A Massachusetts judge has denied a motion to dismiss the murder case against Lindsay Clancy, the US woman accused of murdering her three children.
The judge’s ruling comes after Clancy’s defence team requested dismissal of the case after her first trial ended in a mistrial in September, when a 12-person jury failed to reach a consensus.
The ruling clears the way for prosecutors to pursue the case. They could reduce the charges in a potential second trial or dismiss them altogether.
Clancy has not denied killing her children in 2023, but her defence team argues she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis at the time. Prosecutors say the killings were intentional.
Clancy’s defence team had argued to dismiss the case against her due to double jeopardy – a legal standard that says a person cannot be tried for the same crime twice.
Her lawyers argued that Judge William Sullivan, who presided over the August murder trial, acted prematurely when he declared a mistrial on 4 September, saying that he should have sought a viable alternative.
In his ruling on Monday, Sullivan said that a retrial would not unconstitutionally subject her to double jeopardy, according to court documents obtained by the BBC.
Sullivan also denied a defence motion to see records of the lone holdout juror in the case and to question the juror under oath. He said that questioning the juror “would have been impermissibly coercive”.
“Although a mistrial may be expensive in both human and monetary costs, it is not to be avoided by intrusion into the jury’s domain,” he wrote.
He also said that the possibility that “an unreasonably stubborn or eccentric juror” could be seated is “an unavoidable risk of the jury system”.
“Because the court concludes that there was manifest necessity for a mistrial based on the jury’s deadlock, a retrial on the murder indictments does not violate Clancy’s right not to be placed in double jeopardy,” he wrote.
The judge scheduled a hearing for 16 November to discuss when to hold a second trial. He has previously suggested it could begin in March.
