Lindsay Clancy’s defense returns to court to say there’s no proof she killed her children

Lindsay Clancy and her legal team returned to court Tuesday, arguing that the state of Massachusetts failed to prove she killed her children — a claim prosecutors called “laughable.”

This is the first hearing since Clancy’s triple murder trial ended in a mistrial earlier this month.

The hearing at Plymouth Superior Court, which began shortly before 10 a.m., included a number of motions filed since the trial ended.

Judge William Sullivan immediately pushed back some of those motions to a later date, noting that he and some parties were not prepared to argue them. One of those motions concerns defense attorney Kevin Reddington’s efforts to dismiss Clancy’s case.

Sullivan heard arguments on that motion Tuesday, but delayed ruling on those arguments, as well as those on other motions, until Nov. 2.

The judge also declined to set a new trial date, with Reddington and prosecutors agreeing that with so much still to be decided, it might be premature to do so.

Reddington presented arguments Tuesday on Massachusetts Rule 25, which states that if prosecutors do not make their case effectively, the defendant must be found not guilty.

He first lamented that Clancy had been demonized by politicians “from Donald Trump on down.”

And in a new approach that seemed contrary to the defense’s strategy at trial, Reddington then argued that there was no evidence that Clancy killed her children and that the Commonwealth had not provided evidence that she did so.

Prosecutors, in response, called the allegation “laughable.”

“And now, for the first time, the defendant argues that there is no evidence that she did this,” said Assistant Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham. “I would tell you that the entire record is voluminous in terms of the information supporting the fact that she did this.”

Sullivan said he would take the motion “under advisement.”

Clancy, 36, is accused of fatally strangling her three children – Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months – using elastic bands on January 24, 2023. Her defense team, led by Reddington, argued that she was in a state of psychosis at the time of the murders, due to postpartum psychosis from which she suffered, and therefore was not in running and unable to control his actions.

The prosecution, however, said Clancy knowingly planned the killings in advance, arguing for a first-degree murder conviction.

After a week-long trial, the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. The group of nine women and three men reached an impasse three times, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial on September 4.

After the trial concluded, several jurors spoke publicly and described a single holdout juror who they said refused to meet the required standard of reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors wanted to find Clancy not guilty for lack of criminal responsibility, and the holdouts wanted to convict him, they said.

This man has since identified himself as Michael P. Desronvil. Jurors said that was the only reason they didn’t reach a conclusion, describing someone who refused to participate in negotiations and seemed uninterested in hearing from other jurors.

Desronvil denied the other jurors’ allegations, saying in a statement that he “had no doubt” about Clancy’s guilt.

In a statement Monday to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Desronvil said he wanted to shift the focus away from himself and back to Clancy’s children.

“I know all the attention has been on me, but we want to bring it all back and focus on the three angels that are this hand – the ones who can’t speak for themselves, the ones who can’t defend themselves and the one who can’t fight the battles, and those are Cora, Dawson and Callan,” Desronvil said in the release.

Also Monday, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed a motion asking Reddington to stop making “extrajudicial statements to the media” ahead of a possible retrial.

In the days since the first trial ended, Reddington spoke with several media outlets, including NBC News, to describe what happened in court and what he would like to see for his client in the future.

The Boston Globe and local CBS station WBZ-TV jointly filed an opposition to the motion, saying it would restrict free speech. Sullivan has decided to hear arguments related to those two motions on a trial date in November.

Reddington became heated toward the end of the hearing, angrily declaring that he was “so tired” of people saying he harassed and attacked the recalcitrant juror. In his motion, he argued that the judge should have dismissed the juror after the jury foreman told Sullivan he was refusing to follow the jury’s instructions.