Lindsay Clancy Verdict: Expert Says Judge’s Jury Actions May Be ‘Dangerous’
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The Lindsay Clancy murder trial descended into an extraordinary courtroom confrontation Thursday as a deadlocked jury was sent back to deliberate for a sixth day, prompting a legal expert to warn that Judge William Sullivan was entering “very dangerous territory.”
Defense attorney Mark O’Mara, appearing on CNN Thursday, described the judge ’s decision to bring jurors before the bench individually as “extraordinarily dangerous” and said Sullivan “needs to be extraordinarily careful.”
O’Mara went further, describing the judge’s handling of the jury as potentially creating a “brand new procedural law” through the way he is dealing with the impasse.
The comments came as the jury remained divided after more than 35 hours of deliberations in a trial that lasted roughly six weeks.
The latest drama began when the 12 jurors in Plymouth, Massachusetts, sent Sullivan another note Thursday. The precise contents of the note were not immediately made public, but it triggered a series of unusual proceedings.
Sullivan brought the jurors into court one at a time and questioned them individually. Afterward, Clancy's defense attorney Kevin Reddington told the judge that one juror was preventing the panel from reaching a unanimous verdict.
That juror, Reddington said, “refuses to listen to the law” concerning reasonable doubt.
Sullivan did not accept the characterization or take sides.
“I don’t feel that it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations,” Sullivan said. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or 11.”
The judge then addressed the entire jury, reading instructions concerning reasonable doubt before sending the panel back to deliberate.
The exchange was visibly tense. Reddington appeared frustrated during a private discussion with Sullivan and prosecutors at the bench, at one point slamming papers down on the judge's bench before returning to the defense table.
Clancy herself was brought forward to speak with the judge during the proceedings. Later, she bowed her head as Reddington comforted her.
The jury was sent back out to deliberate before Sullivan announced that he was sending them home for the day. The jury will return on Friday at 9 a.m. ET for further deliberations.
Reddington told reporters outside of the courthouse that the juror would be questioned Sullivan Friday. “There’s a person who has doubt but will not listen to the judge’s instructions,” he said.
The jury's inability to reach a verdict has now become the defining feature of the case's final stage.
The 12 jurors first reported that they were deadlocked Tuesday, after four days of deliberations. Sullivan allowed them to go home and return the following morning.
On Wednesday, the jurors again told the judge they remained unable to reach a unanimous verdict. They had by then spent nearly 30 hours deliberating. Sullivan again sent them back to continue their work before eventually dismissing them for the evening.
Thursday marked the sixth day of deliberations.
Before the latest development, Sullivan had already given the jury the special Tuey-Rodriquez instruction, sometimes referred to as a “dynamite charge,” intended to encourage jurors to reconsider their positions and continue trying to reach a unanimous verdict.
That instruction did not resolve the impasse. Instead, Thursday brought another jury note, individual questioning of the jurors and a new instruction focused on reasonable doubt.
The sequence is why O’Mara's warning is significant. The issue is no longer simply whether the jury has deliberated long enough. It is whether the judge's efforts to break the deadlock risk putting pressure on individual jurors.
A hung jury does not automatically mean a mistrial the first time jurors say they cannot agree.
Massachusetts judges have discretion to determine whether a jury has deliberated sufficiently and whether additional deliberations could reasonably produce a verdict. The state's courts have repeatedly upheld judges giving deadlocked juries further instructions, including the Tuey-Rodriquez charge.
But there are important safeguards. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has recognized that a Tuey-Rodriquez instruction can carry a coercive risk if it pressures jurors to abandon their honest convictions simply to produce a verdict. The court has specifically said judges should avoid language suggesting that the case “must at some time be decided.”
The approved approach instead tells jurors to listen respectfully to one another, reconsider their own views and attempt to reach agreement if they can do so without violating their individual judgment.
And there is a particularly relevant rule concerning what happens after a deadlocked jury receives the Tuey-Rodriquez instruction.
Under Massachusetts law, once a deadlocked jury has received the instruction and resumed deliberations, the jury generally cannot simply be ordered out again indefinitely without its consent. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reiterated in 2025 that, after the instruction, jurors “shall not be sent out again without their own consent.”
That does not mean Sullivan was necessarily prohibited from what he did Thursday. The precise legal significance of the latest proceedings will depend on what the jury's note said, what the judge asked the jurors individually and whether the jurors consented to further deliberations.
But it helps explain why Thursday's proceedings have attracted so much attention.
The most unusual part of Thursday's proceedings was Sullivan's decision to bring jurors before him individually. That is particularly sensitive because the defense had effectively identified a possible holdout juror.
Reddington said one juror was refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt. But…
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