Deadlocked Jury in Lindsay Clancy Trial Goes Home After a Fifth Day Without a Verdict

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Deadlocked Jury in Lindsay Clancy Trial Goes Home After a Fifth Day Without a Verdict

(Headline USA) Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial went home without a verdict Wednesday following a fifth day of deliberations and twice saying they can’t agree whether the Massachusetts mother is criminally responsible for killing her three young children.

The jury will return again Thursday morning. The judge told them to keep deliberating Wednesday when they said for a second straight day that they were at an impasse — a sign there’s a growing chance of a hung jury and the trial ending without a resolution.

Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, doesn’t deny strangling her children in the basement of their home in 2023. Her attorney argues that postpartum psychosis led to her actions, while prosecutors say she knew what she was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months.

“I know it’s been a long day,” Judge William Sullivan said, “so at this point, what I’m going to do is, first off thank you for your time and commitment to this case. I’m going to ask you to come back tomorrow morning.”

Clancy stared at the jury with no expression when Sullivan earlier in the day explained to the courtroom that the jurors were at a standstill.

Sullivan told the jurors not to abandon their own convictions just to reach a verdict, but urged them to seriously consider opposing views and reassess their positions if appropriate.

No one knows, he said, whether another jury would be “more intelligent, more impartial or more competent to decide it than you are.”

Elyse Hershon, a Boston criminal defense attorney and legal analyst, said, “The next time they say they are deadlocked or unagreed — that is usually the mistrial call.”

Clancy’s livestreamed trial has generated intense interest, with reporters and spectators packing the courtroom. The case has also sparked deep public divisions over her culpability and the issues around maternal mental health after childbirth.

Jurors have heard testimony from relatives and doctors about how Clancy’s mental health declined in the months before the killings and how her treatment included several medications and a short stay in a psychiatric hospital. Medical experts hired by the prosecution and the defense reached sharply different conclusions about her psychiatric state.

If jurors ultimately can’t agree on a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide whether to put Clancy on trial again, drop the charges or try to negotiate a plea deal with her lawyer.

If the jury decides Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions, it could convict her of either murder or manslaughter. If she is acquitted, a judge could still order her confined to a mental health facility if an evaluation determines that she poses a danger to the public.

Clancy strangled the children with exercise bands in their home’s basement, then jumped from a second-floor window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down. Her lawyers say she heard a voice telling her to kill the children so she could end her own life, and had bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth.

The prosecution argues she deliberately sent her then-husband on errands to get him out of the house that day, and prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt. Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his ex-wife, whom he views as ill rather than evil.

Dawn Light, 56, was arraigned on an intimidation charge Wednesday at the same courthouse as Clancy’s trial in Plymouth, south of Boston. Authorities say she filmed jurors leaving the courthouse a day earlier.

Light, a retired nurse and Clancy supporter, told reporters she was there: “To see Lindsay. And I did see her. She was getting picked up by the van.” Her lawyer Jennifer White called it a “misunderstanding.”

A not-guilty plea was entered on Light’s behalf and she was ordered to stay away from the court, jurors and witnesses.

The arrest prompted the judge to ask each juror Wednesday if they saw anything that would affect their impartiality, Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington told The Associated Press. The judge also opened the day’s proceedings with a warning not to film, follow, contact or tamper with jurors.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Pabst Blue Ribbon Offers $20,000 Reward to Help Find Its Missing Beer

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Pabst Blue Ribbon Offers $20,000 Reward to Help Find Its Missing Beer

(Headline USA) Pabst Blue Ribbon wants its beer back, and it’s offering a reward to help that happen.

Greig DeBow, the CEO of Pabst Brewing Co., said Wednesday that the company will pay up to $20,000 to anyone who provides new information that leads to the recovery of 1,602 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee beer. The beer went missing Aug. 17 in Southern California.

“I’m sure they look cool with a garage full of PBR,” DeBow said in a post on TikTok. “That’s actually not cool though. We want it back.”

Police in Montclair, California, said the beer was stolen from a warehouse in two separate incidents on the same day.

In the first heist, about $45,000 worth of beer headed to Tucson, Arizona, was picked up but never delivered, according to police.

An hour later, a “purported subcontracting company” submitted fake documents to pick up another $25,000 worth of beer, Montclair police said. Both thefts occurred on Aug. 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.

All told, the thieves made off with 40,000 pounds of beer, Pabst said. Police estimated that the stolen beer was worth $70,000.

DeBow said the company wants the beer to be returned by Sept. 9. Anyone with information is asked to email [email protected].

The theft was one of several recent high-profile food heists.

Late last year, 40,000 oysters, lobster worth $400,000 and a cache of crabmeat all were stolen in separate incidents within weeks of each other in New England.

And in March, Swiss food giant Nestlé said 413,793 KitKat brand chocolate bars bound for Poland were stolen after leaving its production site in Italy.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Gunman Wounds Staff Member at Virginia Elementary School, Then Kills Himself

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Gunman Wounds Staff Member at Virginia Elementary School, Then Kills Himself

(Headline USA) A 19-year-old gunman forced his way into a Virginia elementary school Wednesday morning and shot and wounded a staff member before killing himself, authorities said.

Officers found Anthony Ignatiadis-Isabelle dead inside the Westwood Hills Elementary School library after responding to a report of a suspicious person, Waynesboro Police Chief David Shaw said during a news conference. Shaw said an adult staff member suffered a gunshot wound but has been released from the hospital.

Authorities did not say whether Ignatiadis-Isabelle, of Waynesboro, knew the victim or whether he had any connection to the school. Shaw said no children were inside the library at the time, and that officers responded within three minutes of getting the initial call.

“Our safety and security protocols and procedures worked,” said Waynesboro Public Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Cassell. “Every student and staff member is safe and returned home to their families. Please hug your children and your families this evening.”

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she was monitoring the situation.

“My heart is with these young students, their parents and families, and the teachers and staff at the school,” Spanberger said on social media. “Thank you to the first responders who are assisting at the scene.”

Waynesboro is about 96 miles (155 km) northwest of Richmond.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Vance Talks about The Attempted Assassination of Trump in Christian Podcast

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Vance Talks about The Attempted Assassination of Trump in Christian Podcast

(Headline USA)  Vice President JD Vance said in a podcast released Tuesday that if a 2024 assassination attempt had killed Donald Trump, he would have always wondered if it was part of a conspiracy and might not have accepted even another Republican as the next president.

Vance made the statement during a conversation with Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford. The vice president, who recently released a book detailing his own journey to Catholicism, also defended President Trump for posting an image of himself as Jesus and mused about whether artificial intelligence was a sign of the end times.

The conversation kicked off with a discussion of faith and the rush to scientifically explain away events that may be divinely touched. Vance cited the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which a bullet nicked Trump’s ear and a supporter was killed.

Trump has long talked about his survival as divinely guided, a theme Vance took up. The vice president said that if the bullet had killed Trump, “we would have had real civil strife in a way that I don’t know that the country could have ever come back from.”

Vance said many Trump supporters would have assumed a conspiracy had robbed them of their chosen president, and he said he would have also had those thoughts “in the back of my mind.”

“I would have assumed very dark forces had taken out Donald Trump, right as he was about to come back into the White House,” Vance said. “There would have just been an illegitimacy to our entire political system.”

Most of the hour-and-ten-minute conversation was an amiable chat about faith, Vance’s own spiritual journey, his Easter meeting with Pope Francis the day before the pontiff’s death last year, and human frailty and fallibility. But it occasionally touched on darker themes.

Crawford asked Vance whether, as vice president, he had ever been in a room that was “spiritually dark.”

“I’ve been in meetings with world leaders where various issues are being discussed, and somebody will say something or somebody will make an observation and I’ll feel some darkness about it, it sets off every spiritual alarm bell in my body,” Vance said. He added he also felt “a very dark spiritual energy” in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, probably because of the carnage at the Civil War battlefield.

Crawford also asked Vance about his interest in the “end times,” which the vice president laughingly said had been more of an obsession in youth during the late 1990s, when people were abuzz about the possibility with the coming millennium. A chortling Vance recounted a story of a friend who was obsessed that the world would end in late 2007 and ran up major credit card debt.

“There are, like, things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us, but, again I try not to focus too much on it,” Vance said. He cited “IT companies” and the use of artificial intelligence as a substitute for human interaction.

“I think that’s kind of satanic,” Crawford said when Vance recounted the story of one acquaintance using AI as a marriage counselor.

“Yeah, when you completely divorce the human from the social element that God made us for, OK that’s very, that’s very bad,” Vance said.

Crawford asked Vance about Trump’s post on social media of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus earlier this year, which Crawford said offended him. Trump initially contended he thought the image was of him as a doctor, then took down the post amid widespread criticism from even some of his own backers.

Vance defended the president. “He did not mean to, like, mock or mimic God, that’s just not who he is,” Vance said, adding that the president often tries to keep things light and constantly makes jokes. “He’s a bit of a ballbuster, for those of us who work with him, and he just likes to have a good time. And I think that if people appreciated that, they would recognize, he’s not trying to offend people, he’s trying to keep things light.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

DOJ Declines to Prosecute Its Own Employee Who ‘Engaged in Prostitution’

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DOJ Declines to Prosecute Its Own Employee Who ‘Engaged in Prostitution’

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The DOJ Inspector General released a new report Wednesday, finding that an Assistant U.S. Attorney was caught engaging in prostitution. However, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute the attorney.

According to the report, the FBI provided the DOJ with the information that one of its own lawyers had “engaged in prostitution.” The FBI and DOJ Inspector General then conducted an investigation.

“The AUSA resigned from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) after being contacted by the OIG for an interview,” the DOJ IG report says. “When later contacted by the OIG for a voluntary interview, the AUSA declined to be interviewed … Criminal prosecution was declined.”

Wednesday’s report was just the latest instance of an FBI or DOJ employee engaging in sexual misconduct with impunity.

In July 2025, for instance, The DOJ Inspector General issued a report finding that a then-FBI supervisory special agent solicited and used prostitutes overseas. Like with the above-mentioned AUSA, the Justice Department declined to prosecute the agent.

In October 2024, the DOJ-OIG released a report about how a federal prosecutor had a sexual relationship with the target of a police investigation.

According to that report, the DOJ-OIG received information from a local police department that a U.S. Attorney used his government-issued mobile device to engage in extensive, sexually explicit communications with someone who later became the target of a police investigation.

The DOJ-OIG said its investigation substantiated the local police department’s tip—but again, there was no prosecution.

According to a 2020 Associated Press article entitled, “Under the rug: Sexual misconduct shakes FBI’s senior ranks,” the last time the OIG did an extensive probe of sexual misconduct within the FBI, it tallied 343 “offenses” from fiscal years 2009 to 2012, including three instances of “videotaping undressed women without consent.”

That AP investigation identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents.

“Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them,” the AP reported in December 2020.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Federal Trade Commission, 22 States Accuse Amazon of $20B Scheme

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Federal Trade Commission, 22 States Accuse Amazon of $20B Scheme

(Alan Wooten, The Center Square) North Carolina is among 22 states alongside the Federal Trade Commission filing litigation against Amazon, a company the state and Richmond County have been happy to welcome with a $10 billion data center investment.

The independent federal consumer agency and the Old North State’s first-term Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson say Amazon ran an illegal advertising pricing scheme overcharging more than 1.2 million advertising customers more than $20 billion since 2019. The scheme, plaintiffs say, said Amazon used “shill” bids hidden from public view to enable a higher charge to the winner of auctions.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the case is known as Federal Trade Commission v. Amazon. Relief is sought in the form of a permanent injunction, monetary relief, additional relief as the court deems “just and proper,” and awarding of states civil penalties, restitution, disgorgement and or forfeitures for each violation of respective state laws.

Specific monetary relief for North Carolina is not within the filing. There is a request of up to $5,000 for each knowing violation, and a request for additional unquantified relief.

Documents from Amazon, the plaintiffs say, prove the Big Five tech company knew “advertisers were bidding based on the belief that they were participating in a true second-price auction. But internally, Amazon employees discussed increasing prices while “hoping that advertisers don’t notice and decrease bids or ad spend,” Jackson’s office said in a release.

The litigation says Amazon knew the ceiling for detection. Jackson said businesses can pass higher advertising expenses to consumers through high prices for groceries, pharmacy products, clothing, school supplies and other high volume buys through Amazon.

“Amazon secretly rigged its bidding system to charge businesses more, and customers paid the price,” Jackson said. “We believe Amazon manipulated its ad auctions to inflate what sellers had to pay, adding billions of dollars in costs that ultimately get passed on to customers with higher prices. We’re taking Amazon to court to stop it.”

The litigation is not tied to the Amazon plan for a data center in North Carolina near the South Carolina border in Richmond County. There, in the community of Hamlet, is a plan for a $10 billion investment in the Amazon Web Services data center supply chain.

The global technology company, replete with e-commerce, digital streaming and online advertising, said a minimum of 500 jobs in high-tech cloud computing and artificial intelligence would be in an innovation campus. Such jobs will be data center engineers, network specialists, engineering operations managers, security specialists, and other technical roles, Amazon said.

The Big Five tech companies, as they are colloquially known, are Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet. Former names were Facebook rather than Meta, and Google rather than Alphabet.

Amazon’s 2024 financial report credited 11% growth year over year, up to $638 billion. It said Amazon Web Services revenue is $108 billion. Ten years earlier, the company revenue was $89 billion and web services $4.6 billion.

Cuba Says US Waging a ‘War Without Bombs’ as Diplomacy at Standstill

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Cuba Says US Waging a ‘War Without Bombs’ as Diplomacy at Standstill

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba’s top diplomat in the US, has told Bloomberg that the Trump administration is unwilling to continue talks with the island nation and described the ramped-up US oil embargo, which has caused a devastating humanitarian crisis in the country, as a “war without bombs.”

“The channel for dialogue is at a complete standstill,” Torres Rivera told the outlet, adding that the two sides are unable to set a basic agenda.

Since the US attack on Venezuela to abduct President Nicolas Maduro, the US has cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and pressured Mexico to also end its energy exports to the island, causing severe fuel shortages and bringing Cuba’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

President Trump has been clear that he wants Cuba to be his next military intervention, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the policy, has rejected the idea of a “peaceful agreement” with the Cuban government.

POLITICO reported last month that the CIA has ramped up its presence in Cuba, something the agency also did preceding the attack on Venezuela. The report said that the administration doesn’t believe it needs to end its war with Iran before taking military action against Cuba.

Despite the US hostility, Torres Rivera said that Havana sought good relations with Washington. “Cuba is not a threat to the United States,” she said. “Cuba wants a relationship of respect with the United States where we can talk about our shared priorities.”

Discussing the oil embargo, Torres Rivera said, “What country can function normally when they’ve only received one fuel shipment in 200 days? This is collective punishment. This is a war without bombs.”

Torres Rivera made similar comments in a post on X on August 21, where she also said the “current US oil siege increased the infant mortality rate per 1000 live births to more than double.”

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com. 

Vance Tells Republican Jewish Coalition That the US-Israel ‘Alliance’ Is One of the Most Important in the World

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Vance Tells Republican Jewish Coalition That the US-Israel ‘Alliance’ Is One of the Most Important in the World

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Vice President JD Vance spoke at a Republican Jewish Coalition event on Monday, where he called the US-Israel relationship “one of the most important alliances in the world” and discussed how to sell the special relationship to the growing number of skeptics in the United States.

What was supposed to be an off-the-record conversation was leaked to the media and published in full by the Daily Wire. Vance’s appearance at the event was seen as an effort to assure pro-Israel Republicans that he still supported the US-Israel special relationship despite recent criticism of Israeli officials.

Vance was asked by Norm Coleman, the chair of the RJC, what his position on the US-Israel relationship and whether it was important to US national security, and replied, “Well, certainly it’s extremely important to America’s national security. It’s obviously, you know, I would say one of our most important alliances in the world and certainly our most important regional alliance.”

Citing President Trump’s view on Israel, Vance said that the “Israelis have been a great partner for a number of things, whether it’s Midnight Hammer or intelligence collection, technology sharing, they’ve been a great partner.”

The US vice president said that the US and Israel “sometimes have different views on things” and described himself as a “foreign policy realist” who believes different countries will pursue their own interests but that “there are a few countries—Israel, the UK—where there’s a much deeper cultural symbiosis and harmony than exists with most other countries.”

Vance acknowledged that there is a “growing suspicion” among Americans under 40 over the US-Israel relationship. “And I think my view is what we have to do is articulate why this is in the best interest of the United States of America, and actually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America,” he said.

He added that a “very obvious example” of a benefit the US gets from its relationship with Israel is technology sharing, which he said was needed for President Trump’s plan for a massive missile defense system to cover the entire territory of the United States, which is estimated to cost over $1 trillion, far beyond what the Trump administration has requested for the project.

“We’re working with the Israelis on some extremely top-secret technology that is very, very important for the North American Missile Defense Shield. Because I love my kids, because all of you in this room, we love our kids, we love our grandkids, we want to make sure that if God forbid a bad country shoots a missile at the United States of America, we are safe,” he said.

Vance is expected to run for president in 2028, and he has come under criticism from both the pro-Israel right due to what is seen as insufficient support for the Jewish state and from Israel skeptics on the right, as he has attempted to thread the needle between the two sides.

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com. 

US Strike Hits Wedding in Southern Iran, Killing at Least Five People: Deputy Governor

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US Strike Hits Wedding in Southern Iran, Killing at Least Five People: Deputy Governor

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) A US strike in southern Iran on Tuesday hit a residential building where a wedding reception was taking place, according to local Iranian officials and the Iranian Red Crescent.

Ahmad Nafisi, the deputy governor of Iran’s Hormozgan Province, told Iranian media the strike hit a home in the city of Kuhestak in Hormozgan’s Sirik county and killed at least five people, including a young child, and wounded 68 people.

According to Iran’s PressTV, Hormozgan’s Red Crescent Society described the attack as “a US missile strike that sent shrapnel into a residential home in Kuhestak, where a wedding celebration was taking place.”

The Associated Press reported that Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command, said the US was aware of the reports of civilian casualties and noted that they “originated from Iranian state media.” Hawkins said the US “doesn’t target civilians,” but a large number of civilians have been killed in the US bombing campaign, most notably the more than 100 schoolchildren killed by the February 28 US strike on an elementary school in Minab.

Iranian officials are vowing revenge for the strike in Kuhestak, and the IRGC has been launching attacks on US bases across the region since the US began large-scale airstrikes along Iran’s coast on Tuesday.

“Targeting a wedding and slaughtering innocent civilians in Kuhestak, Iran, is the ultimate proof of the utter desperation of the fake defenders of human rights, a repetition of their atrocities in Minab and Lamerd,” Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote on X.

“Make no mistake: these crimes will not go unpunished. Nothing will protect them from the crushing will of Iran’s Armed Forces,” Azizi added.

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.  

Tiger Woods Plans to Change Not Guilty Plea in DUI Case in Florida, Court Documents Show

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Tiger Woods Plans to Change Not Guilty Plea in DUI Case in Florida, Court Documents Show

(Headline USA)  Tiger Woods plans to change his not guilty plea in a DUI case stemming from a rollover crash in Florida, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

In March, Woods’ Land Rover clipped a truck, rolled onto its side and the legendary golfer was arrested, officials said. Woods pleaded not guilty to driving under the influence in the case in Martin County circuit court, just north of Palm Beach County.

He is expected in court Wednesday morning for a plea conference hearing, according to a notice of the hearing posted Tuesday. No additional details about the nature of the plea change were released.

Woods’ attorney, Doug Duncan, and the State Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press requesting additional information.

Woods was traveling at high speeds on a beachside residential road on Jupiter Island with a 30 mph (nearly 50 kph) speed limit when his Land Rover caused $5,000 in damage to the truck, according to an incident report. He managed to crawl out of the vehicle without any injuries and told a deputy that he was looking down at his phone and changing the radio station when he hit the truck.

Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test that showed no signs of alcohol, but refused a urine test, authorities said. A sheriff’s office report said deputies found two pain pills in his pocket, and he showed signs of impairment.

Woods has traveled outside of the United States to seek treatment at an inpatient treatment facility, according to court records.

In July, Judge Darren Steele approved an agreement in which prosecutors were allowed to review medical records related to Woods’ crash and arrest. The judge signed off on a similar agreement in May that grants prosecutors access to all prescription medication records for Woods at a Palm Beach pharmacy from the start of the year through the end of March.

Woods, 50, is among the most influential figures in golf and is as recognizable as any athlete in the world. The first person of Black heritage to win the Masters in 1997, he has captivated golf fans with records likely never to be broken.

But his career has been derailed by multiple back and knee surgeries, car accidents and pain pill dependence.

Woods has been involved in four crashes over the years. In 2021, he survived a crash in Los Angeles that damaged his right leg so badly he said doctors considered amputation. In 2009, his SUV plowed into a fire hydrant and tree outside his home near Orlando, Florida.

He took a leave from the golf tour after the 2009 accident and again after the latest crash and has yet to return to tournament play.

Woods made his first public appearance since returning from treatment on June 23 when he introduced the PGA Tour’s plans to revamp its schedule for 2028. Woods remained as chairman of the tour’s Future Competition Committee after his arrest. He did not take questions in that appearance.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

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