Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer now insists prosecutors have no evidence she killed her three children, a sharp break from earlier statements that she took responsibility for the deaths.
Attorney Kevin Reddington stood in court on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, and pressed a renewed motion for a required finding of not guilty, telling the judge the entire case rests on speculation. WBZ reported he repeatedly asked where any admission or proof could be found that Clancy killed the children.
“Where is the evidence that she did this? Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington said. “This entire case is based on speculation. Where is the admission? Where does she say that she did this?” He added, “There’s no evidence that she admitted she did this.”
The hearing marked the first court appearance since the early-September mistrial. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry the case. Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz said his office is conducting a thorough review with the interest of justice and the three children in mind. A next hearing is set for Nov. 2.
Reddington’s new posture collides with his own prior record in the case. In April 2026 he offered a written stipulation that Clancy admits to killing her kids and asked the judge to split the trial into separate phases on guilt and mental state. The bifurcation request was denied.
At a June pretrial hearing, Reddington said Clancy takes responsibility. “She, as the kids say, she owns it. She’s not running away from anything here. This whole case is an extreme tragedy,” he told the court.
In his July opening statement he said Clancy “knows what happened to those kids.” Those earlier remarks now sit beside a motion that denies any evidence of the killings themselves. The shift has drawn notice from legal observers following the holdout juror’s public call to remember the three dead children after the mistrial.
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham answered the motion directly in court. “Now for the first time the defendant is arguing that there’s no evidence that she did this,” Buckingham said. “I would suggest to you that the entire record is voluminous as to information supporting the fact that she did this.”
Outside court, Reddington told WBZ-TV’s Kristina Rex the argument was not new. “Look, I argued that in the trial, I argued it on a motion for a required finding, it’s not new rocket science by any means. It’s the fact that [prosecutors] cannot prove a probable cause.”
WBZ-TV legal analyst Jennifer Roman called the turnabout striking. “It’s really bizarre to me that he’s completely changed his entire strategy and approach to this case, after the fact, on something as substantive as whether or not she actually killed the children,” Roman said.
Reddington framed the defense bind in court as a structural problem. “You’re put in a conundrum when you have to admit culpability in order to raise a lack of criminal responsibility,” he said. He challenged pieces of the trial evidence, including body-temperature findings and testimony from Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick, as insufficient.
The motion has two parts: one attacking proof that she committed the killings, and another attacking proof of criminal responsibility. Legal experts who spoke to WBZ described the required-finding request as a long shot. Still, the filing arrives while the Plymouth District Attorney’s office weighs its next step after the hung jury.
Jurors in the first trial left a mixed public record of their deliberations. One panelist later described the case through the lens of broader aims for other women, a view captured in reporting on how some jurors framed their task beyond the evidence alone.
Cruz spoke outside court after the hearing. “We’re doing a very thorough review right now,” the district attorney said. “And we’re going to continue to do our job to make sure that we do what’s best for the interest of justice and the interest of the three children.”
That emphasis on the children tracks the public reaction that followed the mistrial. Political leaders and the former president described the outcome as a deep failure of accountability, with calls for justice centered on the three young victims rather than courtroom tactics.
Trial testimony had already put the family’s final days before the jury. Clancy’s former mother-in-law described a young mother who appeared to be in crisis and seeking help in the period before the children died, evidence laid out when relatives took the stand during the first trial.
Nurse jurors also brought their own medical training into the jury room, a detail fellow panelists later confirmed when discussing how deliberations unfolded. Those accounts remain part of the backdrop as both sides return to court.
Reddington’s September motion does not erase the earlier stipulation offer, the June responsibility language, or the July opening. It simply asks the court to rule that the Commonwealth failed to prove the killings and criminal responsibility as a matter of law. Buckingham’s reply is that the trial record already supplies the opposite conclusion in volume.
The judge has not publicly issued a final ruling from the Sept. 29 arguments in the available reporting. The parties return Nov. 2. Until then the district attorney’s review continues, and the central facts of three dead children remain unchanged by any shift in defense framing.
When a lawyer first says a client owns the tragedy and later says no proof exists that she did it, the public is entitled to notice the contradiction, and to demand a system that still puts the victims first.