PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial entered a fourth day of deliberations Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, at Plymouth Superior Court, with no verdict on whether the former labor-and-delivery nurse is criminally responsible for killing her three children in Duxbury in 2023.

The Associated Press reported that the panel began deliberating in secret last Thursday and has been quiet since, with no communications to Judge William F. Sullivan suggesting how the talks are going. The Boston Globe, covering Monday's session, said the jury had deliberated for 17 hours over three days after testimony from 84 witnesses in a six-week trial. NBC Boston said the jury of nine women and three men started around 12:30 p.m. Thursday and left Monday without a verdict.

"Stay the course," Sullivan told jurors Monday as he excused them for the day and told them not to read or listen to anything about the case, the Globe reported. He told them to resume in the morning.

Clancy, 36, is charged with 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 reason of lack of criminal responsibility. The Globe reported that she has admitted strangling the children with exercise bands in the basement of the family's Duxbury home, then slashed her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window, severing her spine. She appears in court in a wheelchair.

The defense, led by Kevin Reddington, argues that postpartum psychosis — a rare illness that can follow childbirth — left Clancy unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform it to the law. The Globe reported that witnesses described a psychotic episode in which she said she heard a man's voice telling her to kill her children and herself. In the months before the killings she sought treatment, including a psychiatric hospitalization, AP said.

Prosecutors do not dispute that Clancy was mentally ill. They argue the killings were premeditated: that she was depressed and overwhelmed after the birth of her third child, decided to kill herself, and chose to take the children with her because she did not trust anyone else to care for them. AP summarized the state's line: she knew what she was doing.

A verdict slip, the Globe reported, asks jurors to consider not guilty; not guilty because she lacks criminal responsibility; or guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter. A murder conviction can mean life in prison. An acquittal on criminal-responsibility grounds would not end the state's power over her: AP noted that a judge could still order her confined to a mental-health facility if an evaluation finds she is a danger to the public. In Massachusetts the burden is on the prosecution to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.

Reddington told reporters Monday the jury was "working hard," citing about 300 exhibits, including thousands of pages of hospital records. NBC Boston said that on Friday jurors asked to see Clancy's prescription medication and a knife prosecutors say she used in the suicide attempt, and that they asked no questions Monday.

This story discusses suicide. The national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is 988.

Sources