Clancy defense claims no proof after hung-jury mistrial

In Plymouth Superior Court on Sept. 29, 2026, Kevin Reddington stood before Judge William Sullivan and pressed a single demand. “Where is the evidence? Where is the evidence she did this?”

He asked the court to acquit Lindsay Clancy outright.

Reddington told the judge the prosecution’s entire case was based on speculation. “There is no evidence that she admitted she did this,” he said. He filed a Rule 25 motion for a required finding of not guilty, a request that the judge enter acquittal because the trial evidence was legally insufficient for a rational jury to convict on the three murder counts. “I ask the court to look back at the evidence presented and ask yourself, where is the evidence that she did this?”

Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were strangled on Jan. 24, 2023, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The record describes deaths by strangulation with exercise bands. Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Her defense has argued postpartum psychosis exacerbated by prescribed psychiatric medications. That same night she attempted suicide, slashing her neck and wrists and jumping from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair.

A five-week trial ended Sept. 4, 2026, when the judge declared a mistrial after a hung jury, split 11-1 in Clancy’s favor. Through that trial the defense did not treat the act of killing as the contested ground. The fight was criminal responsibility. The Sept. 29 hearing marked a different posture. Reddington argued prosecutors had not proved she killed the children at all. He cited no DNA evidence and no confession or admission. He walked the court back through the night of the killings as the sources describe it, including Patrick Clancy’s return home and the discovery of an open window and blood drops.

Prosecutor Shannan Buckingham answered that the challenge was new. “We’re hearing now for the first time in this argument that counsel is challenging first the sufficiency of the evidence as it applies to the three counts of murder,” she said. She called the shifted argument laughable and said it contradicted the defense position at trial. She stated the governing line on mental illness directly: “Not every defendant with a mental illness or defect lacks criminal responsibility.” That is the prosecution’s case in its own terms—that proof of the killings was presented, that Clancy remained criminally responsible, and that illness alone does not erase liability.

Reddington’s own recounting of how the public reads the file showed the bind he described. “Well, she did it, she admitted it,” he said, describing the common reaction. “They go off on a tangent about all of these horrific allegations, that she’s a demon and she’s possessed and she should be executed. And this is coming from politicians, from President Trump all the way down.” The defense has long sought to separate the question of whether the acts occurred from the question of criminal responsibility. The first trial was not split that way. After the hung jury, Reddington returned to sufficiency itself and asked the judge to end the case without a second panel.

The rule of law turns on that sequence. In a criminal courtroom the state carries the burden on every element. Speculation is not proof. A mistrial after five weeks and an 11-1 split is not a conviction, and it is not an acquittal. It is a failure to decide. Rule 25 exists for the threshold moment when the defense contends the record, taken in the light the law requires, still cannot support a guilty finding. Reddington put that contention on the table in plain words and tied it to the absence of DNA evidence and the absence of any admission he would treat as proof. Buckingham put the opposite contention on the table in plain words: the sufficiency attack was late, the trial record was enough, and mental illness does not by itself defeat responsibility.

Fox News covered the hearing under the headline that the lawyer’s courtroom pivot raises questions about who killed her children. The coverage matched the procedural fact in front of Sullivan. The first trial had been fought chiefly on psychosis and medication. The first hearing after the mistrial opened on whether the Commonwealth had proved the killings. Michael Desronvil is named in the aftermath of the hung jury. Timothy Cruz is named. Massachusetts defense attorney Elyse Hershon is named. None of those names alters the motion pending before the court.

What remains is institutional, not theatrical. Three children are dead. The defendant is paralyzed and held on the murder charges. A jury of twelve could not agree. The defense now says the evidence never crossed the line from assumption to proof and asks a judge to say so as a matter of law. The prosecution says the proof was there and that the mental-state defense does not erase the acts. Limited government, in this setting, means the state must still prove what it charges. Public safety and the families left behind require a process that either carries that proof or concedes it cannot. The taxpayer funds both the prosecution and the prolonged detention and treatment that follow an unresolved capital file. None of those stakes is served by leaving the core question unaddressed.

Judge William Sullivan took the acquittal motion under advisement without an immediate ruling. He set a Nov. 2, 2026, hearing for additional motions and opened discussion of a potential retrial date. Reddington cited unavailability before June 2027. The required finding has not been granted or denied. The next date is fixed. Whether the Commonwealth retries the case, and on what calendar, is not decided.