Last week, the Lindsay Clancy trial ended in a mistrial after one holdout juror refused to acquit.
Prosecutors appear to still be weighing their options about what comes next.
Meanwhile, Clancy’s attorney would love to end this for his client, for potential jurors, and for the nation.
He’s even asking Donald Trump to pardon Clancy. Is that how this works?
Will Donald Trump pardon Lindsay Clancy?
On the Tuesday, September 8 episode of ABC’s Good Morning America, Lindsay Clancy’s attorney made a surprising plea.
Kevin Reddington sat down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos in the wake of his client’s mistrial last week.
“Mr. President,” he said during the talk, “I would hope that you would consider this young lady and the person she is, what she’s been through.”
Reddington continued: “And consider a pardon.”
A pardon is a use of executive clemency that, in this case, allows a sitting President to wipe away a federal conviction — even preemptively.
We’ll get into why this is such a surprising request in a moment.
As a reminder, prosecutors have charged Clancy with three counts of murder.
She allegedly strangled her 3 young children before attempting to die by suicide by jumping out a window, only to end up paralyzed.
This is an obvious case of post-partum psychosis, a are but dangerous after-effect of childbirth. The prosecution has (absurdly) claimed that Clancy was in full control of her actions before and during the murder.
The Clancy trial has ignited a bizarre culture war, with certain conservative factions of the internet attempting to spin this family tragedy into some vague and difficult-to-define conspiracy in which women and doctors have conjured up a fake mental illness as a get-out-of-motherhood-free-card.
Why is a pardon such a strange ask in this case?
Attorneys who have any amount of national attention might often ask for a pardon.
After all, there’s no anti-pardon. Officially, presidents and governors do not have the power to go “actually, I order a conviction.”
While it’s clear that Kevin Reddington is reasoning that you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take, it’s unclear how this would benefit Lindsay Clancy.
Clancy is facing state charges. A Trump pardon, if she received one, would only impact charges at the federal level … of which there are none.
If Reddington is playing whatever-dimensional chess with some broad PR or legal strategy, we’re unsure what it is.
Trump has made broad, unorthodox, and brazenly corrupt use of executive clemency over the past couple of years.
From pardoning reality TV criminals to January 6th insurrectionists who attacked America to random other awful people, a clear pattern has emerged.
Trump is offering pardons to his allies, but also to people who have made massive donations to him.
Clancy is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair. The next time that Trump calls for insurgents to murder members of congress, it’s unclear of what help she could be. Similarly, it’s unclear if she could meet his price — if, again, he had any clemency powers that could benefit her directly.
Prosecutors should really not have brought this case to trial, and instead offered a deal that acknowledges Clancy’s mental state at the time. If prosecutors insist upon bringing this case to trial again, perhaps Clancy’s attorney will as for a pardon at the state level, instead.
