Mistrial in Lindsay Clancy trial: What's next?

Okay, you know what? We have a legal expert and she's joining us from another part of the country. Trial attorney Marlo Greer. Marlo, can you hear me okay? I can hear you. I love the fact that you said she's joining me from a part of the country. I don't even know where I am half the time. Another part of the country. Where are you? Are you Texas, Colorado? Where are you? So I'm a Colorado and Tennessee lawyer and right now I'm sitting in Tennessee with the Colorado Mountains behind me. So we just make sure that I'm everywhere. Okay, well thank you so much for joining us. I was talking to you about this case also earlier this week. So what do you think about the fact that the judge now has declared a mistrial despite the fact that the defense attorney had sought the emergency appeal and that ended up getting denied and then the judge declaring a mistrial. What do you think about all of this? I think that I actually had tears sort of welling up in my eyes. My daughter sent me a message earlier today and said I'm so frustrated and upset. My paralegal, I gave them an extra day off. I give my team an extra day around the holidays and she sent me a message from the golf course. She's been following this trial and she sent me a message from the golf course asking about these things and it is upsetting and you could very much tell that Kevin Reddington did not want this to end in a mistrial. He tried everything he possibly could to make it so that this was not a mistrial. It reminded me of a famous boxer fighting while he was down and coming back for the win and I think half the country is hoping that Kevin Reddington comes back for the win and half the country thinks that he should not. So what do you think the likelihood is that the prosecution is going to try her again? I mean, I would think that it looks like they will try her again on this even though it was 11 to one. What do you think? I think that they will try her again. I think that one of the things that they may be doing and the question is whether the jury will allow this is that the attorneys can ask to speak to the jury. So you saw there that the judge said, hey, would you stay? I'd really like to come back and thank you. I don't wanna talk to you. I'm not gonna talk to you about anything that happened. I just wanna come back and thank you. Juries usually stay for the judge. Juries have the discretion as whether or not to stay for the attorneys and so if any juror stays for the attorneys, the attorneys will likely talk to those juries. I know that there are some people, a very good friend of mine who was a prosecutor who is now sitting on the bench in Colorado, she said, I am done talking to juries. They always say different things. I can never get what I need but in this case with deliberations going that long, I would think that the prosecutors would likely talk to the jury and I really just have no doubt that Kevin Reddington wants to talk to the jury as well. Yeah, absolutely. I would imagine especially the defense attorney would wanna talk to the prosecutors as well because they do wanna get into the minds of the jury and they do wanna be able to hear what they have to say but what would be the process right now? Say for example, the prosecution that they decide, yes, we are going to retry this case. What is the length of this process? When would we actually see this back in court again? What would be your prediction? I am trying to remember my speedy trial rules and so there's issues with that and the retrial in Massachusetts, I don't know how long speedy trial is, usually within six months. The other thing that Kevin Reddington asked for was essentially a judgment for acquittal and in civil law, we call it a judgment notwithstanding the verdict and here, it's really a judgment notwithstanding no verdict and so under Massachusetts, the rule is 25B2. So exciting, right, members? And basically, Kevin Reddington said, I want to brief this. It has to be done within five days and I wanna come back next week and argue this in front of you, judge. So Kevin Reddington wants to push this along as fast as he can. The judge said, look, you have to file it within five days. There's no requirement that I hear it in five days. I wanna wait for a while. They tried to set it for the 28th of September. It's actually being set for the 29th. So that is what is going to happen first is that Reddington is going to file a brief saying, judge, this jury could not come to a verdict. You need to enter your own verdict and that the only possibility there is not guilty. The judge can't enter a guilty verdict but he can enter a not guilty verdict. That is step one. If the judge denies that, then it'll be set for another trial and we'll go through this again and more importantly, Lindsey Clancy, her family, the attorneys, the Commonwealth, they are going to go through this again and that's where the real tragedy and travesty comes is that this woman and these children and the families, a mistrial, I cannot express how heavy that is weighing on their heart and having to put them through this again. Theresa Priolo, just one question for you. So for those people who joined in sort of midway through this trial, the internet fervor of it all and now everybody seems to be invested in the outcomes here, I would think it's gonna be much more difficult the second time around to seat a jury in this case, at least much more difficult this time than it was the first time when there was certainly attention on the case but nowhere near what we're seeing now. How difficult do you think it's gonna be to get 12, potentially 18 impartial people to sit for another jury? I think it's going to be very difficult but what they'll do is they'll just, they'll set a wider net and so typically there's a particular number of jurors that they will call into a courtroom to make up the panel. What they will do is they will set a wider net and they will call more people into the courtroom to find somebody that hasn't watched any of this. My mother, for instance, if she lived in Massachusetts, she was probably somebody that would say, I don't know anything about this trial. So there are people out there that aren't watching this but it's few and far between. Even my friend that I said that's a judge, they were talking about it in Colorado courtrooms and so they're going to have to cast a very, very wide net to find anyone who has not been influenced by the coverage of this case. You know, I have another question for you, Attorney Greer. The breakdown was 11 to one. 11 of those jurors were unanimously agreed or agreed and then there was the one holdout. What do you think the makeup was there because they had a choice of two things. One, the defense said that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecution said that she knew exactly what she was doing and she planned this and she orchestrated it. So just in your experience, where did you think the 11 jurors, where did you think that they were and where do you think that the one holdout was? Given the instruction that was read, again, the reasonable doubt instruction and that the one juror would not follow the law regarding reasonable doubt, that tells me that 11 of the jurors said there is reasonable doubt that she knew what she was doing at the time that she did it, that she planned it. Everything that the prosecution is saying, 11 people said she did not know what she was doing. There's enough reasonable doubt to enter the verdict that is not criminally responsible. That's my speculation, lawyers love that word, about what was going on based on the jury instruction regarding reasonable doubt because the jurors really did say, hey, this person won't follow the law regarding reasonable doubt. And if there is reasonable doubt, the judgment must be either not guilty or not criminally responsible.