Trump upholds constitutional limits on the Clancy pardon plea

President Donald Trump stood with reporters near Air Force One at Shannon Airport in Ireland on Sept. 13, 2026, and answered the question put to him about Lindsay Clancy. He would not pardon her.

“It’s a very sad situation,” Trump said. “I certainly heard that, but look, it’s very sad. There is no winner there. There’s no win no matter what you do. Three children are dead.”

Then he fixed the legal boundary in a single clause: “It’s actually a state situation … not a federal.”

That is the controlling fact. The Constitution’s pardon power reaches only federal offenses. Clancy faces three counts of first-degree murder in Massachusetts for the deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, killed on Jan. 24, 2023. No federal charge is pending. A presidential pardon cannot erase a state murder indictment, and Trump declined to pretend otherwise.

The request had come days earlier from her attorney, Kevin Reddington, after Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on Sept. 4, 2026. On Good Morning America, Reddington addressed the president directly: “Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady – the type of person she is and what she’s been through – and consider a pardon.”

On CBS Boston he repeated the appeal while conceding the legal limit and asking instead for political pressure on the local prosecutor: “If President Trump feels that this is a case that warrants that type of intervention from the executive branch, if you will — even though, legally, it’s not a federal case — he certainly has an awful lot of clout. I think any type of help that we can get is helpful.”

Trump answered the lawyer without accepting the invitation. “He’s a good attorney. I’ve heard from other people he’s a very good attorney. I hope they can work it out. That’s something they have to work out.”

The trial that produced the mistrial had already consumed six weeks, more than 80 witnesses, and 35 hours of jury deliberation. The foreperson reported the panel was split 11-1, with eleven jurors inclined toward not guilty by reason of insanity and one juror refusing to return that verdict. Sullivan declared the mistrial. A hearing is set for Sept. 29, 2026, to decide what follows.

Clancy, who worked as a labor and delivery nurse before the killings, attempted suicide afterward and was left paralyzed from the waist down. Prosecutors allege she sent her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, out on an errand so she would be free to commit the killings. The defense has maintained she was not criminally responsible because of severe mental illness after childbirth. Reddington has argued that critics lack the full picture: “These people don’t understand. They don’t know what she went through. They didn’t see her text messages. They didn’t see her journal. They didn’t see the notes that she wrote.”

Before the mistrial, Trump had already spoken about the case in the Oval Office in plain terms that left no room for sentimental escape. “Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse. But you’ll find out what the price to pay is. There’ll be a price. It’s going to be [a] mental institution or jail or something.”

The defense’s strongest public argument is straightforward and deserves to be stated once in its own terms. Eleven jurors were prepared to find Clancy not criminally responsible. She remains paralyzed. Three children are already dead. Reddington therefore asks for executive help—if not a formal pardon then presidential “clout” with Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz—to spare a second trial that, in the defense view, cannot restore the children and would only compound suffering. That is the claim.

The constitutional answer is equally plain. Presidential clemency stops at the federal line. A state-level pardon would fall to Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who has said she cannot recommend a pardon without a conviction in place. Cruz, a Republican, has not announced whether he will retry the case. Those are the offices the law actually assigns. Treating a national “clout” campaign as a substitute for local charging decisions would collapse the separation between federal and state power that keeps ordinary citizens from living under a single national prosecutor reachable by television plea.

Reddington has signaled the next defense move. He plans to file a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds, arguing there was no manifest necessity for the mistrial. “It will be a motion to dismiss based on what’s called double jeopardy grounds, because there’s no manifest necessity,” he said. “You have to have a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial for obvious reasons – the invested time that the jurors put into it, the court, the staff, the defendant, the prosecution, everybody.” Double jeopardy, in ordinary terms, protects a defendant from being tried twice for the same offense once jeopardy has attached and a trial ends without a verdict, unless the court had a true necessity to stop the proceedings. Whether that standard was met here is for the Massachusetts court to decide on Sept. 29, not for the White House.

Limited government begins with the text. The Framers enumerated federal powers and left the bulk of criminal law—especially murder—to the states. That design is not a technicality to be waived when a case becomes nationally famous or when a jury deadlocks after long deliberation. Public safety starts from the concrete record that three young children are dead in their own home. Faith and family life depend on a legal order that still treats the killing of children as a matter for local courts and local juries, not for presidential improvisation. The taxpayer funds both the state trial courts and the federal executive; neither is served when the latter is asked to lean on the former outside its constitutional writ.

Trump’s Ireland remarks kept the lines intact. He called the deaths a situation with “no winner,” praised the defense lawyer’s skill, and returned the dispute to the people who must resolve it: the district attorney who has not yet said whether there will be a retrial, the judge who will hear the double-jeopardy motion, and, if a conviction ever occurs, the governor who alone holds state clemency. Fox News summarized the exchange under the headline that Trump said the Lindsay Clancy case is a “state situation” following the attorney’s pardon plea. That description matches the president’s own words.

The case now turns on the calendar already set in Massachusetts. On Sept. 29 the court will determine next steps. Cruz still must decide whether to put a new jury in the box. Reddington will press his motion. Three children remain dead, and the price Trump described—mental institution or jail or something—still belongs to the state process the Constitution left in place.