Lindsay Clancy killed her three young children inside their Duxbury home in January 2023.
A hung jury walked away after seven days, unable to agree if she is a killer or a victim.
Her attorney did not wait for an answer before turning to Donald Trump.
A Hospital Turned Her Away Before She Ever Picked Up a Knife
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4 after twelve jurors spent a week deadlocked on one question: could Lindsay Clancy tell right from wrong when she killed Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, never disputed that she did it.
He argued she was drowning in postpartum psychosis and buried under a stack of psychiatric medications nobody was tracking.
Reddington says Clancy tried to get help before the killings and Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island turned her away, citing the very drugs doctors had already prescribed her.
One holdout juror kept the state from convicting her of murder.
District Attorney Timothy Cruz now has to decide whether to retry a case his office just watched collapse.
Clancy sits in a locked ward at Tewksbury State Hospital while he figures it out.
Reddington Went On National Television and Asked for Something No President Can Give
Four days after the mistrial, Reddington sat down with Good Morning America and made his pitch directly to the Oval Office.
"Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady," Reddington said. "The type of person she is, what she has been through, and consider a pardon."
There is one problem Reddington's television audience was never told.
Lindsay Clancy was charged by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, not the United States government, and the Constitution only lets a president pardon federal crimes.
A governor, not a president, holds clemency power over a state case like this one, and Massachusetts has not even convicted Clancy of anything to pardon in the first place.
Reddington is a defense attorney who has spent decades in Massachusetts courtrooms. He knows exactly how federal pardon power works.
Which means the ask was never really about Trump's pen.
Her Ex-Husband Is Suing the People He Says Failed Her First
Patrick Clancy, her husband when the killings happened, is not fighting Reddington on any of this.
His attorney called the idea of a second trial "extraordinarily painful," saying the loss of his children is "something from which he will never recover."
Patrick has told reporters he was not "married to a monster." He was "married to someone who got sick."
He has since filed a separate wrongful death lawsuit, and it is not aimed at Lindsay.
It's aimed at the mental health providers he says missed every warning sign before three of his children were dead.
When the surviving spouse and the defense attorney are pointing at the same people, that is not a defense strategy anymore. That is a pattern.
The Outrage Nobody Wants to Name
The real outrage in this story isn't that a defense lawyer tried a Hail Mary on national television.
It's that the system built to answer whether Clancy belongs in a hospital or a prison just spent a week failing to answer it, while the man who lost his children is busy suing a completely different set of people over that same failure.
None of that erases what Clancy did, and nothing here is an argument for letting her walk.
But if Reddington and Patrick Clancy are both right about that hospital turning her away, the warning sign was flashing weeks before three children died, and nobody there is facing anything close to what Clancy is facing right now.
A defense attorney chasing a pardon that cannot legally exist was never making a legal argument.
He was making a public relations argument four days before a district attorney has to decide whether taxpayers foot the bill for a second trial, and he understands that distinction far better than his television audience does.
Sources:
- NBC News, "Lindsay Clancy's attorney asks for Trump pardon in first interview since state mistrial," NBC News, Sept. 8, 2026.
- CBS News, "Lindsay Clancy trial ends in mistrial with no verdict. What happens next?" CBS News, Sept. 4, 2026.
- Boston.com, "Lindsay Clancy's former husband, Patrick, issues statement following mistrial via attorney," Boston.com, Sept. 4, 2026.
- Newsweek, "Crime or Sickness? Lindsay Clancy, Andrea Yates and the Insanity Defense 25 Years Later," Newsweek, 2026.
- LegalClarity, "Can the President Pardon State Crimes?" LegalClarity, 2026.
- Turn to 10, "Lindsay Clancy's attorney asks President Trump for a pardon during interview," Turn to 10, Sept. 8, 2026.
