Lindsay Clancy's lawyer loses his cool in juror showdown with Trump suddenly dragged in

PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS: A courtroom fight over Lindsay Clancy’s lone holdout juror took an unexpected turn on Tuesday, September 29, when President Donald Trump was pulled into the argument.

Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington pushed back forcefully against criticism that his efforts to scrutinize the holdout juror amounted to an attack, insisting that his comments had been driven by the intense public reaction to the case.

The exchange came during the first major hearing since Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial earlier, leaving the court to grapple with what happens next.

Reddington drags Trump in Clancy trial

Reddington acted visibly frustrated while responding to accusations that he had gone too far in challenging the holdout juror who did not agree with the other 11 jurors on the verdict.

“I am tired of hearing ‘persecution,’ ‘attacking,’” Reddington said, pushing back on the suggestion that he had targeted the juror.

He argued that his legal team had filed a motion but had not launched the kind of campaign against the holdout juror that critics were describing.

Reddington then widened the argument beyond the courtroom, saying his public comments were responses to politicians and other public figures who had weighed in on Clancy’s case.

“I filed one motion and said nothing,” he said.

“Every comment I made was in reaction to Donald Trump down to Nancy Mace, Cruz, calling for her execution. I have responded to these outlandish comments!”

Reddington had earlier invoked Trump while describing the extreme reactions surrounding Clancy.

He said people who did not understand the legal distinction at the center of the case had treated Clancy’s admission that she killed her children as the end of the legal question.

“Now, many, many laypeople have difficulty understanding the concept of the bifurcation,” Reddington said, before describing how some people moved from that conclusion into claims that Clancy was “a demon” or “possessed” and should be executed.

He specifically included Trump among the politicians he said had contributed to that public reaction.

Here is video of Kevin Reddington discussing President Trump’s comments during the courtroom hearing.

Trump never called for Clancy's execution!

Reddington’s version of Trump’s comments, however, comes with a rather important problem: Trump did not actually call for Clancy’s execution.

When Trump addressed the case on September 4, after the mistrial, he called the killings a “horrible tragedy” and said Clancy had done a “horrible, horrible thing.”

He then said there would be “a price to pay”, hardly a ringing call for the death penalty and when discussing what that punishment might look like, he himself floated “a mental institution or jail or something.”

In other words, Reddington appears to have bundled Trump into the execution camp despite the president never actually making that demand.

Trump condemned what happened but he never called for Clancy to be executed.

That distinction becomes particularly glaring because Reddington was speaking in the middle of an argument about how public commentary has distorted the legal battle surrounding Clancy.

There was, however, at least one prominent politician who did explicitly call for Clancy’s execution: Rep Nancy Mace.

Reddington named Mace alongside Trump and Sen Ted Cruz while describing the public reaction to the case.

Defense changes its argument

The courtroom clash also came as Reddington pursued a significant shift in the defense’s legal position.

During the earlier trial, the defense argued that Clancy was not criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

After the mistrial, Reddington has taken a different position, arguing that prosecutors failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy actually committed the murders.

The prosecution has rejected that argument and maintained that Clancy intentionally killed her three children and understood what she was doing.

No retrial date has been set so far and the court has scheduled the next hearing for November 2.