The Lindsay Clancy jury is in its fifth day. It has told Judge William Sullivan once that it cannot reach a unanimous decision, and he sent it back without giving the deadlock instruction. Roughly 23 hours of deliberation stand behind that note.
Massachusetts law is unusually specific about what happens from here, and one rule in particular sharply limits what this jury is permitted to do. Most of it comes from a case Massachusetts watched closely two years ago.
A hung jury is the textbook reason for a mistrial
Double jeopardy normally bars trying someone twice for the same offense. The exception is a mistrial declared out of “manifest necessity.”
The Supreme Judicial Court has called a hung jury “a traditional example” of manifest necessity. The United States Supreme Court put it more bluntly: “jeopardy does not terminate when the jury is discharged because it is unable to agree.”
In deciding whether a mistrial is manifestly necessary, a judge balances “the defendant’s valued right to have his or her trial completed by a particular tribunal against the interest of the public in fair trials designed to end in just judgments.”
So if this jury genuinely cannot agree, a mistrial follows, and a retrial is available to the Commonwealth. That much is settled.
The sequence a judge is expected to follow
A case decided by the SJC in February 2025 lays out the pattern almost exactly.
Two defendants were tried together. Their first trial hung. At the second trial, the jury sent a note reading: “We cannot reach a unanimous decision. Can you provide some guidance on how to proceed? (We have done multiple votes and we have done a final vote).”
The judge dismissed them for the afternoon. The next morning she gave the Tuey-Rodriquez instruction, the Massachusetts charge for a deadlocked jury.
Two days later a second note arrived: “After careful deliberation we, the jury, are not able to reach a unanimous decision. We the jury are deadlocked in our decision and after careful consideration and further discussion, will not change this decision.”
The judge said she had “no alternative but to declare a mistrial.”
The SJC upheld her, holding that after a second and unequivocal statement of deadlock she properly declined to ask whether the jurors would consent to continuing. It also allowed a third trial to proceed.
Read against that, Sullivan is at step one. He has one note and has not yet given the charge.
The jury cannot simply be ordered to keep going forever
G.L. c. 234A § 68C limits a judge’s power to require continued deliberations without the jurors’ consent. It is why the question in these cases is often framed as whether the jury agreed to keep working, and why a second unequivocal note carries so much weight.
The rule that constrains this jury specifically
Here is the part almost nobody has explained, and it matters because of how this case is charged.
Under Massachusetts Rule of Criminal Procedure 27(b), a judge may require a jury to return verdicts on charges it has agreed on before declaring a mistrial. The rule is permissive: a judge “is not required to accept” a partial verdict.
But there is a hard prohibition on top of it. A judge is forbidden from taking a partial verdict on a single indictment that contains lesser included offenses.
Lindsay Clancy faces three indictments, one for each child. Each carries first-degree murder, with second-degree murder and manslaughter as lesser included offenses, plus not guilty and not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility.
The consequence is precise:
Within any single count, no partial verdict is possible. The jury cannot report that it has ruled out first-degree murder but is stuck between second-degree and manslaughter, and have that partial result recorded. It resolves that count completely or not at all.
Across the three counts, a partial verdict is at least theoretically available, because they are separate indictments. The jury could in principle return verdicts on one child’s count and hang on another. Whether Sullivan would take such a verdict is his discretion, and he is not obliged to.
What the Karen Read case settled
This is the most important thing for anyone following the case to understand, and it comes from the highest-profile Massachusetts hung jury in recent memory.
In that first trial the jury deliberated five days and sent three increasingly insistent notes. The final one said some jurors “firmly believed that the evidence surpasses the burden of proof establishing the elements of the charges” while others did not, described their views as rooted in “sincere adherence to their individual principles and moral convictions,” and said further deliberation would be “futile” and would “force them to compromise these deeply held beliefs.”
The judge declared a mistrial.
Afterward, several jurors said publicly that the jury had actually agreed unanimously that the defendant was not guilty on two of the three charges and was deadlocked only on the third. The defense argued that meant a mistrial was not manifestly necessary, that the judge should have asked for a partial verdict, and that she had effectively been acquitted on two counts.
The SJC rejected it. Post-trial accounts of private jury deliberations, inconsistent with what the jury communicated in open court, cannot render a mistrial improper or constitute an acquittal where no verdict was announced or recorded.
The practical lesson is stark. If a jury agrees on something and does not say so in open court, that agreement does not exist in law. A juror explaining it afterward on television changes nothing.
It is also why a defense lawyer facing a possible deadlock has to think hard about whether to ask the judge to inquire about partial verdicts before the jury is discharged. Once they walk out the door, the moment is gone.
If a mistrial is declared
A mistrial is not an acquittal. The charges remain, and the Commonwealth may retry the case. The 2025 decision confirms that even a third trial is permissible after two hung juries.
In practice, prosecutors weigh how the jury split if that becomes known, the cost of retrying a six-week case with more than eighty witnesses, the effect on the family, and whether a different resolution is available. In a case of this profile, a retrial would be the expected course, but it is not automatic.
Any count the jury does resolve is final on its own terms. A recorded acquittal on one child’s count could not be retried.
What we do not know, and cannot
The note said only that the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. It did not identify a count. It did not give a numerical split. It did not say whether the division is over criminal responsibility, over degree, or over something else.
Juries are not asked to disclose that, and speculation about it based on juror demeanor or clothing has no evidentiary value at all.
What would tell us something is a second note. Its wording, and specifically whether it is unequivocal in the way the 2025 case describes, is what determines whether a judge’s hands are effectively tied.
Common questions
What is manifest necessity?
The legal standard permitting a retrial after a mistrial without violating double jeopardy. A hung jury is the traditional example. The judge balances the defendant’s right to finish the trial with the particular jury against the public interest in trials that end in just judgments.
Can the Clancy jury return a verdict on one child and hang on another?
Potentially. The three counts are separate indictments, and Rule 27(b) lets a judge take verdicts on charges the jury has agreed on. But the judge is not required to, and a partial verdict is prohibited within a single indictment containing lesser included offenses.
Could the jury rule out first-degree murder and report that?
No. Because each count carries lesser included offenses, a partial verdict within a single count is not permitted. Each count must be resolved completely or not at all.
What if jurors say afterward that they had agreed?
It has no legal effect. The SJC held in the Karen Read case that post-trial accounts of private deliberations cannot render a mistrial improper or constitute an acquittal where no verdict was announced or recorded in open court.
Could Lindsay Clancy be tried a third time?
Yes. In a 2025 decision, the SJC permitted a third trial after two hung juries, holding double jeopardy did not bar it.
Legal framework from Karen Read v. Commonwealth, SJC-13663 (2025); Sicellon v. Commonwealth and Moore v. Commonwealth, SJC-13478 and SJC-13479 (2025); Commonwealth v. Troila, 410 Mass. 203 (1991); Commonwealth v. Roth, 437 Mass. 777 (2002); Daniels v. Commonwealth, 441 Mass. 1017 (2004); Commonwealth v. Edwards, 491 Mass. 1 (2022); Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317 (1984); Mass. R. Crim. P. 27; and G.L. c. 234A § 68C. Deliberation status through the morning of September 2, 2026. General legal information, not legal advice.