What Does a Criminal Defense Attorney Do When a Trial Ends in a Mistrial?
Readers will learn how a criminal defense attorney's work continues after a mistrial, using the Lindsay Clancy murder case as the example.
A mistrial does not end the work of a criminal defense attorney. It changes the job. The jury has gone home, but the lawyer remains in the fight, and the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has made that part of the process unusually visible.
Clancy pleaded not guilty to three murder charges in the deaths of her young children at the family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The trial ran for nearly six weeks, and the jury deliberated for seven days before the judge declared a mistrial. According to ABC News, the outcome put a spotlight on the three lawyers who led the case: defense attorney Kevin Reddington and Plymouth County prosecutors Sprague and Buckingham.
The Lawyer in the Room
Reddington is a private criminal defense attorney in Brockton, a town roughly 37 miles south of Boston. His courtroom manner became part of the trial itself. The BBC described him as both a gentle protector and a lawyer throwing papers in frustration. During the case, he threw a pair of ninja stars across the courtroom to demonstrate their lethality.
Those moves are easy to call theatrics, but they serve a practical purpose. A defense attorney in a murder case has to test the prosecution's evidence, control the narrative, and give jurors reasons to doubt. In a high-profile trial, those choices also shape how the case is understood.
What Comes Next
After the jury could not agree, the case entered a different phase. Reddington persuaded the judge to grant a one-hour delay before the mistrial was declared. A mistrial generally means the case must be retried from the beginning. But the defense lawyer also had another path: he was set to argue for a finding of not guilty instead of a retrial.
The district attorney's office was not ready to announce its next move. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz declined to say immediately whether Clancy would be tried again. The three lawyers were scheduled to return to court to determine the next steps.
Why the Lawyer's Job Is Still Central
High-profile trials are usually remembered for the verdict. But not every trial ends with one. When a jury deadlocks, the attorneys are the ones who decide how the legal system moves forward. The prosecution must weigh the cost of a second trial. The defense must decide whether to press for an acquittal or negotiate a different result.
The Clancy case shows why courtroom advocacy matters beyond the moments people notice. A lawyer's choices during trial, from cross-examination to how physical evidence is presented, can influence what happens when the jury cannot agree. The law assigns lawyers to every step of the process, and a mistrial is no exception. The courtroom drama may be over, but the legal argument is not.