Plymouth County Superior Court Judge William Sullivan on Monday refused to throw out Lindsay Clancy’s murder charges, allowing a second trial after the first ended in a mistrial.
The defense had argued a retrial would violate double-jeopardy protections because the September mistrial could have been avoided if the court had probed a lone holdout juror more deeply.
Sullivan wrote that complaints about juror Michael P. Desronvil showed a dispute over deliberations’ substance, not reliable evidence that he refused to follow the law.
Questioning that juror further would have been “impermissibly coercive,” Sullivan said, so the court had no choice but to declare a mistrial and can retry Clancy.
Clancy is accused of strangling her 3 children to death in 2023 at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.