A Hard Decision for the Hard-Nosed Prosecutor in Clancy Triple-Murder Case

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAfter a mistrial, Timothy Cruz must decide whether to retry Lindsay Clancy on first-degree murder charges, downgrade the charges or drop the case.Timothy Cruz, the Plymouth County district attorney, at the conclusion of Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial at the Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Greg DerrSept. 5, 2026, 3:33 p.m. ETFor his 25 years as the elected district attorney of Plymouth County, a working-class district between Boston and Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Timothy Cruz has honed his reputation as a hard-nosed prosecutor tough on crime.With that in mind, colleagues and others who know his approach say they would be surprised if he backs off his prosecution of Lindsay Clancy, even after her case ended in a mistrial on Friday, with 11 of 12 jurors appearing to agree that she should not be found guilty of first-degree murder.Encircled by a thicket of cameras and microphones after the trial, Mr. Cruz declined to immediately say if he planned to again try Ms. Clancy in the killing of her three children. But his tone and words did not suggest that he would soften his approach.“This is, has been and will be about getting justice,” he said, invoking the memory of Ms. Clancy’s children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and baby Callan — and pledging to “make sure that the victims are not invisible.”Mr. Cruz, the son of a plumber who was born in the blue-collar city of Brockton, said on Friday that he would make his decision about his next steps “shortly.”Mr. Cruz has been sharply criticized by some supporters of Ms. Clancy for his decision to try her for first-degree murder instead of crafting an approach that acknowledged her mental illness and prioritized treatment over prison time. Ms. Clancy has admitted to strangling her children. Her lawyer argued that she was experiencing psychosis on Jan. 24, 2023, and heard a hallucinated male voice that ordered her to kill them.During the trial that began in July, the assistant district attorneys Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham acknowledged Ms. Clancy’s struggles with depression and anxiety after the birth of her third child. But they also painted her as a manipulative and calculating killer who sent her husband out on errands to buy time to commit the murders, and then fabricated claims of psychosis to evade punishment after she survived her own suicide attempt.“She no longer liked the life that she thought she wanted, and when she saw the opportunity to escape, she made the selfish choice to take it,” Ms. Buckingham said in her opening argument.Robert F. Shaw, a Boston defense lawyer, said the prosecution’s approach was startling, given Ms. Clancy’s well-documented efforts before the killings to find effective treatment for her mental illness.“If somebody’s struggling to get medical help and persistently seeking it out and obviously there’s been real impact on mental health, why frame it right from the start as this cold, calculating, manipulative woman?” Mr. Shaw said.Experts said that most prosecutors would think twice about retrying a case after a hung jury in which they knew a large majority opposed a guilty finding, as seems to have been the case in Ms. Clancy’s mistrial. The expense of a second trial may be another deterrent. But in a case involving child victims that drew widespread national attention, an elected D.A. may feel heavy pressure to persist.In Mr. Cruz’s case, a decision to retry Ms. Clancy on the same charge would also be in keeping with his uncompromising approach. Elliot Levine, a criminal defense lawyer, called Mr. Cruz’s office “the most draconian in the state.”“He will try a case that is maybe a losing case,” Mr. Levine said. “That way it’s the jury’s fault but not his fault for being soft on crime.”Mr. Cruz has been an outspoken critic of some recent criminal justice reforms in progressive Massachusetts, where he is the only Republican among the state’s 11 elected district attorneys. He is running unopposed for re-election in November.Among his supporters in Plymouth County, including Hunter Young, chairman of the Plymouth Republican Town Committee, there is support for a retrial of Ms. Clancy.“I think there was malice aforethought — that’s what the facts seem to show — and I think he should go for it again,” said Mr. Young, 21. “We want justice for the children. It’s not about her.”Had Mr. Cruz opted for a second-degree murder charge against Ms. Clancy, her lawyer would have had the option to waive a jury trial and have the case heard by a judge alone. Some see that path as more humane for mentally ill defendants, or more just, given the complexity of insanity defenses.Typically, Mr. Cruz has reserved his compassion for crime victims. He forcefully criticized a 2024 decision by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court that barred life sentences without parole for people who commit crimes before age 21, and decried as “travesties” the resulting release of some offenders by the state parole board.“Massachusetts was once a national leader in protecting the rights of victims of crime,” he wrote in an editorial last year. “Sadly, those days are long gone.”His leadership has come under fire before. He faced questions a decade ago about his slow response to sexual harassment allegations against his top deputy. He was criticized for spending more than $2 million on private lawyers to fight a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former prosecutor. And he was sued by the state’s attorney general for withholding public records.In a recent setback for his office, Mr. Cruz was ordered by the state’s highest court to grant a new trial to Latarsha Sanders, another Massachusetts mother who killed her children while mentally ill, and was convicted of first-degree murder in 2022. The court found that her mental health records should not have been excluded from her trial by the judge; Mr. Cruz has not yet said if he intends to retry her.A seasoned outsider in a state largely run by Democrats, Mr. Cruz can still bristle at criticism. Heckled by supporters of Ms. Clancy at his news conference on Friday, he snapped back. “I’m not going to stand out here and listen to this,” he said.Asked to defend what some have called his insensitive treatment of Ms. Clancy, he wasted no time turning the tables. “Insensitive?” he shot back. “Insensitive is killing three children.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz’s office did not immediately grant an interview request.Robert Bloom, a professor of law at Boston College — where Mr. Cruz earned his undergraduate degree and played hockey — said the prosecutor’s full-bore approach may reflect an insistence on evenhandedness. His district ranges from elite coastal enclaves like Duxbury, where the Clancys lived, to blue-collar cities like his native Brockton.“In terms of working-class voters, you’ve got to say: We’re treating someone from Duxbury the same way we’re treating someone from Brockton,” said Professor Bloom.Voters have responded, in a politically mixed county where President Trump won more than a dozen towns in the 2024 election. The last time Mr. Cruz was re-elected, in 2022, he won 63 percent of the vote, easily defeating his progressive challenger.Sally King, a longtime Plymouth resident who attended Ms. Clancy’s trial, said she would not vote for Mr. Cruz in November. Ms. King, who described herself as a “conservative Democrat” who has supported leaders from both parties, said she would be “infuriated” if the district attorney were to retry Ms. Clancy on the same charges.“When you have 11 jurors who agreed on insanity?” she said. “There is no justice there.”Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.Remy Tumin is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.Related ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT