October 17, 2004: Bottom of the 12th. No outs. 2-1 count… 🎥

A criminal defense attorney says prosecutors in the Lindsay Clancy case made several missteps that "alienated" the jury and cost them credibility. David Yannetti, a Boston defense attorney and legal analyst, told Fox News Digital the prosecution's approach failed to win over jurors and may help explain why the trial ended in a deadlock. Clancy's case ended in a mistrial this month after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. Clancy faced three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan. She did not dispute killing them but said she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry her.

BREAKING DOWN THE CLANCY MISTRIAL: Karen Read attorney David Yannetti joins me LIVE Saturday at 9 AM ET on @NewsNation. Yannetti knows the stakes of a Massachusetts murder trial ending in a mistrial — Karen Read’s first trial did too. What does he make of the stunning end to the Lindsay Clancy trial — and what happens next? DON’T MISS his reaction and unique perspective from inside the Massachusetts court system. @BostonDefender

As Massachusetts approaches the possibility of another hung jury in a nationally covered murder trial, I keep coming back to the same inquiry: If the Lindsay Clancy jury hangs, will they prosecute her again? What would the Commonwealth have to show to prove that is necessary? Under current law, the answer is essentially nothing. After a hung jury, there is generally no hearing at which the prosecution must justify a retrial, no burden it must meet, no finding a judge must make, and no limit on the number of retrials pursued. The prosecution decides whether it wants another opportunity, and that is effectively the entire procedure. I am starting to believe that this should implicate the Double Jeopardy Clause. I know the prevailing case law disagrees, but if a doctrine permits the government to keep prosecuting criminal defendants until it obtains the conviction it wants, it is worth asking whether that doctrine is consistent with the Constitution's purpose. Constitutional text and principle should not be reduced to whatever rule makes repeated prosecution easiest. The Double Jeopardy Clause was written to prevent the government from prosecuting a citizen until it wins. It was not written with a system in mind in which a hung jury is treated as merely the government's first attempt. A mistrial currently makes a retrial legally permissible, but that does not mean a retrial is consistent with the public interest. If the state cannot persuade one jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the answer should not be to keep trying until it finds a jury that will.