A Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the closely watched case of Lindsay Clancy, the American mother accused of killing her three young children.
Judge William Sullivan made the ruling after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict, while an appeals court rejected a last-minute defence request to replace one member of the panel.
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The 12-person jury deliberated for seven days but could not reach the agreement required in US criminal cases.
Eleven jurors supported finding the 36-year-old Ms Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity. One juror disagreed.
Prosecutors must now determine whether to bring the case before a new jury.
“I’ll be making that decision shortly,” Plymouth County district attorney Tim Cruz told reporters.
Ms Clancy will remain in custody while prosecutors consider a possible retrial.
The five-week televised proceedings, which included testimony from more than 80 witnesses and often harrowing evidence, fuelled a national discussion about maternal mental health. The case also drew comment from US President Donald Trump.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. “I assume there’s going to be another trial.”
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The nearly six-week televised trial also brought renewed attention to the way postnatal mental illness is treated in the United States and to how the legal system handles cases involving mothers who kill their children.
There was no dispute that Ms Clancy, 36, strangled her three children with exercise bands in the basement of her home in Duxbury, a Boston suburb, in January 2023.
She then used a knife to cut herself before jumping from a second-floor window in an unsuccessful suicide attempt that left her paralysed.
Throughout the trial, her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argued that Ms Clancy should be found not guilty because she lacked criminal responsibility or was legally insane. He portrayed her as a devoted mother who was experiencing a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, five; Dawson, three; and eight-month-old Callan on 24 January 2023.
Family members, including Ms Clancy’s now former husband, Patrick, described the deterioration in her mental health during the months after the birth of her third child. They said she repeatedly sought help from healthcare providers, who prescribed her a range of medications.
The proceedings drew comparisons with the case of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001.
Judge William Sullivan
After an appeals court overturned her original murder conviction, Ms Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. Her lawyers argued that she had been suffering from severe postnatal psychosis.
Prosecutors did not deny that Ms Clancy had been struggling with her mental health. She had previously worked as a labour and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.
But they argued that she understood killing her children was wrong and deliberately chose to do it.
Prosecutors called a psychologist who examined Ms Clancy and concluded that she had intended to take her own life and killed her children because “she was convinced that they would suffer without her”.
They highlighted evidence that, shortly before the killings, Ms Clancy sent her husband to collect food and visit a pharmacy after using her phone to calculate how long it would take him to return.
Patrick Clancy testified that his wife had left a psychiatric hospital less than two weeks earlier, but that he saw no indication in the following days that she intended to harm herself or the children.
He said she appeared “normal” when he left the house to collect dinner.
While at the pharmacy, he had a brief phone conversation with his wife.
When he returned, he found her lying in the backyard with cuts to her wrists and neck.
She told him she had attempted to kill herself.
He testified that he asked about the children and was told they were in the basement.
After calling 911 and waiting for first responders to arrive, Mr Clancy ran downstairs and found the children with exercise bands wrapped around their necks.
Several witnesses, including Mr Clancy, testified that Ms Clancy later said from hospital that she had heard a man’s voice telling her that if she did not act, she would lose her opportunity.
