PLYMOUTH, Mᴀss. — After her triple-murder case ended in a mistrial, Lindsay Clancy will appear in court Tuesday for a status conference that should signal how the controversial case will proceed following a month of uncertainty.
At the hearing, prosecutors and the defense are expected to address pending motions from Clancy’s attorney to stave off another trial, the defense’s attempt to obtain more information about the holdout juror and – if prosecutors decide to retry Clancy – the schedule for a new trial.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in the divisive case on September 4 after the jury sent several notes saying they were ᴅᴇᴀᴅlocked and that a single juror was preventing the panel from unanimously finding Clancy not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility for 𝘬iᩚlling her children.
At trial, Clancy admitted to 𝘬iᩚlling her children – Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months – but argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she fatally strangled them and then attempted sᩚuᩚiᩚcide in January 2023.
Still, interest in the case has yet to dissipate: The weeks since the trial ended have been filled with revelatory interviews with several jurors about their deliberations, a heartbreaking “60 Minutes” interview with the father of the three victims and fervid online debates about the complicated case.
Prosecutors have not announced whether they will retry Clancy, but experts said both sides are likely considering whether another jury would reach the same conclusion, largely siding with the defense. At least one of Clancy’s jurors believes they would.
“If they tried the trial again the way they did, nine times out of ten, I think a jury would come back with not guilty by reason of insanity,” juror Nick Dargie told ABC News. “No doubt in my mind.”
But the thought of enduring another weekslong trial full of heartbreaking and graphic testimony is daunting for some, including Clancy’s supporters – who believe she was victimized by a healthcare system that often overlooks maternal mєntal health – and her former husband, who became the subject of rampant online conspiracy theories.
“The prospect of reliving this tᩚraɢedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful – for Patrick, for his family, and for all of us,” an attorney for Patrick Clancy said in a statement earlier this month.
Defense wants to avoid a retrial …
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz struck a defiant tone when the judge declared a mistrial, insisting the first-degree murder charges were “warranted and appropriate.”
“In the end, I bring it all back to the child victims in this case – Cora, Dawson, and Callan,” Cruz said outside the courthouse as he was heckled by Clancy supporters. “This was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies.”
The parties are expected to address the potential of a retrial at the status conference Tuesday. Sullivan may schedule a new trial date.
The attorneys could also offer a glimpse into any plea negotiations that may be happening behind the scenes. Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has indicated he is open to working with prosecutors to avert a second trial, though he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he would never agree to a deal in which his client would serve any jail time.
Legal experts and Mᴀssachusetts lawyers have expressed skepticism an agreement could be reached, citing the difficulty the parties would have in finding common ground and the various factors Cruz must weigh as he considers a retrial.
Clancy’s legal team has also filed motions seeking to resolve the case without a second trial, including one which asks the judge to dismiss the charges altogether, arguing a retrial would violate her rights protecting her from double jeopardy.
In the filing, Clancy’s defense attorneys argued Sullivan improperly declined their repeated requests to question the holdout juror or the jury foreperson and declared a mistrial without “manifest necessity” – a high legal burden that means all other options to reach a verdict were exhausted.
“Respectfully, the Court’s rejection of the multiple requests for judicial inquiry consтιтutes legal error which led, inexorably, to the mistrial being declared without manifest necessity,” the defense team wrote.
Clancy’s defense attorneys criticized Sullivan’s “well-intentioned” but “limited” questioning of the jurors, whom he called to the bench one-by-one on the sixth day of deliberations and asked under oath if they could apply the law as instructed.
“The Court should have instead probed the foreperson’s specific complaint in order to make a reasoned decision as to how best to proceed,” Clancy’s defense wrote.
Reddington filed a separate motion asking the judge to enter a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, arguing the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office did not present sufficient evidence that Clancy is criminally responsible for her actions.
“The Commonwealth had to prove that a woman all six experts agreed was mentally ill nonetheless kept the capacity the law demands. It did not,” he wrote in the motion, referring to a slate of mєntal health experts who testified for the prosecution and the defense.
Sullivan denied two similar motions – which are routine in criminal proceedings – during the course of the trial.
… and asks judge to investigate holdout juror
At the status conference Tuesday, the parties are also expected to address the defense’s motion asking the judge to further investigate the lone holdout juror by obtaining some of his cellphone records and questioning him.
Several jurors have spoken to reporters since the trial ended about the holdout, with some alleging he did not adequately engage with the rest of the panel and scrolled on his phone during deliberations. The jury foreperson told NBC10 Boston the lone juror refused to find Clancy not guilty even though he acknowledged he had reasonable doubt, a violation of the law.
The holdout, however, said in a statement this month his position was misrepresented by some of his fellow jurors who spoke to the press, standing by his belief that the evidence showed Clancy was guilty.
The defense’s motion – which did not identify the lone juror by name – requested the holdout’s cellphone records during the time spent in the deliberation room, his juror questionnaire, and certain background information related to his responses on the questionnaire about his experience with the law.
Reddington wrote the judge should then question the holdout about his responses during the jury selection process, some of his other sworn statements and “the use of a mobile telephone or receipt of outside information during deliberations.” The questioning would be limited, the motion said, and not delve into the content of deliberations.
The defense attorney suggested Sullivan could also ask Juror 10 about the holdout’s cellphone use. That juror, Dargie, previously told ABC News the holdout juror “wouldn’t engage” and would spend time “scrolling on his phone” during deliberations.
The defense also requested the court preserve other information, such as the surveillance footage from the hallway outside the deliberation room.
The holdout’s attorney criticized Reddington’s “disgusting” motion, saying in a statement it amounts to an attack on the juror and the US Consтιтution.
“If the new normal is that jurors are going to face brutal reprisals for disagreeing with a defense attorney, you can kiss the Sixth Amendment goodbye,” attorney Edward Paltzik wrote on X.
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
