On Tuesday, the jury in Lindsay Clancy’s trial informed the judge they were deadlocked and couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. Such situations are not uncommon in Massachusetts, as seen in several recent high-profile cases.
Hung Jury in Recent Trials
Massachusetts has witnessed hung juries in a few notable trials in recent years, including those of Karen Read and Emanuel Lopes.
Emanuel Lopes’s case involved charges of murdering Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna in 2018. His first trial in 2023 ended in a mistrial with a hung jury. The second trial in 2024 experienced initial deadlock before reaching a unanimous guilty verdict after six days and 32 hours of deliberation.
Similarly, in Karen Read’s first trial in 2024, the jury was deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial after five days and 27 hours of deliberation. Jurors indicated deadlock at several points, prompting additional deliberations before a mistrial was declared. Read was later acquitted in a subsequent trial.
The “Tuey-Rodriguez” Instruction
In these cases, judges employed the “dynamite” charge, known in Massachusetts as the “Tuey-Rodriguez” instruction. This measure encourages jurors to reach a verdict and is named after a 1973 case.
“You should consider that it is desirable that the case be decided. You should consider that you have been selected in the same manner, and from the same source, as any future jury would be. There is no reason to suppose that the case will ever be submitted to six persons who are more intelligent, more impartial, or more competent to decide it than you are, or that more or clearer evidence will be produced on one side or the other. With all this in mind, it is your duty to decide this case if you can do so conscientiously.”
Judges may send the jury back for further deliberation twice. If deadlock persists and the jurors seek clarification on legal points, more rounds are allowed. When a jury signals deadlock for the second time, the judge consults with attorneys and often reads the “Tuey-Rodriguez” charge.
If the jury remains deadlocked after this, a mistrial may be declared. For Clancy, this means she would stay “in custody” at Tewksbury State Hospital under psychiatric care, pending the Plymouth County district attorney’s decision on whether to retry her.