Lindsay Clancy lawyer urges Trump to pardon her but request faces major hurdle
WASHINGTON, DC: The Lindsay Clancy case has taken a surprising turn after ending in a mistrial on September 4, 2026, as her lawyer is now seeking a pardon for her from Trump.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, has not denied that she fatally strangled her three young children in January 2023.
Lindsay Clancy Lawyer wants Trump to forgive her
Appearing on ABC News on Tuesday, September 8, Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, expressed hope that President Donald Trump would intervene after the jury deadlocked in her murder trial last week.
However, Trump does not have the authority to pardon Clancy because she faces state-level murder charges prosecuted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, rather than federal charges. Under the US Constitution, a president’s pardon power extends to federal offenses, but not crimes prosecuted under state law. That means Trump cannot pardon Clancy or use his presidential clemency powers to resolve the Massachusetts case.
“I’d like to say that perhaps Donald Trump, who felt compelled to speak out about this case may very well, Mr President I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is and consider a pardon,” Reddington said.
One juror refused reportedly declined to join the other 11 in voting to acquit. The jury, involving nine women and three men, found itself in an hours-long legal drama Friday, September 4, as Judge William Sullivan tried to declare a mistrial and Reddington appealed.
Notably, the Lindsay Clancy trial jury consisted of 18 total members initially seated (12 deliberating jurors and 6 alternates), with 12 jurors actively participating in deliberations.
During the interaction with the ABC host, Reddington appeared to soften his stance on the holdout who refused to go with not guilty.
“I would defend an individual’s right to be a holdout forever; that’s part of our judicial system, and I respect that, and I would certainly defend his right to do that,” he said.
Attorney says Clancy was not calculated killer
The attorney was quick to dismiss those who slammed Clancy as an evil or calculated killer.
“Oh please,” he said. “It’s not evil.”
“These people don’t understand,” Reddington insisted. “They don’t know what she went through, they didn’t see her text messages, they didn’t see her journal, they didn’t see the notes that she wrote, they didn’t see the text she sent her mother in October, saying ‘Mommy can you please come? I’m sick. Something’s wrong,’ and it was the result of the medications.”
Clancy’s lawyer also revealed that she reached out to suicide hotlines when she felt like taking her life and also went to “Women and Infants.”
“She reached out to everybody, and anybody who would listen to her and kept saying, ‘I am not good, I am not well,’ and it was ignored.”
Clancy's defence claims she was reportedly suffering from postpartum depression, which led to her strangling her three children, Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months).
Clancy also made a suicide attempt by cutting herself and jumping from a second-story window, which left her paralyzed below the waist.
