PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial told Judge William F. Sullivan on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, for a second time that it cannot agree on a verdict. Sullivan then read a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction — Massachusetts’ “dynamite” charge after a deadlock — and sent the panel back to keep deliberating. A second deadlock note and that instruction are not a mistrial. Deliberations continue.

The Associated Press reported from Plymouth that the jury on Wednesday “told the judge for a second time that it can’t agree on a verdict,” on a fifth day of deliberations. The Boston Globe’s live updates said the panel remained deadlocked, that Sullivan began reading the Tuey-Rodriguez charge at about 2:23 p.m. ET, and that at 2:27 p.m. he sent jurors back after finishing the instruction. The Globe put deliberations at more than 27 hours across five days. NBC News, updating Wednesday afternoon, had already reported the Tuesday deadlock and Massachusetts practice that a judge may send a deadlocked jury back, but not more than twice without the jury’s consent.

Tuesday’s first note, read in open court, said: “After many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision.” Sullivan sent them back then without a dynamite charge, citing more than 80 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits. Jurors later asked to stop around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. Insanity Developing reported that recess and the first deadlock note. Wednesday’s second note is a new development.

Nick Sortor, posting from the courtroom as Sullivan read the charge, said the judge is sending the jury back and summarized the instruction as given from the bench. Those points, attributed to Sortor’s contemporaneous account, track the Massachusetts model: a jury verdict is the principal way facts are decided in a criminal case; absolute certainty is not expected; each juror’s verdict must reflect that juror’s own convictions, not mere agreement with the majority; jurors should listen with an open mind and respect others’ opinions; it is desirable that the case be decided; there is no reason to think another jury would be more intelligent, impartial, or competent, or that better evidence would appear; jurors have a duty to decide if they can conscientiously do so; and the Commonwealth still bears the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

That charge does not force a verdict. It does not declare a mistrial. Under Massachusetts practice described by NBC News, the Patriot Ledger, and the Globe, a judge may give the Tuey-Rodriguez instruction after a second reported deadlock. If the panel later reports it is still hung, the judge generally may not send them out again without their consent, and may then decide whether to declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then decide whether to retry the case. None of that has happened. The jury is still out.

The 12-person jury — nine women and three men — is in its fifth day. Before deliberations resumed Wednesday morning, Sullivan questioned each juror under oath at sidebar about whether they had seen or heard anything that would affect impartiality, after a Sutton woman was arrested Tuesday afternoon and arraigned Wednesday on a witness-intimidation charge accusing her of filming jurors leaving court. AP identified her as Dawn Light, 56. That arrest is a separate proceeding; AP said Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, described the judge’s questions as going to impartiality.

Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, is on trial in Plymouth Superior Court on three counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2023, deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. She has pleaded not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. She has admitted the killings, then cutting her wrists and neck and jumping from a second-story window; she appears in court in a wheelchair after a spinal injury. The defense argues postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors argue she planned the killings and knew right from wrong. Verdict options include first- or second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty, or not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. The prosecution must prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.

This story discusses suicide and the deaths of children. The national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is 988. For postpartum mental-health help, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is 1-833-852-6262 (1-833-TLC-MAMA).

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