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The Lindsay Clancy trial ended with a mistrial, thanks to one man, who refused to back down.
Many people believe he’s a hero.
Hero 🙌🏻 pic.twitter.com/ZXfPFKa24k
— Ames (@VivaLaAmes11) September 4, 2026
That mistrial means everybody gets to do this all over again.
Another knock-down fight over whether Clancy was so mentally ill when she waited until her husband left the house to strangle her three children to death that she’s not criminally responsible for what she did.
But before round two gets underway, people who spent weeks glued to this trial are doing what people always do after a team blows the big game: picking apart the coaches.
And in this case, the coaches are the lawyers.
The prosecution has taken a beating online from people who believe the state had a strong case but choked. The argument is that the two female prosecutors, Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham, didn’t know how to present their case. Many people thought the two female prosecutors were flat, awkward, totally ineffective, and completely overmatched by Lindsay’s bulldog defense attorney, Kevin Reddington.
But is there more to the story than just a couple of chokers who couldn’t get the W?
Well, one TikToker thinks so, and she took that criticism in a totally different direction.
She agrees with many and says yes, the prosecutors need to be replaced….
But her part of the argument is different… she claims they’re just too ugly to win.
Her argument isn’t that murder cases should be decided by a Miss America contestant. She’s talking about persuasion, presentation, and human nature.
Courtrooms are supposed to run on facts and evidence. But let’s be real, jurors are still human beings. They notice everything: faces, clothes, expressions, voices, confidence, charm, and awkwardness. You know the deal. They can see and feel who’s warm or cold and who’s interesting or irritating after three long weeks.
None of this is new stuff, advertising figured this out about 100 years ago, and politics certainly knows about projecting a certain look and vibe. Heck, Hollywood built an entire industry around looks and personality.
So why would we pretend every human bias magically disappears the second somebody walks through a courthouse door?
@greenbrier_w
Lindsay Clancy trial ends in a hung jury. The likelihood of these lead prosecutor staying on the case seems very low
♬ original sound – Ema
Did these prosecutors lose because they’re not pretty? Probably not for that reason alone. Lord knows there was plenty working against them, including the decision not to sequester the jury, the online mob of feminists fawning over Lindsay, and their own inability to connect with the power of this story. But human nature being what it is, their looks probably played some role.
Let’s take a look at both of these women’s expertise when it comes to justice and the law.
Patriot Ledger:
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague has worked at the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office since December 2003, according to her LinkedIn page.
According to her profile, she has tried 28 homicide trials and more than 40 Superior Court cases involving sexual assault, firearms, narcotics, and domestic violence offenses, as well as hundreds of District Court cases.
Sprague earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Bridgewater State University in 1999 and her Juris Doctorate from New England Law Boston in 2003.
She was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar on Dec. 12, 2003, according to the state’s Board of Bar Overseers.
During the trial, Sprague has presented several pieces of physical evidence, including the children’s pajamas and pill bottles prescribed to Clancy.
Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham has worked at the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office since 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.
She serves as chief of the Family Protection Unit at the district attorney’s office, her profile says.
Buckingham earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Stonehill College in 2003 and her Juris Doctorate from Northeastern University School of Law in 2011.
She was admitted to the Massachusetts bar on Nov. 14, 2011, according to the state’s Board of Bar Overseers.
In the prosecution’s opening statement on July 27, Buckingham noted how Cora, Clancy’s 5-year-old daughter, liked to wear large bows in her hair. Buckingham has worn several bows in her own hair throughout the course of the trial.
So, these two women appear to have the legal chops to take on a case like this. How did it go so spectacularly south?
They turned into a joke.
Shanan Buckingham probably thought wearing bows in honor of Clancy’s daughter Cora, who loved having bows in her hair, was a lovely gesture. Instead, the move backfired, and Shanan quickly became a meme.
Presentation matters… especially when you’re trying to persuade 12 regular people through weeks of emotional testimony in a case where the other side has built its entire defense around sympathy. The prosecution never broke through that wall, even though on paper, they had the expertise to do so.
Lindsay Clancy was presented as a sick, broken mother swallowed whole by postpartum mental illness, prescription drugs, and a medical system that failed her over and over.
That’s a massive, emotional story to overcome… and if lawyers can’t connect with a jury, command the room, and make the state’s case feel just as real and emotional as the defense’s story, you’ve got a problem… clearly, there was a mistrial. They almost completely lost the case.
So, yes, looks might be part of that equation. Humans are judgemental. We judge people based on their clothes, charisma, age, facial expressions, tone, body, and about 55 other things lawyers would probably rather pretend don’t matter… but they do.
And while the internet is arguing over how badly the two prosecutors need a makeover, there’s another lawyer in this case who clearly understands the human side of a courtroom very well.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington.
Reddington is a seasoned old bird.
He’s been defending people accused of horrific crimes for decades, including clients whose cases involved mental illness and insanity defenses. He’s kinda infamous for using that defense, to be honest.
But that’s what criminal defense lawyers do, right? Somebody’s gotta represent the accused, including the accused nobody else wants to sit next to.
But what’s gotten strange is what happened outside the courtroom, thanks to women who’ve gone off the rails in this case.
Because while Reddington was doing his job defending Lindsay Clancy, a chunk of the Clancy fan club apparently decided he wasn’t just her attorney…
He was their hero.
A feminist warrior, if you will.
Hell, some women even turned this old dude into a sex symbol, if you can believe that. The same thing happened with Trump investigator Robert Mueller. Women went bonkers over him as well.
Buzz Feed:
You can buy ornaments, pins, mugs, pint glasses, stickers, hats, T-shirts, Christmas T-shirts (e.g., a cartoon Mueller in a Santa hat with “He knows if you’ve been bad or good”), key chains, action figures, and a felt pennant with a good ink drawing of the man. You can buy buttons that read “SAVE MUELLER,” “PROTECT MUELLER,” and “It’s Mueller Time,” ones that feature his name and half his face on a gold backdrop, or a nice Valentine’s option that features Mueller in black and white, surrounded by hearts.
You can buy Mueller novelty prayer candles. Many kinds! There are more traditional options, with a haloed Mueller pointing at his sacred heart, and this black candle with a ’70s crime drama vibe. The latter is currently sold out, but for $22 you can purchase the companion piece “pee tape prayer candle,” the kind of gag gift destined to be found by a prospective in-law. Nine hundred and thirty-seven people pledged $34,532 on Kickstarter for these candles to exist!
Fauci too, right? Who can forget the “Fauci fan club?”
And now history is repeating itself. Now, the guy getting paid to keep a confessed child killer from being convicted is being treated like he’s leading women across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
@thesabrinakosmas
Safe to say, I’m not a fan & refuse to let this man be treated like a celebrity #kevinreddington #lindsayclancy #lindsayclancytrial #feminism #conservative
♬ original sound – thesabrinakosmas
That’s where this case goes sliding even further off the rails.
Reddington is supposed to fight like hell for Lindsay Clancy… that’s his job. He’s getting paid to do this.
If you’re sitting in the defendant’s chair facing three murder charges, you want the pit bull.
Reddington knows how to build an insanity defense… he does it all the time, and he’s clever. Calling a woman in her 30s a “girl” or a “young lady” isn’t some random mistake when you’re standing in front of jurors asking them to see her as vulnerable, sick, and deserving of mercy.
That’s some serious lawyering. Really good lawyering, actually.
But what gets really creepy is the leap from effective defense attorney to feminist folk hero.
Sorry, ladies, but once again you’ve lost the plot.
Reddington isn’t defending “women.” He’s defending Lindsay Clancy. Period.
And Lindsay Clancy’s on trial because her three children died when she strangled them to death with exercise bands.
But that reality has gotten totally mangled beyond recognition online, thanks to what many people refer to as “Ku Klux Klancy’s.”
Women began showing up around this case saying they understood Lindsay… they felt the “same.” Then some went further and said they were Lindsay, or could’ve been Lindsay, because they too had struggled after childbirth or experienced frightening thoughts… we’ve now got what many are calling two recent “copycat” murders. Kids are dying out there.
John Fund:
WARNING: The Lindsay Clancy trial heads for a mistrial as the jury remained deadlocked. But for Nellie Bowles of Free Press “The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed,” she wrote. “In Canada, that’s the law already. If a parent kills a kid under the age of 1, it’s a maximum five-year sentence. We’re now going to see a movement to bring that to the U.S., and also to expand it to older kids. Death cults will death cult.”
WARNING: The Lindsay Clancy trial heads for a mistrial as the jury remained deadlocked. But for Nellie Bowles of Free Press “The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed,” she wrote.…
— John Fund (@johnfund) September 4, 2026
Important context: Canada’s law is narrower than Bowles makes it sound. It applies to mothers who kill a baby under 1 while suffering from a childbirth-related mental disturbance, and the maximum sentence is five years.
But seriously, are women now like those spiders that eat their young? We just shrug and say, “Well, that’s nature”?
Yes, millions of mothers have been depressed, exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, or hit with thoughts that scared the hell out of them. That happens. Hormones go wild, but they sure as hell didn’t strangle their children to death or slit their throats.
And treating Lindsay Clancy as some universal symbol for struggling mothers is a very dangerous place to push the women’s movement.
@grn_eyes_txn
♬ original sound – Texas Green Eyes 🌻🦋💕
S
When thousands of people repeat some version of “I could’ve been Lindsay,” something very rare begins to feel way too normal and ordinary.
And Lindsay stops being one woman who committed one horrific act.
She becomes a symbol.
That’s how you wind up with people cheering the mistrial, fawning over her attorney like he’s a heartthrob, and treating a murder prosecution like Team Lindsay versus Team Prosecution.
The three dead children have become supporting characters in their own story.
Cora, Dawson, and Callan are blips on the radar in the Lindsay show.
That should bother people a helluva lot more than somebody on TikTok calling prosecutors ugly.
Because under all the fandom, hashtags, courtroom crushes, and internet psychosis, the real question in this case has always been this: was Lindsay Clancy mentally ill?
Obviously, something was terribly wrong… but mental illness doesn’t mean she crosses the legal finish line.
And once again, that’s a battle the next jury will have to decide.
And after weeks of watching this case get swallowed by internet fan fiction, twisted maternal activism, lawyer crushes, and people projecting their own lives onto Lindsay Clancy, sometimes it’s helpful to hear somebody shoot it to you straight.
@iamromaarmy
♬ original sound – Roma Army
Which brings us right back to those lawyers.
The next trial is a test of whether the prosecution learned anything from their failure.
Maybe the TikToker is onto something uncomfortable about how much appearance and presentation influence people, even when everybody wishes it didn’t.
Either way, the prosecution now knows exactly what it’s up against.
Kevin Reddington knows how to sell Lindsay Clancy’s story.
Maybe the two prosecutors need to take a long look in the mirror. Literally.
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