Lindsay Clancy to return to court for 1st time since mistrial

Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three young children, is set to return to a courtroom Tuesday morning for a hearing that could determine the future of her murder case.

Three weeks after the judge declared a mistrial in the case, Clancy’s lawyers are pushing to have the case thrown out as well as investigate the holdout juror whose vote resulted in the deadlock.

Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not spoken publicly about whether his office plans to retry the case since the mistrial was declared on Sept. 4.

“I will let you know there will be no decisions made today regarding that. I’m going to be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time in the context of an official court proceeding,” Cruz said at the time.

Tuesday's hearing marks the first time Clancy will return to court after the lengthy and emotional trial, which brought national attention to issues surrounding postpartum mental health.

Clancy pleaded not guilty to three murder charges for the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter Cora, 3-year-old son Dawson and infant son Callan, who were strangled at the family's home in Duxbury, a Boston suburb, on Jan. 24, 2023.

The former nurse attempted suicide on the night of her children's deaths, leaving her paralyzed and in a wheelchair, according to state prosecutors.

Clancy's defense attorney argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis -- considered a psychiatric emergency, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists -- and overmedicated when she strangled her children and attempted to take her own life.

Prosecutors argued that Clancy was criminally responsible for the children's deaths and was capable of understanding the severity of her actions.

Some of the jurors who spoke out after the verdict alleged they deadlocked after one juror -- who later identified himself as Michael Desronvil -- refused to follow the court’s instruction about reasonable doubt.

Desronvil’s attorney argues that he had “no doubts” about the case and that he is being harassed for his convictions.

"I didn't have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented,” Desronvil said in a Sept. 18 statement.

Since the mistrial, Clancy’s defense attorneys filed a flurry of motions to have the case thrown out, and the judge may hear arguments about those issues tomorrow.

In a motion filed last week, Clancy’s attorneys Martin Weinberg and Kevin Reddington argued that retrying the case would subject her to double jeopardy because the judge overseeing the case had “viable choices other than declaring a mistrial.”

"There was no manifest necessity for the declaration of a mistrial given the absence of judicial inquiry regarding repeated reports that one juror was refusing to apply the Court's instructions regarding reasonable doubt and, correspondingly, was failing to discharge his responsibility as a juror to follow and apply the law as instructed," the attorneys wrote.

Reddington also requested the judge question the holdout juror about his “truthfulness” during the jury selection process, as well as some of his actions during the deliberation process. He asked the court to preserve the original questionnaires for the twelve jurors and six alternates, every jury note, the recordings of some sidebars, court-officer logs, sign-in sheets for the jurors’ mobile devices, and video from the jury-room corridor from the deliberations.

Desronvil’s attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik has vowed to fight Reddington’s push to investigate the juror, telling Fox News earlier this week he plans to submit a bar complaint against Reddington.

"Kevin Reddington's disgusting motion to investigate Michael is worthy of nothing but universal condemnation. This is certainly not the final word from us on this subject, but merely our first words," he said.

Reddington also renewed his motion to have the judge enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility for each criminal counts, arguing that prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to prove their case.

"The government did not present evidence that allows a juror earnestly seeking the truth to determine that the defendant's guilt on the crime was proved on each element of the offense," Reddington wrote in his motion earlier this month.