Lindsay Clancy has hired the lawyer who argued this exact question to this exact court and lost. Martin G. Weinberg entered a limited appearance in Plymouth Superior Court on Tuesday to file and argue a motion to dismiss her case on double jeopardy grounds, according to the filing. Nineteen months ago Weinberg stood before the Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of Karen Read and asked it to bar her retrial after her own mistrial. The court said no, in an opinion that reads as a set of instructions for how to lose this argument.
It also reads as a map of the one path that is still open, and Clancy’s trial lawyer already walked onto it on September 4. This piece explains what Weinberg was hired to do, what the Read decision actually held, the single fact that separates Clancy’s position from Read’s, and why the strongest argument on September 29 may not be double jeopardy at all.
What the filing does
A limited appearance is exactly what it sounds like. Weinberg has not taken over the case. The filing states he will represent Clancy in connection with the motion to dismiss and “related matters,” which leaves Kevin Reddington as trial counsel and brings in a specialist for one motion. It is a common arrangement in Massachusetts when a trial lawyer wants an appellate advocate to carry a discrete legal fight.
Clancy’s case returns to court on September 29 for a status conference, where Judge William Sullivan is also expected to take up Reddington’s pending motion for a required finding of not guilty under Rule 25. Her first trial ended September 4 when the jury reported it was deadlocked after seven days of deliberation, split eleven to one, with the eleven favoring a verdict that she was not criminally responsible.
Who Weinberg is
One of the most experienced criminal defense and appellate lawyers in Massachusetts. He joined Karen Read’s team in 2024 specifically to handle her post-mistrial double jeopardy motions, and he argued Read’s case before the SJC on November 6, 2024. The opinion lists him first among her counsel. This month he won an acquittal for Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins in a federal extortion case.
Hiring him is a signal about strategy rather than about the trial. He was brought in to make an argument that, if it succeeds, ends the case without a second trial.
The rule, and the exception
The Fifth Amendment and article 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights bar trying a person twice for the same offense. The bar is not absolute. Since United States v. Perez, 22 U.S. 579 (1824), a defendant may be retried when the first trial ended in a mistrial declared out of “manifest necessity.”
A hung jury is the textbook example. The Supreme Court held in Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317 (1984), that a jury’s failure to reach a verdict is not an event terminating jeopardy, so retrial after a deadlock is permitted. That is the general rule, and on its face it disposes of Clancy’s case.
There is a second principle that matters more here. A mistrial declared with the defendant’s consent removes the double jeopardy problem almost entirely, because the defendant chose to end the trial. A mistrial declared over the defendant’s objection is the situation in which the Commonwealth must actually justify what happened.
What Read held
Read’s argument was that jurors told her lawyers after the mistrial that they had unanimously agreed she was not guilty on two of the three charges and were deadlocked only on the third. If that was true, she said, those two charges had effectively been acquitted and could not be retried.
The SJC framed the question and answered it in one breath: “Can posttrial accounts of jurors’ private deliberations that are inconsistent with their public communications in court render the declaration of a mistrial improper, or constitute an acquittal, where the jury did not announce or record a verdict in open court? We conclude that they cannot.” The court affirmed the denial of her motion to dismiss and of her request for a post-trial juror inquiry.
The reasoning tracked Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U.S. 599 (2012), where a jury forewoman announced in open court that the jury was unanimous against the more serious charges, and the Supreme Court still allowed retrial on all of them because no verdict was returned. What jurors say they decided is not what the jury decided. Only a verdict announced and recorded in open court is a verdict.
The fact that separates Clancy from Read
Buried in the Read opinion is the sentence that explains why Weinberg lost and why he may have been hired anyway: “At no point during this discussion did defense counsel object to the judge’s declaration of a mistrial or express disagreement with that outcome.”
The court returned to it repeatedly. Read’s lawyers had twice requested the Tuey-Rodriquez instruction, the charge a judge gives a deadlocked jury before giving up, which the court called “the final step” preceding a mistrial. When the third deadlock note came, they neither objected nor asked to be heard. The trial judge observed that defense counsel “were no shrinking violets” and would not have sat silently if they opposed a mistrial.
Clancy’s record is the opposite. Reddington objected. He asked the SJC on an emergency basis to order further questioning or removal of the holdout juror, and when that failed, Judge Sullivan declared the mistrial over his stated objection, saying he did not feel he had any choice. Clancy’s counsel did everything Read’s counsel did not do.
That preserves the argument. It does not win it. Once a defendant objects, the question becomes whether the judge abused his discretion in finding manifest necessity, and appellate courts are highly deferential to trial judges on that question, because the trial judge is the one who saw the jury. A jury that has reported deadlock repeatedly after seven days is the strongest possible case for necessity. Massachusetts also forbids a judge from sending a jury back after repeated impasse reports without the jurors’ consent, which narrows what Sullivan could have done instead.
Why Rule 25 may be the better argument
Double jeopardy bars a retrial when the first proceeding ended in an acquittal. A deadlock is not an acquittal. But a judge’s ruling that the evidence was legally insufficient is, and that is what Reddington’s pending motion asks for.
Rule 25(b)(1) allows a judge to enter a required finding of not guilty after a jury is discharged without returning a verdict. If Sullivan grants it, the case is over and no double jeopardy motion is needed, because an acquittal by the court bars retrial absolutely. The argument is that no rational jury could have found Clancy criminally responsible beyond a reasonable doubt when all six experts who testified agreed she suffered from serious mental illness at the time. We explained that motion when it was filed in Reddington’s Rule 25 motion, explained.
The two motions are complementary. Rule 25 says the Commonwealth’s evidence was never enough. Double jeopardy says that even if it was, the state does not get a second try. A judge who is unwilling to end a triple murder case by finding the evidence insufficient is also unlikely to end it on a discretionary mistrial ruling he made himself three weeks earlier, which is the practical difficulty with both.
What to watch on September 29
Whether the double jeopardy motion has actually been filed by then, since the appearance says Weinberg will file it rather than that he has. Whether Sullivan rules from the bench or takes either motion under advisement. Whether the defense seeks any inquiry into the jury’s deliberations, which Read squarely forecloses and which no competent lawyer would now request in that form. And whether a denial goes to a single justice of the SJC under G.L. c. 211, § 3, which is the route Read took and the reason her case produced a published opinion at all.
If the motions fail, the case proceeds toward a retrial, and the Rule 36 clock that ordinarily gives the Commonwealth one year from the mistrial becomes the next thing to watch.
Common questions
Can Lindsay Clancy be retried after a mistrial?
Generally yes. Under Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317 (1984), a hung jury does not end jeopardy, and a mistrial declared out of manifest necessity permits retrial. The defense argues there was no manifest necessity here.
Who is Martin Weinberg?
A veteran Boston criminal defense and appellate lawyer who argued Karen Read’s double jeopardy case to the Supreme Judicial Court in November 2024 and lost, and who won an acquittal this month for Suffolk Sheriff Steven Tompkins. He has entered a limited appearance for Clancy to file and argue the dismissal motion.
Why did Karen Read lose the same argument?
Because no verdict was announced in open court, and because her lawyers did not object when the mistrial was declared. The SJC held that post-trial accounts of deliberations cannot convert a deadlock into an acquittal.
What is different about Clancy’s case?
Her lawyer objected to the mistrial and sought emergency relief from the SJC beforehand. That preserves an argument Read had forfeited, though the trial judge’s finding of necessity still receives substantial deference.
What happens on September 29?
A status conference at which the pending Rule 25 motion for a required finding of not guilty, and any filed double jeopardy motion, are expected to be addressed.
Filing details and Weinberg’s retention as reported by the Boston Globe, Boston 25 News and Fox News, September 16, 2026. Karen Read v. Commonwealth, SJC-13663 (Feb. 11, 2025), read in full and quoted from the slip opinion; the decision has no reporter citation on CourtListener and is cited here by docket and date. United States v. Perez, 22 U.S. 579 (1824), Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317 (1984), and Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U.S. 599 (2012), verified against CourtListener. Account of the September 4 mistrial and Reddington’s objection as reported by NBC News, Boston.com and NPR. Lindsay Clancy has not been convicted of any offense. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.