Lindsay Clancy jury sits ten hours, then breaks until Monday

Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial left a Plymouth courtroom on Friday without a verdict. They had sat for about three and a half hours on Thursday and more than six and a half hours on Friday, a little over ten hours in all. Judge William Sullivan sent them home for the weekend. "It's been a long day for everybody." They return at 9 a.m. on Monday.

The panel is nine women and three men. Their only public request on Friday, according to defence lawyer Kevin Reddington, was to see prescription bottles and a kitchen knife. The bottles were found in Clancy's bedroom and in her husband's car. Prosecutors say she used the knife on her wrists and neck before jumping from a second-floor window in a suicide attempt after the killings.

Clancy, 36, is a former labour and delivery nurse. She has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder in the deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, in 2023. The jury can return not guilty, not guilty by reason of mental defect, guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder or guilty of manslaughter. The verdict must be unanimous.

Sullivan did not read the jury's question in open court. He called lawyers to the sidebar. Clancy's parents, Paula and Michael Musgrove, sat through the Friday session. The judge reminded jurors to avoid news and not to talk about the case outside the room.

The physical evidence the jury asked for sits at the centre of both stories in the room. Prosecutors treat the pills and the knife as proof of awareness and of an attempt to end her own life after the children were dead. The defence treats the same objects as proof of a psychiatric collapse. Reddington's closing, in one retired judge's public remark, "literally missed nothing." That is advocacy language. The jury now has to pick a count.

Ten hours without a note except for two exhibits is not a signal by itself. Some panels ask for readbacks on the first afternoon. This one wanted objects. Objects can mean the members are testing the medical file against the kitchen. They can also mean one or two people wanted to look again before a vote.

Monday morning will show whether Friday ended because people were tired or because a split needed a weekend. Sullivan cannot tell them to hurry. He can only keep them off the internet.

The children are not in the room. Their names are on the indictment. Every option the jury has, including a mental-defect finding, is a legal answer to those three names. The pill bottles and the knife are the items they chose to hold in their hands before they try to write that answer down.

Until Monday at 9 a.m. there is no verdict. There is a sealed set of exhibits, a nine-to-three panel, and a judge who has already said the day was long.