PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The judge in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder case declared a mistrial after a last-minute appeal to the highest court in Massachusetts failed.

Judge William Sullivan had been ready to say the jury of nine women and three men were deadlocked Friday morning after a note from the jurors that read:

“It is with a heavy heart that we report that we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to.”

Sullivan heard arguments from Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, who didn’t object to calling a mistrial, and Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington, who emphatically did.

“I don’t feel I have any choice but to declare this trial at this time,” the judge said after hearing both sides, setting off gasps from people in the packed courtroom gallery. The jury had already come back with two other notes reporting an impasse earlier in the week. In a separate note, the forewoman said that one juror was not following the law.

Sullivan said he would bring the jurors up to officially declare the mistrial, and for a few minutes, Reddington sat quietly at the defense desk next to Clancy.

The Duxbury mom has been on trial since the end of July, accused of murdering her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months, in January 2023. She didn’t dispute during her trial that she killed the kids; instead, Reddington argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and wasn’t criminally responsible for the deaths.

After strangling the children, Clancy tried to kill herself by jumping out a window, leaving her paralyzed.

Just before the jurors were to be brought back in, Reddington stood up suddenly and said that he’d like to file an emergency motion to the Supreme Judicial Court.

“I am asking for a single justice appeal for this travesty,” Reddington said.

The motion, filed for Reddington by appellate attorney Dana Goldblatt, requested that the court question the one juror, a man according to Reddington, about his ability to apply the law.

“A juror’s refusal to follow the law is always personal, and not a matter of protected deliberative privilege, and requires removal,” the motion argued. “Here, the removal is particularly important because the juror’s reasoning reflects a bias against those who suffer from debilitating mental illness, a protected category.”

Supreme Judicial Court Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt heard arguments briefly during the Plymouth court’s lunch break.

She said she’d take the issue under advisement and about half an hour later, around 2:15 p.m., everyone was called back into the courtroom.

Once Sullivan came back, he said that the SJC justice had denied the motion and that he intended to bring the jury in to declare the mistrial.

Reddington made one last effort, raising a constitutional issue and requesting a hearing, but Sullivan denied it.

When Sullivan gave the jurors the news, one woman threw her head into her hands.

Clancy kept her face neutral.

Sullivan thanked the jurors for their service, saying, “I understood you all gave everything you could.”

The list of jurors has been impounded for two weeks, in part for the jurors safety, per an order from the judge.

Outside the courthouse, District Attorney Timothy Cruz told reporters he wouldn’t give an answer on whether his office would try the case again until he’d reviewed it with his prosecutors.

Judge Sullivan set a status hearing for Sept. 29 at 9 a.m. and guessed that a retrial could happen as early as this fall.

“This has been an emotional trial for everybody,” Cruz said. “But in the end, I bring it back to the child victims in this case, Cora, Dawson, and Callan. This was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies.”

He said that in this case it was “warranted and appropriate” to charge Clancy with first-degree murder, calling the killings “cruel and calculated.”

“This is a case about three children who died a violent and horrific death at the hands of the person who should love them the most,” Cruz said.

When Reddington came out, he was critical of Cruz.

“It’s a very sad case,” Reddington said. “Cruz knows that he was crushed, he doesn’t have a case, he doesn’t have to stand here and say that he’s advocating on behalf of the victims, then look down to see what their names are.”

He said that Clancy, who he described as being like a daughter to him, is a brave woman who spent seven weeks at trial, “where nobody had anything bad to say about her except for the two prosecutors and apparently Tim Cruz.”

Reddington, when asked how his client was doing after the mistrial declaration, said that Clancy was simply “not good.”

“It sucks,” Reddington said of the situation. “But not for me, it’s what I do for a living, but for Lindsay.”

Clancy’s ex-husband and the children’s father Patrick put out a statement through his lawyer David Meier after the mistrial was declared, saying that he was grateful for the work of the court and jury.

“The loss of Patrick’s children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure,” Meier said. “The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful — for Patrick, for his family, and for all us.”

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