The judge presiding over the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who admitted to killing her three children, sent the jury back to deliberate for a third time Thursday after an apparent disagreement among jurors over the concept of “reasonable doubt,” the standard they must apply to reach a verdict.

After receiving a note from the jury, Judge William Sullivan brought the jury back into the courtroom in Plymouth Superior Court shortly after 3 p.m. to reinstruct them on the burden of proof prosecutors must achieve in their bid to convict Clancy of triple first-degree murder. That conviction would send her to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

Reading from prepared instructions, Sullivan told the jurors that prosecutors do not have to prove their case “beyond all possible doubt, for everything in the lives of human beings is open to some possible or imaginary doubt.” He said prosecutors proved their burden if they produced among jurors “an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, that the charge is true.”

Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, told the court after the judge’s reinstruction that a note from the jury foreperson said that there was one juror “who refuses to listen to the law that [the judge] has given him or her on reasonable doubt.” He implored the judge to remove the juror, a request the judge characterized as “a sensitive undertaking” and ultimately denied.

“I don’t feel that it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations,” Sullivan said. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to say, ‘I agree with 1 juror, or the 11.’”

Before Sullivan addressed the jurors, the judge, the attorneys and Clancy herself gathered at what reporters in the courtroom characterized as a heated sidebar. The jurors were summoned individually, and Reddington later told the court they were asked if they could follow the judge’s instructions in evaluating the law.

Reddington characterized that question as too “soft.”

“The question is not sufficient enough,” he told the judge. “It does not allow any foundation for a motion to remove the juror who refuses to accept your instructions on the law.”

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, Massachusetts, 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.

The jury, which comprises nine women and three men, according to reporters in the courtroom, had been deliberating for about 36 hours as of Thursday afternoon. They went home around 4 p.m. E.T.

The jury’s persistent deadlock underscores the complexity and contentiousness of the case, which has sparked national debates about culpability and maternal mental health. The jurors previously told the judge they could not reach a unanimous verdict on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Both times, the judge sent them back. State law dictates that a mistrial would have to be declared if the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict after returning twice from “due and thorough deliberation.”

Lisa Rubin contributed reporting.

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