Less than a week after a hung-jury mistrial, Lindsay Clancy is asking a Massachusetts judge again to throw out the murder case against her — this time with a renewed motion that, if granted, would count as an acquittal and bar a retrial.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington filed the motion Thursday in Plymouth Superior Court, renewing earlier requests for a required finding of not guilty under Rule 25, Boston.com and NBC Boston reported. Judge William Sullivan is scheduled to hear the motion at a Sept. 29 conference.

Clancy, 36, faces first-degree murder charges in the Jan. 24, 2023, deaths of her children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — at the family’s home in Duxbury. She has admitted the killings but pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, arguing she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis. Sullivan declared a mistrial last Friday after jurors deadlocked following more than a week of deliberations.

Reddington’s filing argues prosecutors never put on proof that could let a rational jury find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Clancy lacked a mental disease or defect. “No rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she had no mental disease or defect when the Commonwealth’s own proof established that she did,” he wrote, according to Boston.com. “The Commonwealth had to prove that a woman all six experts agreed was mentally ill nonetheless kept the capacity the law demands. It did not.”

NBC Boston’s account of the paperwork says all six forensic experts — three for each side — agreed Clancy suffered from a serious mental illness on the day of the killings. Reddington wrote that the Commonwealth’s rebuttal experts disputed the label of the illness, not the fact of illness itself: one described a major depressive episode; another bipolar II with dissociation. Treating clinicians from the weeks before Jan. 24 testified they saw postpartum depression and anxiety without observing psychosis — testimony that, he argued, goes to which illness she had, not whether she had one.

“The government did not present evidence that allows a juror earnestly seeking the truth to determine that the defendant’s guilt on the crime was proved on each element of the offense,” Reddington wrote, per Boston.com.

Jurors who have spoken publicly described an 11–1 deadlock, with a lone holdout refusing a not-guilty finding for lack of criminal responsibility even after acknowledging doubt in the state’s case. Reddington’s motion is not based on those jury votes. “The Court decides whether the record, viewed most favorably to the Commonwealth, could support the finding the Commonwealth needed,” he wrote. “On this record it could not, and every juror who applied the reasonable doubt standard reached that conclusion.”

If Sullivan enters a required finding for insufficiency of the evidence, that is an acquittal that bars retrial — the point of Rule 25, Reddington noted to NBC Boston. Separately, he has said he plans a double-jeopardy dismissal motion arguing the mistrial was not legally necessary; hung-jury mistrials generally do not trigger double jeopardy, but he contends this one should.

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not announced whether he will retry Clancy on first-degree murder, reduce or dismiss charges, or negotiate a plea. Reddington has separately told CNN he is open to a plea that avoids jail time. Clancy remains at Tewksbury State Hospital. The next court date is Sept. 29.

Sources