The judge presiding over the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children, and Clancy’s defense attorney clashed in court over how to deal with a juror who the attorney said “refuses to listen to the law” in deliberations.

Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s defense attorney, accused Judge William Sullivan of being “soft” and “glossing over” the burden of proof the prosecutors must meet for a guilty verdict when he instructed the jurors on Thursday on how to consider the concept of reasonable doubt in their deliberations.

“You did it soft. You didn’t do it forcefully,” Reddington told the judge in Plymouth Superior Court on Friday morning.

“What do you want me to do, get a brass band?” Sullivan replied, raising his voice. “The fact that I perhaps didn’t give it my full inflection, I’m sorry about that. I’m not an actor. I’m just giving the instructions.”

On Thursday the judge received a note from the foreperson that said one juror “refuses to listen to the law that [the judge] has given him or her on reasonable doubt,” Reddington said. He unsuccessfully sought to have that juror removed.

In court Friday morning, Reddington argued that the majority of the jurors appear to be leaning toward finding Clancy not guilty except for the lone holdout. He said the note from the foreperson said the juror “has made statements acknowledging doubt but refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states.” He requested that the judge further question that juror.

Prosecutors argued that the jury should be allowed to continue deliberating without further questioning, and that the judge’s instructions to them were sufficient.

“What we have here is a note that indicates a disagreement about how to weigh the evidence, and that’s deliberation,” Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said.

Sullivan ultimately agreed, saying, “that note does not indicate that this is a person who has refused to follow the law.”

The jury — comprised of nine women and three men, according to reporters in the courtroom — has been deliberating since Aug. 27.

On Friday, Reddington referred to the holdout juror as “he.” The jurors told Sullivan they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and each time, Sullivan sent them back to continue deliberating. 

Clancy does not dispute killing her children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands in the basement of her Duxbury, Mass., home in January 2023. But she has argued she was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time — a rare psychiatric emergency that can affect women after childbirth — and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, a conviction that would send her to a state-run psychiatric facility for an indefinite period of time with the opportunity to be evaluated for release in the future.

Prosecutors are seeking a triple first-degree murder conviction, which would send her to prison for life without the possibility of parole. The jury could also find her guilty of second-degree murder, which would send her to prison for life with the possibility of parole, or manslaughter, which carries a 20-year sentence on each count.

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