Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer used a Fox News appearance to dismiss any sympathy for Lindsay Clancy moments after a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the case of her three strangled children, comments that drew immediate attention for their bluntness.
Judge William Sullivan ended the murder trial Friday afternoon at Plymouth Superior Court after a jury of nine women and three men failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The panel had deliberated more than 37 hours over seven days following a five-and-a-half-week presentation of evidence. Fox News reported the jury split 11-1, with one holdout juror refusing to join the others late Thursday and into Friday.
Clancy, 36, a former nurse, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2023 strangulation deaths of her three children, Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eighteen months, at the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She admits she strangled them with exercise bands but denies it was murder. Her defense team argued she was overmedicated while suffering from postpartum depression and that a cocktail of prescribed drugs triggered psychosis.
The mistrial leaves Clancy still facing charges. A status hearing is set for September 29. Prosecutors could seek a retrial on the same counts, first- and second-degree murder plus manslaughter, pursue lesser charges, or ask a judge to decide the verdict instead of a jury.
Meyer, a U.S. Marine and Medal of Honor recipient who serves as a Fox News commentator, appeared on the network Friday afternoon and did not hold back. The Daily Mail reported his remarks in full.
"I just want to say: Who cares how she's feeling? Nobody cares."
He went further, describing in graphic terms what Clancy's children endured.
"The reality is I hope she is suffering a tenth of what her child was suffering as she stood behind her child with her fan, with her workout band and she choked and listened and felt her child squirm and fight against this, and worry about how this woman's feeling?"
Meyer called the broader public conversation around the case misplaced.
"This is absolutely absurd and appalling that we are trying to find empathy over fighting justice for these three innocent children who this woman brutally murdered."
His most striking comment drew on his own combat record in Afghanistan.
"But what I'm going to tell you is the fact that we're having empathy for this human being, she is nothing less than her evil. I'll say this. I've probably taken the lives of men who deserved it less than this woman."
Fox News has been at the center of several high-profile on-air moments in recent months, including the network's decision to part ways with anchor Maria Bartiromo after leaked texts surfaced.
Fellow Fox News commentator Emily Compagno joined the segment and raised her own pointed questions. She asked why Clancy, who is being held at a psychiatric hospital, appeared to be wearing mascara during proceedings.
"Why is someone in psychiatric care wearing mascara?"
Compagno also pushed back on what she described as attempts to cast the case as a feminist cause.
"Why is there some kind of effort at equating this with feminism, which many have shaped it as? How do you see this?"
The question of who, specifically, has framed the Clancy case in feminist terms was not addressed in the segment. But the exchange reflected a broader frustration, shared by many conservative commentators, that sympathy for a defendant can overshadow accountability to victims, particularly when those victims are children too young to speak for themselves.
That tension between media framing and public accountability has surfaced repeatedly in political commentary this year, including James Carville's recent broadside against progressive media figures he accused of distorting the Democratic brand.
The path to mistrial was not straightforward. After more than 37 hours of deliberations stretching across seven days, one juror refused to align with the other eleven. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington sought an emergency order to force the panel into one final round of deliberations, arguing the holdout was not properly applying reasonable-doubt instructions.
A justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court, held a hearing on Reddington's emergency appeal and ruled in favor of Judge Sullivan's plan to declare a mistrial. Sullivan made the declaration Friday afternoon.
Reddington told reporters afterward that Clancy was "not good." He also raised concerns about the prospect of a fair retrial, suggesting it would be nearly impossible to find an impartial jury panel given the international attention the case has drawn.
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz maintained his office's position that the killings were "cold-blooded, calculated murder." He has not yet confirmed plans to retry Clancy, though Fox News reported a retrial appears likely. Cruz said in a statement that his office's job was to ensure "the victims are not invisible."
Defense forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified during the trial that Clancy believed an external force had taken over her body. He described her as being in "a dream state" where she "did not have control of her own body" and said she heard a command before acting.
Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's ex-husband and the father of the three children, was the trial's first witness. He has said in past interviews that he forgives his ex-wife and believes her actions were the result of mental illness.
His attorney released a statement Friday acknowledging the weight of what may come next.
"The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful."
After the mistrial was declared, state police escorted Clancy's parents and sister from the courthouse. Clancy herself, who attempted suicide after the killings by jumping from an upstairs window and is now permanently confined to a wheelchair, is expected to remain at a psychiatric hospital until the case is resolved.
The case has divided public opinion in ways that cut across normal political lines. Figures across the media spectrum have weighed in on questions of criminal responsibility, mental health, and maternal violence, debates that often create unexpected breaks from expected partisan positions.
Cora was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eighteen months old. Those are the facts that anchor this case, regardless of what any jury, commentator, or defense psychiatrist says about the woman who killed them.
Meyer's comments were raw. They were not diplomatic. And they gave voice to a frustration that millions of Americans share: in a legal system built on process and procedure, the smallest victims can become an afterthought.
The defense argues Clancy was not in control of her own mind. Prosecutors say she committed cold-blooded, calculated murder. One juror out of twelve could not decide. And so the process starts over, with a hearing on September 29 and no verdict in sight, more than three years after three children were strangled in their own home.
Dakota Meyer's bluntness may have startled some viewers. But the discomfort his words caused pales next to the reality of what happened in that Duxbury house, and the fact that, after five and a half weeks of testimony and 37 hours of deliberation, accountability remains elusive for the three people who deserved it most.
When the system cannot deliver a verdict for a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and an infant, the system owes those families more than another round of process.