Lindsay Clancy/Image: Reuters
A Massachusetts judge has rejected Lindsay Clancy’s request to dismiss the murder charges against her, ruling that a second trial over the deaths of her three children would not violate her constitutional protection against double jeopardy.
Sullivan disagreed, concluding that there was a legal basis for the mistrial under the principle of “manifest necessity”. “The foreperson’s notes did not plausibly suggest that Juror Doe refused to consider the trial evidence or disagreed with the law as explained by the Court in its instructions,” Sullivan wrote as cited by CNN. He also rejected a prosecution request for a gag order restricting public statements by the parties involved in the case. The ruling follows arguments presented last week by Clancy’s defence team, which maintained that holding another trial would amount to double jeopardy. Her lawyers argued that the judge had not exhausted all available options to resolve a disagreement among jurors before ending the first trial. The standard requires that all reasonable options for reaching a verdict be exhausted before a trial can be terminated. In his ruling, the judge also rejected claims that the juror responsible for the deadlock had refused to participate in deliberations. He added that information about the juror that emerged after the trial could not be used to challenge the decision to declare a mistrial.
Judge William Sullivan ruled on Monday that there was sufficient legal justification for declaring her first trial a mistrial in September.