Will a Massachusetts jury convict Lindsay Clancy of murder?

A jury in Plymouth, Massachusetts, has spent two days deciding whether Lindsay Clancy is a murderer, and has not decided. It goes back in on Monday. Polymarket's Lindsay Clancy market predicts a 34% probability that she is convicted, which puts yes at 34 cents and about 194% when the jury comes back. We think this is a good asymmetric bet.

Clancy killed her three children at their home in Duxbury on January 24, 2023. Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has never disputed it. He spent five weeks arguing she was not criminally responsible, because bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis had taken her mind apart.

Nobody disputes the illness, the prosecutor included, who told the jury in her closing argument there was no dispute Clancy was mentally ill. The question is whether the Commonwealth has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the illness is not why she did it.

Massachusetts is the most forgiving state in the country regarding mental illness-related offenses. Under the rule it adopted in 1967, a person is not responsible if a mental illness left them unable to know that what they were doing was wrong, or unable to stop themselves. In most states, the defendant proves that, but here she doesn't have.

However, juries convict anyway. The Boston Globe went through every first-degree murder trial in the state since 1990 that raised this defense. There were 41 of them, and it worked five times.

Most defendants in Massachusetts get to choose who hears them: twelve jurors, or one judge sitting alone. Clancy never had that choice. District Attorney Timothy Cruz charged her with murder in the first degree, and that charge takes the option away.

For the contract to resolve 'Yes,' it needs one of two verdicts: murder in the first degree or murder in the second. Manslaughter and acquittal pay nothing. A jury that never agrees also pays nothing.