Lindsay Clancy trial: Holdout juror 'admitted reasonable doubt' but would not acquit, foreperson says

A lone juror who blocked the acquittal of Lindsay Clancy "admitted he had reasonable doubt", the jury's foreperson has said. 

In a TV interview with NBC10 this week, foreperson Ronni Carlson said she thought that at one point during deliberations the group had persuaded the juror arguing for a conviction to vote for an acquittal.

"He admitted he had reasonable doubt. I started filling out the forms," Ms Carlson said.

"There were three forms I had to fill out, and I started filling them out. I wrote my signature on each one. And then he said, 'But I'm still not going to say that she's not guilty by reason of insanity.'"

Explained: What happens next after jury deadlock?

After seven days of deliberations, the trial was ultimately declared a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. By law, the court could not accept a majority verdict.

Clancy had been charged with the 2023 murder of her three children - something her lawyers did not dispute but argued happened while she was suffering from a psychotic episode.

They said the 36-year-old former delivery nurse had not been in control of her actions due to a condition called postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

Prosecutors, however, said Clancy had acted deliberately and contrived to get her then husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house prior to the murders by sending him to pick up medicine and dinner for the family.

Global attention

The trial attracted global attention and divided opinion in the US, sparking debate around postpartum mental health treatment in America and how its mental health system treats cases where mothers kill their children.

It appears one juror had been holding out, with Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, asking them to be dismissed - a request that was rejected - and accusing them of lying under oath.

He said the other jurors were "robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful".

The names of the jurors have been temporarily sealed by the judge, and the holdout juror has not yet come forward and given a public account of what happened inside the jury room.

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Clancy 'had to have snapped'

During the six-week hearing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, jurors heard testimony from family members and medical providers about how Clancy's mental health declined after the birth of her youngest child.

Ms Carlson said the evidence proved Clancy loved her children, citing Clancy's journals and testimony from her former mother-in-law.

"So she had to have snapped, and not known what she was doing. To me, it was proof that she didn't know what she was doing," Ms Carlson added.

On three occasions, jurors sent the judge notes saying they were unable to reach a unanimous decision. The jury's foreperson also sent a note complaining that a single juror would not follow the court's instructions about reasonable doubt.

Judge William Sullivan questioned the jurors, repeated his instructions regarding reasonable doubt, before asking them to keep trying to agree on a verdict.

If found guilty, Clancy could have been sentenced to life in prison. Had she been acquitted, she could have been ordered to remain at a mental health facility and undergo an evaluation to determine whether she would be a danger to the pubic if released.

She is currently at a psychiatric hospital, with a decision on a potential retrial yet to be made.

(c) Sky News 2026: Lindsay Clancy trial: Holdout juror 'admitted reasonable doubt' but would not acquit, forepe