The Lindsay Clancy case is far from over. Just days after a Massachusetts jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in her triple murder trial, her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, is back in court, pushing hard for something bigger than a retrial. He wants the whole case thrown out.
On Thursday, September 10, Reddington filed a renewed motion in Plymouth Superior Court asking the judge for what's legally called a "required finding of not guilty." In plain terms, he's asking the judge to step in and rule that the prosecution simply didn't prove its case, which would end the matter for good and prevent Clancy from ever being tried again.
This isn't Reddington's first attempt. It's actually his third. He first asked for this kind of ruling right after prosecutors rested their case during the trial. He asked again once all the testimony had wrapped up. Both times, Judge William Sullivan said no. But now, with the trial having ended in a mistrial rather than a clear verdict, Reddington is trying once more, and this time the stakes feel different.
Kevin Reddington Files Third Bid for Clancy Acquittal, Citing Split Jury and Insufficient Evidence
To understand why Reddington is fighting so hard, it helps to look at what happened at the end of the trial. After roughly 38 hours of deliberation spread across seven days, the jury simply couldn't agree. According to Reddington's own account, 11 of the 12 jurors were ready to find Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, which is essentially Massachusetts' version of an insanity defense. Only one juror held out, refusing to go along with the rest.
The jury foreperson reportedly sent a note to the court explaining that this one juror had admitted having doubts about Clancy's guilt but was refusing to apply those doubts the way the law requires. When jurors couldn't move past that impasse, Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial.
For Reddington, that near-unanimous split isn't just a footnote. It's the heart of his new argument. He believes it shows that the evidence presented by prosecutors was never strong enough to convince a reasonable jury of Clancy's guilt in the first place.
In his written motion, Reddington laid out his position bluntly. He argued that the government did not present evidence that would allow a juror who was genuinely searching for the truth to conclude that every element of the crime had actually been proven. That's a technical legal standard, but the message behind it is simple: he believes the prosecution's case was too weak to have gone to a jury in the first place, let alone to be tried a second time.
A big piece of his argument rests on the medical experts who testified during the five-week trial. Six forensic experts took the stand, three called by the prosecution and three called by the defense. According to Reddington, all six agreed on one key point, that Clancy was suffering from a serious mental illness at the time her children were killed. If both sides' own experts agree on that much, Reddington argues, then the prosecution never actually cleared the bar needed to prove she had the mental capacity to understand right from wrong when the killings happened.
He also pointed to a recent and closely watched case for legal backup, the Karen Read trial. Massachusetts' highest court ruled in 2025 that when jurors make comments after being dismissed about how they personally voted, those comments cannot be treated as some kind of unofficial or unannounced verdict. Reddington is using that precedent to strengthen his own position, even though the situations aren't identical.
Double Jeopardy Fight Looms: Kevin Reddington to Argue Clancy's Mistrial Was Unnecessary
Before getting to the background of the case itself, it's worth noting that Reddington isn't stopping with this one motion. He's said publicly that he plans to file a separate motion to dismiss the case entirely on the grounds of double jeopardy, the constitutional principle that protects people from being tried twice for the same crime. Normally, a mistrial caused by a hung jury doesn't trigger double jeopardy protections, since the case is considered unresolved rather than decided. But Reddington intends to argue that the mistrial in Clancy's case wasn't actually necessary from a legal standpoint, which could open the door to a double jeopardy claim of its own.
For anyone who hasn't followed the case closely, the facts are devastating. Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse from the Duxbury area of Massachusetts, was charged with killing her three young children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, at their family home back in January 2023. Cora was five years old. Dawson was three. Callan was just eight months old. Prosecutors said Clancy strangled all three children using resistance exercise bands.
After the killings, Clancy attempted to take her own life. She cut herself and then jumped from a second-story window of her home. She survived, but the fall left her paralyzed from the waist down, a condition she still lives with today.
Throughout the trial, Reddington never denied that Clancy caused her children's deaths. Instead, his entire defense strategy centered on why it happened. He argued that Clancy was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis at the time, a serious mental health condition that can develop after childbirth and, in rare and tragic cases, cause a person to lose touch with reality entirely. According to the defense, Clancy was hearing a voice that commanded her to end her children's lives and then her own.
Prosecutors saw it differently. They argued that Clancy understood exactly what she was doing and had planned the killings in advance, which would make her legally responsible for the crimes regardless of any mental health struggles she may have had.
Kevin Reddington Seeks Presidential Pardon for Clancy in TV Interview, Despite Jurisdiction Limits
What's made this case even more unusual is that Reddington hasn't confined his advocacy to legal filings. In the days after the mistrial, he went on national television, appearing on Good Morning America to speak publicly about his client. During that interview, he described Clancy as intelligent, hardworking, and an incredible person. He went a step further and said he feels a genuine bond with her, comparing her at times to a daughter.
He also made a request that raised eyebrows among legal observers. He asked for a presidential pardon on Clancy's behalf, even though presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes, and Clancy's charges are entirely at the state level in Massachusetts. It was a striking, if legally unusual, plea from a defense attorney clearly determined to use every avenue available to help his client.
DA's Office Weighs Next Move as Kevin Reddington and Clancy Await Sept. 29 Hearing
As for what happens on the prosecution's side, that remains uncertain. The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office has not said publicly whether it intends to retry Clancy on the murder charges, pursue a plea agreement, or reduce or drop the charges altogether. All of that will likely become clearer as the case moves forward.
For now, all eyes are on the next court date. Clancy is scheduled to appear again on September 29 at 9 a.m. in Plymouth Superior Court, where Judge Sullivan is expected to address Reddington's latest motion. Whatever he decides could shape the entire future of the case, either ending it outright or setting the stage for a second trial in one of the most closely watched criminal cases Massachusetts has seen in years.