The line that mattered in Kevin Reddington’s “Good Morning America” interview was not the one about a presidential pardon. It was this one, about Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz:
“I hope, however, after sitting through this trial and seeing the evidence that was presented from the government, as well as from the defense, that he would revisit that issue and hopefully would be willing to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides.”
That is a defence lawyer asking, on national television, for a plea.
It is also a reversal. Before the trial, Reddington’s public position was that no deal was available at all. “There’s no plea bargaining, there’s nothing Cruz wants,” he said then. “His triple homicide convictions, consecutive life sentences.”
He has asked before, in writing, and been refused
The most important thing about Tuesday’s request is that it is not the first one. It is the second attempt at the same idea, made through a television audience because the first attempt failed in a courtroom.
On 7 April 2026, Reddington filed a motion offering something remarkable. Lindsay Clancy would formally stipulate, in writing, to her involvement in the conduct that led to her three children’s deaths. She would concede the act.
In exchange, the defence asked the court to split the trial into two phases: one on whether she committed the acts, and a second on her mental state at the time. Conceding the first would leave her mental condition as the only question a jury had to decide.
Prosecutors did not agree. They had opposed bifurcation before, arguing that the evidence in each phase would be nearly identical, and the case went to a single jury on everything at once in July.
So the defence has already offered to give away the only fact in dispute, in return for a narrower trial, and been turned down. Tuesday’s appeal is the same trade proposed again, louder.
The softening
The shift ran through the whole interview with George Stephanopoulos. Days earlier Reddington had said Cruz “knows that he was crushed; he doesn’t have a case.” On Tuesday he characterised his own words as bravado.
Lawyers do not walk back their own trash talk about an opposing prosecutor for nothing. They do it when they want something from that prosecutor.
What the defence wants is obvious enough. It fought a seven-week trial to a jury that could not agree, and by Reddington’s account came within one juror of an acquittal or a finding of not criminally responsible. Doing that again is expensive, exhausting, and not guaranteed to land in the same place.
What a deal would actually have to look like
Clancy stands indicted on three counts of murder in the first degree. That charge carries no discretion at sentencing.
Under G.L. c. 265, § 2, a person convicted of murder in the first degree is punished by “imprisonment in the state prison for life and shall not be eligible for parole.” There is nothing for a judge to weigh. Three counts of it is the outcome Reddington described Cruz as wanting.
Any deal therefore has to move off that charge, and there are only a few places to move to.
Second-degree murder. Also a life sentence, but under the same section the defendant “shall be eligible for parole after the term of years fixed by the court.” Life with a parole date is a categorically different sentence from life without one.
Manslaughter. Under G.L. c. 265, § 13, punishable by “imprisonment in the state prison for not more than twenty years.” A finite number, with credit for time already served.
A route that ends in commitment rather than prison. The defence case was never that Clancy did not kill her children. The case was that she was not criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis, which if accepted leads to commitment to a secure psychiatric facility rather than a sentence. We have set out how that mechanism works separately.
That last option is the one that fits what both sides have actually said. Clancy is already held at Tewksbury State Hospital. Trump, asked about the case, said the outcome would be “mental institution or jail or something.” Reddington’s entire defence was that she belongs in the first category. And the April motion shows the defence was already trying to steer the case toward a proceeding about mental state alone.
Why Cruz may not move
The obstacles are not technical. They are about what a district attorney has said in public and to whom.
Cruz has framed the prosecution around the victims, saying his office was focused on “getting justice for those three little babies.” A prosecutor who has said that finds it hard to accept manslaughter, whatever the psychiatric evidence, because the charge is the message.
He also has a hung jury rather than a loss. A mistrial is not an acquittal and it is not a rebuke. Prosecutors retry hung cases routinely. A jury reportedly splitting 11 to 1 is a data point that can be read as encouraging or discouraging depending on which side of the room you sat on. Reddington says the single holdout was holding out to convict. If that is right, eleven jurors were prepared to accept the defence, which is an argument for the defence and equally an argument that a different twelve might go the other way.
And he has already said no once, to a written offer that gave him the act.
The father’s position, and its limits
There is a third party with standing to be heard. Under G.L. c. 258B, the children’s father has the right to confer with the prosecutor before the commencement of any trial and before any act terminating the prosecution, which a plea would be.
Patrick Clancy has said through counsel that reliving the case through another trial would be “extraordinarily painful.” That points toward resolution rather than retrial, and Cruz is required to hear it, though not to follow it. The statute says in terms that the right to confer “does not include the authority to direct the prosecution of the case.”
The problem with asking this way
Reddington’s public posture since the mistrial may be making the ask harder, and the criticism has not come only from anonymous accounts.
After the jury was dismissed on Friday he said of the holdout: “They know they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful.”
That produced a backlash, including calls on social media for professional discipline. It also drew a rebuke from Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor, in a column published on 7 September under the title “The Clancy Trial: When ‘Twelve Angry Men’ Becomes One Angry Man.” Turley’s point was that in the film, Juror Number Eight was attacked for wasting everyone’s time by refusing to yield to the majority, and was right. His criticism of Reddington was blunt: officers of the court should be standing in the path of a mob rather than leading one.
Writing for JURIST, editorial director Ingrid Burke Friedman took the request to remove the juror more seriously, noting that it was not frivolous and that Reddington had argued the juror had looked the judge in the eye and lied. But she also identified why Judge Sullivan refused: Massachusetts law confines juror removal to personal reasons unrelated to the case, and if a foreperson’s report that a dissenter was applying reasonable doubt incorrectly were enough, it would become impossible to tell misconduct apart from disagreement.
None of that is a legal obstacle to a plea. It is a practical one. A prosecutor weighing whether to be generous is being asked by a lawyer who spent the previous week attacking the one juror who would not acquit.
What happens next
Cruz has not said whether he will retry the case. Clancy returns to court later this month for a status hearing, a trial assignment and a hearing under the rule allowing judicial review of a jury’s verdict.
Watch for three things. Whether Cruz says anything at all before that hearing, since silence is itself a negotiating position. Whether a trial date is actually assigned, which would signal he intends to go again. And whether the charge in any proposed disposition moves off first-degree murder, because until it does there is no deal to be made.