Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, has added the attorney who fought Karen Read's double jeopardy battle to her defense team, a move that signals an aggressive legal fight against any attempt to retry her after a jury deadlocked 11-1 in her favor.
Veteran Boston attorney Martin Weinberg entered a limited appearance at Plymouth Superior Court on Tuesday, filing paperwork that says he will represent Clancy in connection with a forthcoming motion to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds and "related matters," Fox News reported. The filing does not say when Weinberg will submit that motion.
Weinberg joins Kevin Reddington, Clancy's longtime defense attorney, who signaled immediately after the September mistrial that he would fight any attempt to put her on trial again. The case is next scheduled to return to court on September 29.
Clancy does not deny killing her children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, inside the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023. She pleaded not guilty. Her defense argued she was not criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis and heavy medication. Prosecutors countered that the killings were carefully planned, alleging Clancy sent her husband Patrick out of the house before attacking the children with exercise bands.
Weinberg is not new to double jeopardy fights in Massachusetts courtrooms. He previously represented Karen Read after her 2024 trial ended without a verdict, arguing she should not face second-degree murder and leaving-the-scene charges again. A judge rejected that request, finding the jury had never formally returned not-guilty verdicts and that Read's attorneys had agreed to the mistrial.
Read was retried in 2025. She was acquitted of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a deadly crash, but convicted of misdemeanor operating under the influence.
The Clancy case presents a different set of facts. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4 after jurors spent seven days deliberating without reaching a unanimous verdict. The reported split was stark: eleven jurors supported finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. One holdout juror blocked the verdict.
Whether those circumstances give Weinberg stronger footing than he had in Read's case is the central legal question heading into September 29. In Read's fight, the judge found the defense had consented to the mistrial, a factor that typically weakens a double jeopardy claim. The Clancy filing has not yet laid out its specific legal theory, and prosecutors have not publicly announced whether they intend to retry her.
Meanwhile, Sullivan moved to protect the jurors who sat through the emotionally charged trial. In a written order obtained by Fox News, the judge directed that the identities of all twelve jurors and six alternates remain private indefinitely.
Sullivan cited the unauthorized disclosure of jurors' personal information. He wrote that jurors had been identified without their permission and that at least one juror asked for the protection to be extended with no end date.
"Based on the circumstances of this trial and the fact that the case continues to receive daily, divisive attention in Massachusetts and beyond, the Court concludes that there is a real and present 'risk of [personal] harm to the jurors [and] to the integrity of their service.'"
Sullivan found "a risk of immediate and irreparable injury" if the juror list were made public. The order does not prevent jurors from identifying themselves or speaking with the media voluntarily. Details about the jury's internal deliberations have already surfaced publicly, adding to the judge's concern about protecting those who served.
In a separate order, Sullivan temporarily extended protection covering the names of the larger jury pool summoned from July 20 through July 24. Those names will remain impounded for another ten days because of safety concerns.
Clancy has been held at Tewksbury Hospital since the January 2023 incident. After allegedly killing her three children, she jumped from a second-story window of the family home in what authorities described as an apparent suicide attempt. The fall left her paralyzed.
The case has drawn intense public attention and political commentary. President Trump weighed in after the mistrial was declared, and Reddington himself made a direct public appeal in the days that followed.
For now, the defense team's strategy is clear: bring in the lawyer who knows Massachusetts double jeopardy law as well as anyone practicing, file the motion, and force prosecutors to justify dragging this case through a second trial. Reddington has pursued every available avenue to end the prosecution, and Weinberg's addition raises the stakes on the legal front.
Three children are dead, and no legal maneuver changes that. But when eleven out of twelve jurors concluded a defendant was not criminally responsible, the question of whether the state should get a second bite deserves a serious answer, not just from the lawyers, but from a system that claims to value the jury's role in American justice.
