Judge denies motion to dismiss Lindsay Clancy’s murder case, clearing the way for a retrial
The judge presiding over Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial has denied the motion to dismiss the case.
The ruling follows Clancy’s legal team’s request for the case to be dismissed after the trial in August for the deaths of her three young children ended with a mistrial on 4 September.
Prosecutors are now free to pursue the case, with charges potentially being reduced in the second trial or dismissed altogether.
Her lawyers have argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her children.
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Prosecutors say the killings, which made headlines across America, were intentional.
The defence team argued the case should have been dismissed on double jeopardy grounds – which prevents a person being tried more than once for the same crime.
They also argued Judge William Sullivan should have sought an alternative when he declared a mistrial in September.
Monday’s ruling saw Sullivan state a retrial would not subject Clancy to double jeopardy, according to the BBC.
"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 reportedly wrote.
The potential for ‘an unreasonably stubborn or eccentric juror’ to be seated is ‘an unavoidable risk of the jury system’, he is understood to have said.
"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 reportedly wrote.
The judge also denied the motion for records of the lone holdout juror in the previous trial to be seen in the case and for that juror to be questioned under oath.
On September 18, after the mistrial ruling, the holdout juror told CBS he had ‘no doubt’ Clancy deliberately killed her children.
He said, "Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned it.
"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."
Sullivan ruled Clancy’s defence team had failed to show records were required for a retrial and he said questioning the juror ‘would have been impermissibly coercive’.
A hearing has been scheduled for November 16 to discuss when a potential second trial may be held.
Topics: True Crime, US News
Michael D. Carroll
