Articles Posted in Trial Strategy and Evidence Notes

On September 4, 2026, a Plymouth County jury could not agree in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, and the judge declared a mistrial. In the two weeks since, reporting has turned to the lone holdout and to what he did or did not disclose before he was seated. A judge impounded the jury list…

On September 4, 2026, a Plymouth County jury reported that it could not agree, and the court declared a mistrial in the case against Lindsay Clancy. On September 10, 2026, the defense filed a renewed motion for a required finding of not guilty. The motion asks the court, not a second jury, to end the…

Medical experts can help a Massachusetts jury understand how an injury occurred and whether the medical findings support the prosecution’s account. The judge must first decide whether the opinion is reliable and whether its wording risks unfairly influencing the jury’s decision about guilt. On September 9, 2026, the Supreme Judicial Court addressed both questions in…

Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, was tried in Plymouth Superior Court in 2026 on three counts of murder in the first degree for the January 2023 deaths of her children, Cora, age five, Dawson, age three, and Callan, age eight months. She did not dispute that she caused their deaths. Her…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 A motion to suppress and a motion to dismiss are the two filings that can end a criminal case before a jury hears anything. Other motions can be important in getting to a good outcome. These two can produce an…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 Most of the expert work in my cases is never heard by a jury. An expert who reads a laboratory file and tells me the analyst skipped a step has changed the case, and has done it without putting a…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 By the time a jury is empaneled, most of the work that will decide the case is finished. What was gathered, what was tested, and what was excluded in the months before set the limits on what either side can…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 The closing argument is the only time in a Massachusetts criminal trial when I get to say what the evidence means. Everything before it is questions. This is the one stretch where I speak in complete sentences to the jurors…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 Most of the objecting I do in a criminal trial happens before the jury walks in. By the time the first witness is sworn, the evidence I care about has usually been argued in writing, in front of the judge,…

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | Massachusetts Criminal Defense Since 1995 Almost every client asks me the same question in the first meeting: when do I get to tell my side. The honest answer is that in most trials the client never does, and that the case is usually better for…