Who is Kevin Reddington? What we know about Lindsay Clancy’s hotshot lawyer
New York Post · RC · trust 51/100
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Add The New York Post on Google He’s been hurling sharp blows in the courtroom for decades.
Accused-killer-mom Lindsay Clancy’s hotshot lawyer Kevin Reddington has spent 50 years litigating high-profile cases — arguing in many that his clients’ alleged crimes were the extreme result of mental illness.
Reddington, 75, has spent months in the spotlight while fighting for Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of fatally strangled her three children , Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
While prosecutors argued that the former labor and delivery nurse carefully planned the killings, including sending her then-husband to pick up medication at CVS and take-out from a local restaurant so she could commit the heinous crimes, Reddington countered that Clancy was in the throes of postpartum psychosis, worsened by myriad prescription medications.
Reddington also claimed she heard a man’s voice instructing Clancy to kill the children and herself.
It’s the latest headline-making case that the criminal defense attorney has taken on.
In 1989, Reddington defended Therese Rogers, who was accused of killing her boyfriend, Walter E. Quinn Jr., by stabbing his eyes out while he slept in their Bridgewater home.
He argued that she and her daughter had been abused by Quinn for years and that Rogers was suffering from delusions and PTSD from battered woman syndrome. It was one of the first cases to successfully use this defense, and Rogers was acquitted.
It was during Rogers’ trial that Reddington built his reputation for dramatic courtroom displays. In a jaw-dropping demonstration, he abruptly flung ultra-sharp martial art stars across the room to prove to the jury how dangerous the weapons were, according to The Enterprise .
Reddington helped Boston Red Sox first baseman Maurice “Mo” Vaughn walk away scot-free from a DUI in 1998. Vaughn was busted on the charges after allegedly crashing into a broken down car while driving home from Foxy Lady Strip Club in Providence, Rhode Island.
The lawyer convinced jurors that Vaughn wasn’t wobbling during his arrest because he was drunk, but because he was suffering from a knee injury.
The following year, Reddington claimed that Richard Shuman, a businessman accused of gunning down two of his business associates with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol in 1997, suffered from depression and was having a psychotic episode amplified by his medications when he killed them.
But a Superior Court jury found Richard Shuman guilty of the premeditated murder and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Reddington also fought for Michael “Mucko” McDermott, who in 2000 fatally shot seven of his coworkers at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, arguing that he was legally insane and had schizophrenia.
During the 2002 trial, McDermott calmly told the court that he was on a mission from St. Michael the Archangel to prevent the Holocaust.
He claimed he could hear Adolf Hitler’s thoughts, and his description of slaying each of the victims — who he described as “Nazis” — sent their families out of the courtroom in hysterics.
The jury ultimately didn’t buy the insanity defense and found McDermott guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life behind bars.
Boston mob boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger’s girlfriend Catherine Greig hired Reddington after she was arrested in 2011 for harboring Bulger — a fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Greig, who spent 16 years on the run with the gangster, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Reddington also played a part in another recent bombshell case out of Massachusetts — the trial of Karen Read in the death of her cop boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
He represented witness Jennifer McCabe, who Read’s defense team requested to testify and sought evidence from her phone.
Read was ultimately acquitted in a second trial of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a crash in the 2022 death of O’Keefe, but convicted of operating under the influence in June 2025.
Reddington referenced the Karen Read case in his failed bid to avoid a mistrial in the Clancy case — by arguing that the jurors may have been confused during deliberations.
“Under Karen Read versus the Commonwealth … Massachusetts rules of criminal procedure give a trial judge discretion to require a jury to return a verdict for charges on which they have agreed before declaring a mistrial,” Reddington told Judge William Sullivan.
A similar rule “also permits the judge to poll the jury when a verdict is returned and before the verdict is recorded, however, a judge is not required to accept a partial verdict before declaring a mistrial,” he said.
A lawyer for the prosecution then fired back, “I would object to that … I think we’re in a different scenario here than in the Read case.”
“In that case, they did reach a verdict on certain charges but not others,” she said.
Reddington graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 1975 and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar association that year.
He’s earned several accolades, including becoming a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers in 1996 and being selected to Massachusetts Super Lawyers from 2004 through 2025.
“As Jerry Spence said, ‘I never sinned.’ Nope. Nope. I don’t have it in me to ever try to put somebody in jail,” he told NBC 10 .
He has described Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, as “an incredible wife, mother [and] friend.”
A major development in her divisive case came Friday, when the judge announced a mistrial after the jury couldn’t come to a unanimous decision about her fate after 40 grueling hours of deliberations.
Her next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.
Reddington did not return a request for comment.
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