
DA Timothy J. Cruz (R-Plymouth County) — The only Republican district attorney in Massachusetts. His office brought and has not withdrawn the murder and strangulation charges, and controls whether Clancy is retried; he had not decided as of the September 29 hearing.
Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) — Signed the state's 2024 maternal-health law expanding postpartum home visits and mental-health grant funding, the administration's principal legislative response to date; S1171, the pending evaluation-mandate bill, has not received a floor vote.
On October 14, 2026, the lone holdout, juror Michael Desronvil, gave his first televised interview, to Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany. He said he had no reasonable doubt, and told Fox, “I had a lot of evidence to back up my claim,” but declined to specify it. He described Clancy as “methodical” in the “execution” of her children, and said Patrick Clancy’s 911 call stayed with him: “Hearing the pain in his voice, hearing the desperation from that clip — it was surreal.”
His account contradicts the foreperson’s. Speaking to NBC10 Boston on September 8, she said he “admitted he had reasonable doubt” yet would not sign the not-criminally-responsible forms. Other jurors called him “arrogant” and said he disregarded the nurses on the panel. These are competing accounts of closed-door deliberations, and neither has been independently verified. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has asked Judge Sullivan to open an inquiry, seeking hallway video, phone sign-in sheets, the juror’s questionnaire, and his probation and domestic-violence-registry records, according to Fox News. That hearing was postponed after Desronvil retained counsel. No court has made any finding of misconduct.
On the case itself, DA Timothy J. Cruz (R) told reporters at the September 29 hearing that his office had not decided on a retrial. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg moved to dismiss on double-jeopardy grounds, Reddington filed a motion for a not-guilty finding, and Sullivan took both under advisement. Prosecutors separately asked for limits on defense comments to the media, citing Reddington’s remarks about the juror. Arguments are set for November 2. Clancy remains presumed innocent.
Commentary segment re-uploaded by News24; its title is the uploader’s characterization. Clancy has not been convicted and is presumed innocent.
The Clancy fund: A GoFundMe organized by Wisconsin resident Brandee Mulligan is aimed at Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, to cover travel, lodging, and living costs. Boston.com reported it had passed $800,000 as of August 17, and the New York Post reported it at $1.2 million by September 13. The organizer said in a TikTok video that she does not have access to the donations, according to USA Today. Donations came from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. It is a campaign for her parents; Boston.com describes its purpose as their living and travel costs.
The Mangione fund: Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court on August 14, 2026, to two counts of stalking resulting in death in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with sentencing set for December 18. His state murder case is still pending, and he is presumed innocent of that charge. A legal-defense fund for him runs on GiveSendGo. NBC News reported it passed $1 million on May 6, 2025, from more than 28,000 donations with a median of $20.
What no source shows: Neither fund’s donors are identified, and no report we found documents their party or ideology. Mangione’s organizers say donors share grievances with the health-insurance industry, which is their characterization, not a measurement. The “Democrats want to celebrate Clancy” framing circulating online is commentary; we found no statement from a Democratic elected official or party body celebrating or defending the killings. This page does not assign either donor pool a political label.
The rally: PBS NewsHour reported that roughly 300 women, mostly in pink and carrying signs reading “Believe” and “She Needed Help,” gathered outside the Plymouth courthouse on August 20, organized by Renee Kimball. Attendees said they were concerned about how the mental-health system treats women. PBS does not report any political affiliation for the attendees or organizers.
A single juror's dissent, not a verdict, is why Lindsay Clancy's case is unresolved. She remains presumed innocent while prosecutors decide whether to retry her. What the trial surfaced beyond that question — a psychiatric-care system that lost track of a patient the day before a catastrophe, and a two-year-old bill written to fix exactly that gap, still without a vote — does not require a verdict to remain true.
