Speaking at the White House on Friday, President Trump addressed the Lindsay Clancy case just hours after a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the case surrounding the deaths of her three young children.
He described what happened as “a horrible tragedy” and said “she did a horrible, horrible thing.” He acknowledged the jury had deadlocked and suggested a second trial now looks likely, adding that “there’ll be a price” and predicting the outcome would eventually mean “mental institution or jail or something.”
🚨 President Trump responds after Lindsay Clancy trial ends in mistrial:
“It’s a terrible situation. She did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse. But you’ll find out what the price to pay is. There’ll be a price. It’s gonna be mental institution or jail or something. But… pic.twitter.com/vwyCyQC1Do
— Brandon Tatum (@TheOfficerTatum) September 4, 2026
Reaching that mistrial took time.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Clancy’s jury spent seven full days, more than 37 hours in total, trying and failing to reach a unanimous decision.
The panel, made up of nine women and three men, had to determine whether Clancy, 36, bore criminal responsibility for the deaths of her children: five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, all strangled inside the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023.
Clancy has never denied causing her children’s deaths. Her legal team built its defense around her mental state, arguing she was experiencing postpartum psychosis triggered by a combination of medications she’d been prescribed at the time.
Shortly after the killings, she attempted suicide by jumping from an upstairs window, an attempt that left her paralyzed and now permanently confined to a wheelchair.
Judge William Sullivan issued the mistrial ruling Friday afternoon at Plymouth Superior Court. The decision came after a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected an emergency request from Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, who had hoped to push the jury back into deliberations rather than let the case end in deadlock.
“I’m going to declare the jury is deadlocked, and I’m going to declare a mistrial,” Sullivan told the courtroom.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz spoke to reporters outside the courthouse soon after, standing by his office’s decision to pursue first-degree murder charges. “Children were murdered, and it’s our job to seek justice,” he said.
He stopped short of confirming whether his office plans to pursue a retrial, though most legal observers following the case expect that to happen.
Several paths remain open for prosecutors going forward. They could pursue the same murder charges a second time, shift toward a lesser charge like manslaughter, or attempt to negotiate a plea deal with Clancy’s defense team. There’s also the option of asking a judge to decide the case, without sending it back to another jury.
Reddington has argued “it would be impossible to find an impartial panel of jurors” for a retrial, pointing to how much attention this case has already drawn, both across the country and internationally. The next scheduled hearing falls on September 29.
Featured image via X screengrab
