Clancy Mistrial: DA Weighs Retrial, Plea Deal

Cruz did not commit to a retrial. "This was and has always been about getting justice for those beautiful babies," he told reporters outside the courthouse. "Children were murdered, and it's our job to seek justice." He said there would be no immediate decision, and added that as a father and grandfather he could not imagine the families' grief.

Patrick Clancy, speaking through attorney David Meier, thanked the court and the jurors for "their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance." The statement continued: "The loss of Patrick's children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful — for Patrick, for his family, and for all of us." Patrick Clancy has said in interviews since the deaths that he forgives his ex-wife because she was ill.

Former federal prosecutor and former acting ICE director Jonathan Fahey told The National Desk that Sullivan handled the juror dispute correctly. "The whole system requires a unanimous jury, and if you take the juror off, that makes it not unanimous," Fahey said. "It doesn't seem inherently fair." He said a lone-holdout hung jury is not rare, but the public fight over it was: "I can't think I've ever seen" it play out this way.

Fahey said prosecutors in a lower-profile case might walk away if 11 jurors favored acquittal, but that three dead children make that unlikely. "They may try to work out a compromise on a second-degree murder or something else, but I don't think they're going to walk away from it," he said.

Boston Herald columnist Wendy Murphy went further, writing that Cruz "will agree to a plea deal when the heat dies down" and predicting Clancy is found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a locked mental facility. "The first trial was a budget buster," Murphy wrote, arguing the vote she describes as 11-1 for insanity means Cruz "can never win a guilty verdict."