Kevin Reddington turned Lindsay Clancy’s hung-jury win into a bizarre appeal to President Trump, asking him to consider a pardon in a Massachusetts murder case presidents cannot wipe away.
The defense attorney went straight to Trump early Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” just days after jurors failed to agree on whether Clancy should be held criminally responsible for killing her three young children.
“Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady – the type of person she is and what she’s been through – and consider a pardon,” Reddington told George Stephanopoulos.
Clancy’s case is moving through state court, where presidential pardon power does not reach.
Reddington gave no explanation for how Trump could step into the case, or whether he wanted help before a second trial, after a conviction, or in some other form.
The plea followed Trump’s own public comments about Clancy, after the president said she had done a “horrible, horrible thing” and would have to “pay the price” for killing Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” Trump told reporters last week.
🚨 BREAKING: Kevin Reddington is asking President Trump to consider pardoning Lindsay Clancy — just days after Trump said this about her:
“She did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse.”
Trump added that “there will be a price” and said it could mean “a mental institution,… pic.twitter.com/0ThMuyrKaC
— Lindsay 🇺🇸 (@TheLinzerShow) September 8, 2026
“Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse. But you’ll find out what the price to pay is. There’ll be a price. It’s going to be [a] mental institution or jail or something,” Trump stated.
Reddington’s ABC appearance also leaned heavily into praise for Clancy.
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“Just a wonderful neighbor, friend, wife, mother,” he said. “I do feel a very strong bond with Lindsay.”
He showed little regret over boasting after the mistrial that his defense had “crushed” District Attorney Tim Cruz.
“That’s just bravado,” Reddington said with a smile, tying the line to the “emotions” of completing a “six-, seven-week trial.”
“I don’t regret saying it at all,” he said, though he allowed that he “perhaps could have been a little more circumspect” and could have said only that he “did a good job” with the defense.
Cruz’s office still has not announced what happens next.
After the trial fell apart, Cruz told reporters outside court that no decision had been made. Prosecutors can bring the same case again, pursue reduced charges, negotiate with Clancy or abandon the case.
Reddington said he would listen if Cruz wanted to talk about resolving the case short of another trial.
“I‘m willing to listen to Tim. I‘ve known Tim for 30 years. He‘s a very hard-charging prosecutor,” Reddington said.
“I hope, however, after sitting through this trial and seeing the evidence that was presented from the government as well as from the defense, that he would revisit that issue and hopefully would be able to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides.”
That softer tone came after Reddington said during deliberations that Clancy had no deal on the table while facing three counts of first-degree murder.
“Right now there are three counts of first-degree murder. I cannot waive the jury, there is no plea bargaining there is nothing. Cruz wants his triple homicide convictions, consecutive life sentences with Lindsay and the judge can’t do anything about it and I can’t do anything about it,” Reddington told reporters.
The jury split 11-1 after weeks of testimony about the deaths inside the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home.
Reddington said he respects a juror’s right to stand alone, but objected to the forelady’s note claiming the holdout “had doubt but would not apply reasonable doubt” to his vote.
“I would defend that individual’s right to be a holdout for forever, that’s part of our judicial system. I respect that and I would certainly defend his right to do that,” Reddington said.
“That’s not right, and that’s why I was upset,” he said.
The panel of nine women and three men had to decide whether Clancy murdered her children with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023.
After the children were strangled, Clancy cut her wrists and neck, took some of her prescription medications and jumped from a second-floor bedroom window.
She survived the fall paralyzed and now uses a wheelchair.
Reddington’s defense asked jurors to find Clancy not criminally responsible, arguing that severe postpartum psychosis caused her to hear a voice telling her to kill the children.
Prosecutors argued Clancy was clear-headed enough to plan the killings and sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out on errands so he could not stop her.
Her mental health care also became part of the defense case, with Reddington blaming psychiatrists and other providers for failing to properly diagnose Clancy and for overmedicating her in the four months before the children died.
Jurors heard that Clancy had been seeing a psychiatrist, contacted two perinatal clinics, called a suicide hotline twice and spent five days in a mental institution.
Testimony also covered her insomnia, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and thoughts of harming her children. Clancy had been prescribed 13 psychiatric medications during that period and believed the drugs were worsening her condition.
Beyond the courthouse, the mistrial stirred reaction from media figures.
Joe Rogan went after women who have supported Clancy online or promoted conspiracy theories about the case.
“This lady killed her kids and everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, she needed help.’ Imagine if a single father killed his kids. Do you think there’d be any dads out there? ‘We get it. We understand. I also get sad!’” Rogan said.
Joe Rogan condemns the “Free Lindsay” crowd:
“If those ladies could see the crime scene and see those dead kids with their vacant eyes staring up because their mother took their life, the last thing that they saw was their mother standing over them, choking them to death, I… pic.twitter.com/aZH1w1V1qK
— jay plemons (@jayplemons) September 1, 2026
He said sympathy might look different if supporters saw what happened to the children.
“If those ladies could see the crime scene and see those dead kids with their f—ing vacant eyes staring up because their mother took their life, the last f—ing thing that they saw was their mother standing over them, choking them to death, I don’t think they would feel so bad.”
Rogan said the response around Clancy fit his view that “people are out of their f—ing mind right now.”
“She’s out of her f—ing mind. The world is out of its f—ing mind. It’s like more of these things come up where you’re like, ‘This can’t be real. This can’t be real.’ And it is real,” he said.
Dr. Phil McGraw said Saturday that Cora, Dawson and Callan “are the real folks we need to give our attention to here.”
McGraw said mental illness can become “kind of a political, ideological football” in court, but that consequences would remain no matter how Clancy’s case ends.
“She’s going to have to live with this the rest of her life and probably in a psychiatric facility if, in fact, she is not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease,” McGraw said.
“I’m not excusing what she did in any way,” McGraw said. “I think she should be held fully accountable, but I think we need to understand causation.”