Hosts on The View blasted Lindsay Clancy’s attorney for shifting from an insanity defense to claiming no proof she killed her three children, calling it a terrible legal take.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington stood in a Plymouth, Massachusetts courtroom Tuesday and asked Judge William Sullivan a direct question about the murder case against his client.
“Where’s the evidence that she did this?” Reddington said.
That question landed after a full trial in which Reddington never disputed that Lindsay Clancy killed her three young children. He argued instead that postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible. Now he has filed a motion for a required finding of not guilty, saying prosecutors failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Fox News reported the shift drew sharp criticism from The View co-hosts the next day.
The panel saw a clear contradiction. Alyssa Farah Griffin did not hide her reaction.
Griffin said:
"My jaw was on the floor because the defense’s entire argument hinged on she had postpartum psychosis. She wasn’t responsible by reason of insanity but she, in a psychotic state, did this crime, and now he’s like, ‘We don’t even know if she did it,’"
Sunny Hostin, a former lawyer, went further. She said the turnaround made no sense in front of the same judge who heard the original defense.
Hostin said:
"I don’t understand how you can spend an entire trial arguing that she did it but she is not criminally responsible because she was suffering from a psychotic episode and postpartum psychosis and then turn around in front of the very same judge and say there’s no evidence she did it. I think that is a terrible take,"
She added that the new stance “feels very conspiracy theory and not grounded in the law.” Hostin’s own past claims about serving as a holdout juror in another high-profile case have drawn separate scrutiny in reporting on her jury history.
Sara Haines struck a mixed note. She said the lawyer appeared to be “moving the goalposts a bit.” Yet she also pointed to what she called holes in the original case narrative, including questions about Clancy’s memory in the hospital and statements that may have been repeated back to her.
Haines later joked, “I’m not convinced he’s not on TikTok.”
Outside the studio, legal analysts who reviewed the record described the same problem. George Washington University professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley compared the defense to a movie with multiple endings.
Turley said Reddington “appears to be crafting a criminal defense like the 1985 screenplay of ‘Clue’ with different endings for different audiences. After insisting that Clancy did kill her children, he is now arguing that there is no evidence showing that she killed her children.”
Turley added that Reddington claims the judge effectively blocked him from arguing Clancy may not have committed the crime. If that is true, Turley said, the lawyer “should thank Judge Sullivan.” The insanity defense had already drawn a sympathetic jury. An alternative theory that she never did it “would likely have alienated many jurors by insulting their intelligence.”
Fox News contributor Gregg Jarrett was blunter. He said Reddington openly conceded at trial that his client strangled her three young children. “It was never in doubt or dispute.” The new claim, Jarrett said, is “demonstrably untrue and utterly absurd.” A lawyer who does that “undermine[s] the very argument you’re making to the judge” and damages the client.
Jarrett tied the latest move to earlier conduct. He pointed to Reddington’s public attacks on the holdout juror after the mistrial. That dispute continues. A lawyer for the Clancy holdout juror has rejected claims the juror ignored the law.
The case remains in limbo in Plymouth. Judge William Sullivan previously asked the jury to keep deliberating during proceedings captured in a Sept. 3, 2026 photo of Clancy and Reddington in court. A new trial has not been scheduled. Both sides told the court they needed more time.
Reddington has said he is not available to start a new trial until June 2027. Clancy is due back in court Nov. 2 for another motion hearing. Pending matters include a defense bid to dismiss charges on double jeopardy grounds and a request to open an inquiry into the holdout juror.
One of the jurors later drew attention for celebrating the Karen Read acquittal online before serving on the Clancy murder case, a detail covered in earlier reporting on the jury pool.
Media coverage of the trial itself has already produced side controversies. Vanity Fair revoked credentials of a journalist caught winking at the camera during proceedings, another marker of how closely the case has been watched.
The human cost sits outside the legal sparring. Patrick Clancy has spoken publicly about still talking to his three dead children in the first interview since the mistrial, a reminder of what the courtroom arguments ultimately concern. That account appears in a separate family interview.
Reddington’s motion rests on the claim that the prosecution never supplied enough proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy killed the children. The View panel, Turley, and Jarrett all treated that claim as a sharp break from the trial record the same lawyer presented.
Griffin, Haines, and Hostin framed the change as moving the goalposts. The legal commentators framed it as a self-inflicted wound that weakens whatever argument remains before Judge Sullivan.
When a defense spends a trial conceding the act and then tells the same judge there is no evidence of the act, the victims’ families and the public are left watching lawyers revise the story after the jury has already spoken.
