Fox News commentator Dakota Meyer said he hopes Lindsay Clancy is suffering, after a judge declared a mistrial in her trial over the killing of her three children in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Clancy, 36, now faces a retrial after a jury of nine women and three men could not agree on whether she was guilty of murder or manslaughter in the deaths of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and 18-month-old Callan in January 2023.
Meyer, a US Marine who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the War in Afghanistan, dismissed the focus on Clancy's feelings following the mistrial during an appearance on Fox News on Friday afternoon.
"I just want to say: Who cares how she's feeling? Nobody cares," he said. "The reality is I hope she is suffering a tenth of what her child was suffering as she stood behind her child with her fan, with her workout band and she choked and listened and felt her child squirm and fight against this, and worry about how this woman's feeling?"
Meyer's comments on Fox News
Meyer said he was "sure she is struggling," but that attempts to empathize with Clancy were an outrage.
"This is absolutely absurd and appalling that we are trying to find empathy over fighting justice for these three innocent children who this woman brutally murdered," he said.
He went on to compare Clancy to people he had killed in combat in Afghanistan. "What I'm going to tell you is the fact that we're having empathy for this human being, she is nothing less than her evil. I'll say this. I've probably taken the lives of men who deserved it less than this woman," he said.
Compagno questions Clancy's supporters
Fellow Fox News host Emily Compagno also questioned why women had rallied behind Clancy. "Why is someone in psychiatric care wearing mascara?" she asked. "Why is there some kind of effort at equating this with feminism, which many have shaped it as? How do you see this?"
The mistrial and Clancy's defense
Judge William Sullivan declared the mistrial at Plymouth Superior Court on Friday afternoon. Clancy admits strangling her three children with exercise bands but denies it amounted to murder.
The former nurse has said she was overmedicated while suffering from postpartum depression, and that the combination of drugs she was prescribed brought on psychosis. She tried to kill herself by jumping from an upstairs window of the home she shared with her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, after the killings. The attempt failed but left her paralyzed and permanently confined to a wheelchair.
Jurors deliberated for weeks
Jurors spent more than 37 hours deliberating over five-and-a-half weeks of evidence, with one juror refusing to side with the others late Thursday into Friday.
Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought an emergency order to force jurors into one final round of deliberations. A hearing was held before a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who ruled in favor of Judge Sullivan's original plan to declare a mistrial.
What happens next
Clancy remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has not yet confirmed whether he plans to try Clancy again, though a retrial seems likely. Speaking after the mistrial was declared, Cruz maintained his view that Clancy's killing of her children was cold-blooded, calculated murder.
The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for September 29. Prosecutors could seek to retry Clancy on the same charges of first and second-degree murder and manslaughter, or pursue lesser charges, likely manslaughter. They could also opt to have a judge decide the verdict rather than putting the case before another jury.
A case that drew international attention
Friday's mistrial, on the seventh day of deliberations, left the case unresolved. The decision seemed to surprise no one in the courtroom, and neither Clancy nor her family showed emotion as the judge announced the trial was ending without a resolution.
Reddington suggested it would be impossible to find an impartial jury to retry a case that has attracted international attention. He said Clancy was "not good" when a reporter asked how she was doing after the mistrial. Her parents and sister were escorted from the courthouse by state police, saying nothing to reporters.
Ex-husband's reaction
Clancy's ex-husband, Patrick, who was the trial's first witness, has said in past interviews that he forgives her and believes her actions were the result of mental illness. A statement released by his attorney on Friday said the prospect of reliving the tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful.
