Evening Edition: Mistrial Declared in Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial

0:00I'm Greg Gutfeld. I'm Martha McCallum. I'm Rebecca and this is The Fox News rundown. Friday, September 4, 2026. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Miss trial in the case of Lindsey Clancy, who murdered her three young children, but claimed she wasn't guilty by reason of insanity. I have observed lots of struggling jurors that cannot agree, struggling juries and hung juries and the like. But I don't know that I've ever seen a case like the Lindsey Clancy case. This is The Fox News rundown, evening edition. After deliberating for roughly 36 hours over the course of a week, jurors in Plymouth County, Massachusetts told the judge three times they were hung. Thursday, the judge called each juror in one by one to speak to them at a sidebar, after which the court discovered there appeared to be one holdout. And the four person indicated this holdout agreed. He had some doubt in the prosecution's case, but not enough.

1:02This prompted strong argument from Lindsey Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, who insisted this juror should be dismissed, that he wasn't following the judge's instructions properly. The judge re-instructed the jury on reasonable doubt, but Friday morning, Reddington said it hadn't been enough. You're kind of glossing over the issue. The issue is this juror will not, according to that note, apply the law of reasonable doubt. And that's why I've requested, you know what I've requested. Right. I know what I've done. But it just encased the records, because I am specifically not glossing over this issue. The Plymouth County judge William Sullivan said he was not an actor, that he would not re-instruct on reasonable doubt again, but that he would talk to the jurors with more pizzazz. Plymouth County DA Timothy Cruz said outside of court, after the Miss Trial had been declared that they hadn't yet made a decision about a retrial. But also speaking in the world that we live today, and all too often, criminals are being treated as victims,

2:02and the real victims are invisible. As he said that, a supporter of Lindsey Glancy's shouted asking why he didn't care about the children's mother. Reddington said outside court, They know that they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors. He said they were ready for a retrial if it happens, but said the DA should check his facts before he makes a final decision. I think the system worked perfectly the way it was intended. Jack Lu was a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge for 16 years, and a Boston Municipal Court Judge for five. The judge had a light touch on the complaint about a single juror, as he absolutely should have been. This is obviously a very emotional and difficult time always, in every case, and I thought the system worked as it absolutely was intended to do in a difficult emotional time and a terribly grim trial.

3:03You were a judge, though, for two decades, if I read this correctly, have you ever encountered yourself something quite like this? I think it was 21 years, if I'm remembering how long it was. I guess that is two decades. Have I ever encountered anything quite like this? Well, I haven't, because this is a unique case, and an unbelievable case. And so, no, I have never encountered a situation quite like this. I had observed lots of struggling jurors that cannot agree, struggling jurors and hung juries and the like, but I don't know that I've ever seen a case like the Lindsay Clancy case. Hearing Reddington say that his client, Lindsay Clancy, was robbed by one juror. The judge seemed to disagree with this, and a request to block the call for a mistrial was rejected by the Sipelic Court. What did you make of the defense arguments to try and push off the declaration of a mistrial?

4:07You know, he was a wonderful lawyer and a wonderful person, Mr. Reddington. And he's just doing his job, but he's wrong. That juror did this solemn duty, this one duty, as far as we know, and voted their conscience. What more can we ask from people? And I actually, Mr. Reddington is a wonderful human being. I know that, and I've known him for decades, but he's speaking unfairly to that one juror. I guess he was talking about the juror and not the DA at that moment. That's unfair to that juror. And if there's a chance that juror is listening to this radio show, you did your job. You should hold your head high, and every one of the jurors on that hung jury should hold their head high. You've done justice. Justice is not a result. It's a process, and it's a complicated process, and kind of an emotionally textured process.

5:08And you do it a good job. You should be proud. You've done a public service. The prosecution hasn't said whether or not they will actually pursue a retrial, though one might imagine that is very likely. What would you think a prosecuting office might do differently? Would they pursue lesser charges? We were hearing our own Paul Moro on air say that it might be possible to ask for a venue change. What do you anticipate is likely? They will not reduce the charges. They'll come back with the exact same charges. They will improve their presentation because they have an entire trial transcript and everything on video to review. So they'll be slicker, they'll be better, they'll be more persuasive, they'll be more telegenic, if you will. They have to, so the old conventional wisdom was the prosecution does better on retrial. For various reasons, I will not bore you with. That logic is being turned on its head by social media cases. In the Karen Read case, trial number one, social media was at a slow boil.

6:13At trial number two, there was chaos as social media went crazy. So Mr. Cruz, the district attorney should consider whether or not it's going to be harder to get a convictions in round two. Who knows? We have been speaking with retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Jack Lew, more after this. Talk to me about your impressions of the subject matter here. We had people outside court supporting Lindsey Clancy. People have strongly taken sides here, accusing her of murder, saying what she did is absolutely first degree murder and she should be held accountable. There are people very strongly on this other side of this debate, talking about maternal health and postpartum issues. I don't know if you have any opinions you want to share, but what did you make of how strongly people felt and how they showed up? I am willing to share my opinions and I hope you won't be sorry that you asked. I think the case highlights really profound issues with American mental health care,

7:23that part of medical care that is related to mental health care. There might be some connection with medical insurance and how it's World War Three to get mental health treatment, proper mental health treatment. All of these folks showing up, I don't have any problem with that, but if you show up with the idea that you're going to influence the jury, then you really are thinking about this the wrong way. But if you want to show up to support somebody, knock yourself out, do it, or against somebody, that's fine. But if you want to explicitly influence the jury, that's wrong and you're displaying contempt for our justice system by doing that. But I admire the fact that you're willing to come out and show your face and take a position on these pressing legal issues, which are so difficult. Let me caution you about one thing now. Are we seeing a form of bias, bias in favor of, or related to the kind of bias in favor of what they call the missing

8:25attractive woman syndrome, the missing attractive woman syndrome? Are we seeing that, a missing attractive white woman syndrome? Is this what we're seeing here? We have Ms. Clancy, we have Karen Reed, we had a case in Massachusetts, you may not be aware of, I believe it's Ms. Fitzsimmons. We're seeing that social media seems to come out strong, or people come out because of social media on behalf of attractive white woman. I know that's a provocative thing to say, but what's really going on here? Interesting. Talk to me about what we heard in court, a bit of the testimony before I let you go. This was really a battle of the experts, it seems. A lot of forensic psychiatrists and this sort of discussion about what constitutes psychosis, one time, auditory hallucination would seem to be a big part of this. What did you hear from the prosecution that you think was most effective? And then I'll ask you what you think maybe you heard from the defense

9:29that was most effective, but start with the prosecution. Where do you think they heart of their argument lies and should lie? Should they retry? I didn't think these experts, more properly called opinion witnesses, ended up being very helpful in this case. We all are looking at the fundamentally the same evidence, and there aren't that many disputes about what actually happened. So personally, it's just my personal opinion, but I'm not particularly swayed by any of the experts. How do they know any more about what happened to this individual than a layman? Maybe they can add a little bit of detail, but they're not crucial. They're just hired guns opinion witnesses. So I'm not impressed by anybody's experts in this case. In some cases, they can be very impressive and crucial. The prosecution's best piece of evidence is that this was a brutal, brutal, brutal murder of three young children. And that's what they got. And the defend, and this is all my opinion,

10:34I don't claim to be all-knowing, but you ask me. The defense's best evidence, I'm not saying there's any sense of humor or anything like that, but the defense's best evidence is that Miss Clancy was really loony tunes at the time these things happen. Wow. One more on this before you go, she was left paralyzed by her own suicide attempt, right? It sounds like there was some diminishment of that in court that it wasn't really this full attempt, it wasn't a real attempt, but how do you think that played with the jurors as she's sitting in a wheelchair? Oh, I think I'm no expert on public opinion. It was certainly the jurors, but I think anyone in the US watching that trial and hearing the claim that this was a fake or exaggerated suicide attempt probably had like an involuntary reaction of revulsion of such a claim that's foolish, of course. But you know, if you're going to trial lawyers and trial lawyers on a first degree multi-murder case, if you're going to dissect their performance, you're going to find

11:38lots of issues and problems because it is a very difficult job that requires a lot of personal courage. It's not like when they dissect a radio interview or a so-called pundit like me, it's a much more difficult thing to do to try a murder case. So all right, that didn't land to saw Lee that attempted blow, but they got a tough job to do out there, prosecute him or defense. And just briefly, do you do anticipate this will be retried, right? There's no way the DA is going to back down. So the answer is yes. Retire, Judge Jack Lew, thank you so much for your insight and your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Glad to be here. Time members can listen to the show Add Free on Amazon Music. And for up to the minute news,

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