Mistrial declared in Lindsay Clancy trial after jurors fail to reach verdict

Hey there, you're watching Fox Local Los Angeles. I'm Coco McEvoy, and if you've been watching this for the past about hour or so, then you know that we have been closely monitoring the Lindsay Clancy murder trial out of Plymouth, Massachusetts. And we want to continue that coverage now. We want to bring in Adante Pointer, who is an attorney. And Adante, for starters, thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to talk about this huge high-profile case. Yes, no problem, thanks for having me. So first question for you, a lot has happened today, but something that really stuck out to me was the fact that the defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, repeatedly asking the judge first for that emergency stay, which was then denied, and then after trying to plea again. How unusual is that for the defense to be talking to the judge like that following what then ended up being a mistrial? Well, I think we have an unusual and uncommon sort of circumstances, wherein you have a jury that's been deliberating over seven days and trying to reach a unanimous verdict and was not able to do so, and had been sending out messages to the judge, which the judge then continued to charge them to go back in and continue deliberating. So I think this was what you witnessed was a defense attorney who, perhaps not at his wits' end, but very frustrated with the process and trying to really encourage the court to do what he thinks is the right thing, which was avoid a mistrial and instead bring this juror out and voir dire the juror, essentially ask the juror, examine the juror, ask to why they're not deliberating, and then that in and of itself would perhaps get the juror dismissed, another alternate juror brought in, and maybe the jury then would have reached a verdict. Yes, you know, I'm curious why that didn't happen as well, but something else that Kevin Reddington addressed when he did his live remarks outside of the courthouse was the fact that if this does go to another trial, he said he's not changing his strategy because he said, quote, he won the case, but I'm curious about the prosecution and what their thoughts might be on what potentially went wrong with this case. Well, you know, I think one of the places to start, and you've heard Reddington say this, you know, throughout the trial, was that the prosecution's theory, as well as the experts that they had hired to support that theory, he didn't give much credence to, and he also felt like the jury didn't give much credence or credibility to, and in fact, one of the statements or quotes that he made was that the whole world knows that Ms. Clancy was acquitted and that they won the trial, so he's very confident in his approach and what his evidence was and what his theory of the case is. You know, one of the questions that is begged by the way in which he's talked about the case, and in particular, the district attorney, is he provoking the district attorney's ego and forcing the district attorney's hand to retry the case, if not for anything more than just being kind of publicly shamed? However, the DA is not supposed to buy into that. The DA is only supposed to try and also take cases to trial that they believe in and believe they can win, so I'm sure the DA has a lot to chew on, if you will, post-trial. Definitely a lot to chew on post-trial, and I imagine that both sides are gonna wanna speak to that one lone male juror who, you know, in this case, according to Kevin Reddington, kind of held up that unanimous verdict, and if you can talk about just how extraordinary that is, how monumental it is to have this one lone juror ended up being the holdout and impacting this whole case, causing a mistrial. Well, this is the wonder, if you will, of our American judicial system. You know, you're supposed to be tried in front of a jury of your peers, and each person that's on that jury has their own voice, has their own vote, and therefore, one person can essentially hold up a verdict, a unanimous verdict coming back, and instead cause a retrial or a mistrial. So every person on that jury has a very powerful position. Together, as one, if it's unanimous, you get a verdict and an ultimate conclusion. If not, then you have something like this, where that one juror can essentially hold to their guns, so to speak, and not be so influenced and swayed and kind of cave in to that pressure, because there's a tremendous amount of pressure, especially in a case like this that's high-profile, the world is watching, and you've deliberated over seven days after a multi-week trial. There is a lot of pressure from the judicial system and everyone else to get this thing right and to get a finality of a conclusion. But once again, one juror who, because of their conviction, but in this case, with the way it's being styled, is that unwillingness to deliberate, held up that process from reaching its final conclusion. And now both the defense as well as the prosecution have to figure out where this goes next. And if you can also talk about the length of this trial, like you mentioned, the seven weeks, I think 80 witnesses, hundreds of exhibits as well. Just talk about all that went into this case. Well, that's a tremendous amount of judicial resources. You're holding up a courtroom, a judge, the staff, the security, and all these different things that go into making the trial safe, secure, and supposed to be fair. And so that is a tremendous amount of resources to dedicate and commit to a trial for it now to essentially be back at square one. And so that's also something that the district attorney and the judicial system will need to take into account in the consideration as they decide what to do next. Do they want to commit prosecutors, witnesses, resources, money, time, space, energy, if you will, in order to do this again? Especially if they look at what happened here. And if you take what Reddington says, it was 11 and one in Clancy's favor, does it make sense to try this again and either wind up with this result or a worse result? So I think the district attorney has to give some very thoughtful and deep consideration as to how to proceed. Is it to offer a different type of plea deal? Is it to try to bring different lesser charges? Or is it just to throw your hands up and say, hey, we had a go of it, it didn't work out, and we're gonna move on? Because at the end of the day, keep in mind, Clancy is without her kids, so she's punished for life already. They're just looking at a judicial punishment at this point. And how long does the prosecution have to decide whether or not they're going to retry the case? Well, the issue I think here is, you have a status conference that's at the end of this month on September 29th. Presumably the court is expecting the district attorney to have made a decision and tell the court which way they wanna proceed. The district attorney has made statements saying that he's gonna take at least some time. He wouldn't say today what his intentions are. And I believe that's because they're gonna need to huddle up and really discuss this and review the trial and see if there's anything that they could do that they didn't previously do during this first trial that they think would change the results. And Adante, what type of precedent do you think this could set as well? Because this case really centered a lot around postpartum depression. Oh, you know what, Adante? I'm so sorry to cut you off. We have been anticipating another press conference that's breaking in right now, but we wanna thank you so much, Adante, for your time. We appreciate you thoughtfully coming on to Fox Local Los Angeles to break down the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.