Reddington asks Sullivan to hear live witnesses at Clancy's Nov. 2 hearing.

Nov. 2 is already on the calendar. This motion asks Judge William Sullivan to take live testimony and sworn statements that day, or to postpone the hearing if he will not, Boston 25 News reports. A request to hear witnesses is not a ruling that the Sept. 4 mistrial lacked manifest necessity, and the Boston Globe reports Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz still has not decided whether to retry three first-degree murder counts or reduce them to second-degree murder, which would let Clancy waive a jury.

Boston 25 News reports that in a motion filed Oct. 7, 2026, defense attorney Kevin J. Reddington asked Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan to allow testimony at the hearing set for Nov. 2. If Sullivan denies that request, the defense wants the hearing postponed until witnesses can testify. The station reports the filing is tied to Clancy's claims of possible outside influence on the jury and to her argument that retrying her would violate double-jeopardy protections. Her lawyers say the court cannot decide those questions on the papers alone. They want to present sworn statements and live testimony, including evidence about what happened with the jury before the mistrial. NewsNation reports the motion was filed Wednesday. The Boston Globe, writing about the same request, says the motion was filed Thursday. Oct. 7, 2026, was a Wednesday.

NewsNation reports Reddington wrote, "Before declaring a mistrial, a judge must give 'careful consideration to alternatives to a mistrial.'" He continued, "Further inquiry was the obvious alternative. Ms. Clancy contends in her motion to dismiss that it was error not to inquire, because the foreperson's note was open to more than one reading and the Court did not ask her what it meant." Because Clancy objected to the mistrial, NewsNation reports, the defense says prosecutors must show manifest necessity before a second trial can go forward. The Boston Globe reports Clancy contends the jury was deadlocked 11-1, with a single juror pushing for conviction. Boston 25 News reports the note indicated that 11 of 12 jurors had reached a unanimous position and that the holdout believed she was guilty. A reported split is not a verdict. The first trial already ended in a mistrial on Sept. 4.

The Boston Globe reports Reddington has urged Sullivan to conduct a limited inquiry into the holdout juror, including the confidential questionnaire the juror filled out before being seated and cell phone records of texts and calls during deliberations. Those are requests in a filing. They are not findings that a questionnaire answer was false, that a phone was used in the jury room, or that anyone outside the jury reached a juror. The Globe reports the defense is urging dismissal of the first-degree murder charges on double-jeopardy grounds and arguing that Clancy has a constitutional right to present evidence at the Nov. 2 hearing. NewsNation reports the defense wants the pending motions heard together, with witnesses, so the court is not calling the same people twice.

Last week, the Boston Globe reports, Sullivan denied a defense request for a directed verdict of not guilty. Boston 25 News reports that earlier this month he denied a required finding of not guilty. That ruling was entered Oct. 1. It kept the charges in the case. It did not order a retrial. The Boston Globe reports Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not decided whether to retry Clancy on three counts of first-degree murder, which would require another jury. If the charges are reduced to second-degree murder, the Globe reports, Clancy could waive a jury and have a judge decide the case. The Globe and NewsNation report she is 36 and is charged in the 2023 deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in Duxbury. Boston 25 News and NewsNation report the defense is that she should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. NewsNation has also reported that she remains at Tewksbury Hospital, a state psychiatric facility. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.