The Clancy Jury Had Two Boxes. The Bible Kept a Third.

Friday morning. Plymouth Superior Court. Judge William Sullivan said the word. Mistrial.

Nine women. Three men. Seven days. Three notes. Eleven to one.

Eleven for not criminally responsible. One who would not go.

The jury had two answers it could give.

Guilty. Not criminally responsible.

A mind that knew. A mind that was sick. The second box is a state hospital with yearly reviews.

There is no third box.

January 24, 2023. Duxbury, Massachusetts. Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse. Cora, five. Dawson, three. Callan, eight months.

Prosecutors say she strangled them with exercise bands, then went out a bedroom window. She is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair.

She did not testify.

Her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, testified that after childbirth she had suicidal thoughts, and thoughts about harming the children. Anxiety. Medication changes. Sleep deprivation.

Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, blamed the treatment. “Because of the damn medicine and the lousy medical care that she got.”

Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist, testified for the defense. “She was hearing a voice which was commanding her to engage in the killing behavior. She did not feel any sense of control.”

Prosecutors said she acted “intentionally, rationally and swiftly.” Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said she “was not a woman in the throes of psychosis.”

One side had a word for the voice. Hallucination. The other side said there was no psychosis to hear one.

Two words for one voice.

The old book had three.

“And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.” Matthew 4:24