What to expect when Lindsay Clancy returns to court this week

Colleen Cronin, Boston Herald on Sep 28, 2026

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BOSTON — Many questions have been raised about the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial since it ended in a hung jury, and it’s not clear if the defendant’s first time back in court Tuesday will answer them all.

Clancy was on trial this summer for allegedly murdering her children in January 2023. After weeks of testimony and almost 40 hours of deliberations, the judge in the case declared a mistrial Sept. 4.

The Duxbury mom’s defense didn’t dispute that she killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, instead, her attorney Kevin Reddington argued that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled the children and can’t be held criminally responsible for their deaths.

Since the mistrial, Reddington has filed a motion to dismiss the charges against her. Issues have also been raised about the one holdout juror. Meanwhile, the Plymouth County District Attorney Office hasn’t yet announced whether they’ll retry Clancy.

Defense motion to dismiss

Reddington said he would move for a required finding of not guilty right after Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.

But he has also filed motions to dismiss Clancy’s case altogether based on claims of double jeopardy.

Reddington filed the motion last week with attorney Martin Weinberg, who has joined Clancy’s defense in a limited capacity for the double jeopardy argument.

The crux of their argument, as presented in the motion, is that the case should be dismissed because Sullivan declared a mistrial without doing an inquiry of the one juror the other panelists said was holding out.

Weinberg also represented Karen Read when her first second-degree murder trial ended in a hung jury. Read also argued double jeopardy precluded her from being tried again. That argument went to the Supreme Judicial Court, but ultimately Read had a second trial and was acquitted of all major charges last year.

The foreperson of the jury in the Clancy case reported that the holdout, since identified by his attorney as Michael Peguy Desronvil, had expressed doubt but wouldn’t agree that defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. The foreperson wrote that Desronvil refused to follow the law.

At the time, Sullivan had individually questioned all the jurors about whether they could follow the law and gave them an instruction on reasonable doubt, even though Reddington had pressed for a voir dire of Desronvil.

“The multiple reports of a juror violating this bedrock principle ... required a judicial inquiry sufficient to ascertain whether her right to an impartial jury was being violated,” Reddington and Weinberg wrote in their motion to dismiss, explaining that state and federal courts have found it’s warranted in cases where there is a credible report of juror misconduct.

“Respectfully, further inquiry was certainly required where, as here, the inevitable result of the failure to do so was a mistrial, declared over the defendant’s objection, carrying all the risks of unfairness and abuse repeatedly emphasized by both the Supreme Judicial Court and the United States Supreme Court,” they wrote.

Juror inquiry

Reddington has also filed a motion for an inquiry into Desronvil.

Despite public comments from other members of the jury after the mistrial was declared, Desronvil said that he did not have doubts about Clancy’s guilt during the deliberations.

“As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented,” Desronvil wrote in a statement through his lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik. “Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented, I thought it was enough proof that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”

In his inquiry motion, Reddington requested information on allegations of domestic abuse against Desronvil and any criminal cases that he may have been involved in. He also asked for logs for the jurors’ cellphones and data from Desronvil’s phone during the deliberation period.

Paltzik slammed the inquiry request and said that it sets a precedent for targeting other jurors in the future.

Because of the continued, heightened scrutiny on the case, Judge Sullivan has impounded court records that would reveal the names of the jurors who have not come out publicly, including the jury list, the jury questionnaires, and the jury pools lists from the period that Clancy jurors were going through voir dire.

According to the case docket, Clancy’s Tuesday hearing will be held at 9 a.m. before Judge Mark Gildea at Plymouth Superior Court.

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