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Mistrial is declared in Lindsay Clancy child killings case after jury deadlocks
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- A judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial declared a mistrial Friday after jurors failed to reach a verdict in a case that sharply divided many Americans over whether the Massachusetts woman should be criminally responsible for killing her three young children.
The trial generated intense interest for weeks, drawing attention to maternal mental health after childbirth.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, never disputed that she killed the children. But her attorney said she had a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids -- the youngest just 8 months old -- then tried to take her own life in 2023. Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing.
Friday's mistrial, on the seventh day of deliberations, leaves the case unresolved. In the end, the decision seemed to surprise no one in the courtroom. Neither Clancy nor her family showed emotion as the judge announced the trial was ending without a resolution.
Clancy remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.
Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said he believes Clancy would have been acquitted if it had not been for a juror who was the subject of a dispute over whether the judge's instructions were being followed.
Reddington said Clancy was "not good" when a reporter asked how she was doing after the mistrial.
Her parents and her sister were escorted by state police from the courthouse, saying nothing to reporters. Her ex-husband Patrick Clancy, the trial's first witness, has said in past interviews that he forgives her and believes her actions were the result of mental illness.
A statement released by his attorney Friday said "the prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful."
The prosecutor who decided to charge Clancy said there would not be an immediate decision about a second trial. He said public opinion would not be a factor.
"This was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies," said Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz. "This case is not about the healthcare system, or about how women are treated in it, or what diagnoses there are."
He pointed out that the two trial prosecutors were "both mothers themselves."
The deliberations took a dramatic turn Friday when the judge said he was going to declare a mistrial before suddenly changing course and letting Clancy's attorney appeal that decision to the top court in Massachusetts. But the court declined to stop the judge from declaring a mistrial.
Trump administration scrubs data on gender-based bullying from school civil rights survey
The Trump administration this week quietly released an update to a major survey on civil rights in schools that was scrubbed of all data related to nonbinary students or bullying based on gender identity.
The numbers come from the Education Department's Civil Rights Data Collection, a federal survey of nearly every public school in the nation. The release this week covers the 2023-2024 school year, when the survey included "nonbinary" as a gender category alongside male and female.
However, an Associated Press analysis shows that in every column for information related to gender identity, the numbers were replaced with a code indicating "Suppressed in Compliance with Executive Order." That refers to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his inauguration day calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.
The government also suppressed the number of allegations of harassment or bullying on the basis of gender identity in schools, information about whether the districts had written policies prohibiting such harassment, and any links to those policies.
Those questions in the data collection are designed to capture the experiences of transgender and nonbinary students -- whether they experience harassment, participate in sports or face overly harsh discipline, said Seth Galanter, a senior fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy and a former attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights under the Biden and Obama administrations.
Only school districts that already collected data on trans and nonbinary students were required to report it to the federal government, Galanter said, and roughly 1,800 out of the more than 13,000 U.S. school districts reported data in the last collection.
"We're losing the granular experience of those kids," Galanter said. "They exist in the world, their schools acknowledge their existence, but we now no longer have any way to have any kind of local, state or national picture about these kids and what their school experience is like."
In a written statement, the Education Department said the Office for Civil Rights would be releasing more data in coming weeks. It also said the Trump administration is "realigning the functions of OCR to align with its statutory mandate."
The data suppression reflects the Trump administration's wider efforts to target protections for transgender and nonbinary students in schools. The White House has repeatedly clashed with schools and colleges over accommodations for transgender students, with the Justice Department this week announcing a federal lawsuit against the school system in Kansas City, Kansas, over its policies on transgender students.
US issues sanctions on Turkish bank that it calls a 'critical financial lifeline' for Iran
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Trump administration announced Friday that it has imposed sanctions on a Turkish financial institution as part of its latest effort to sever "critical financial lifelines" for the Iranian government.
The actions against Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi come after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week launched "Operation Economic Outcast, " Washington's new effort to isolate already heavily sanctioned Iran from its remaining trading partners to try to get it to capitulate to U.S. demands after more than six months of war.
The Treasury Department accused the Turkish bank and its entities of being established to enable Iran's efforts to transfer oil revenues from China to Turkey, where they could then be converted to cash and gold. It also said the institution "knowingly offered" banking services to Iranian financial entities, including those already sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022 for funneling Tehran's oil sales.
Bessent, who had told The Associated Press earlier this week that another bank would face economic penalties, said financial institutions with ties to Iran will "continue to find out the hard way that we are serious about Operation Economic Outcast."
"While we hope no more banks will need to be sanctioned, that ultimately depends on how quickly the international community comes to its senses and ceases support of the murderous Iranian regime," he said in a press release Friday. "We know who you are, we know where you are, and we will continue to take action together with our allies and partners until we have buried the head of the Iranian snake."
But so far, the goal to force those that still do business with Iran to cut off financial ties or face U.S. retaliation has fallen flat, with promises of an "economic D-Day" for a group of countries that could include China and India quickly turning into warnings and negotiations with Iran's trading partners.
Bessent had previously told reporters that he wanted countries to have an opportunity to shift away from Iran before it was too late in a bid to avoid upending the global financial system.
The Trump administration's reluctance to penalize major trading partners that still do business with Iran was on display last week when the U.S. took steps to limit an Egyptian bank's operations in the United Arab Emirates but stopped short of imposing sanctions.
EPA seeks more public comments as it struggles to devise water rule that limits scope on wetlands
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking additional public comments as it tries to redefine the scope of the nation's bedrock clean water law to significantly limit the wetlands it covers.
The request, announced Friday, comes nearly a year after the agency proposed a rule defining "waters of the United States," or WOTUS, based on a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that removed federal protections for vast areas. The plea for new information is highly unusual and reflects the complexity of the water rule, a contentious regulation that has been argued in the courts for decades and reached the Supreme Court twice since 2006.
The latest proposal is a "supplemental" rule that EPA said will help it and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers evaluate a wider range of options as they work toward a final rule that fully implements the Supreme Court's decision in a case known as Sackett v. EPA.
The 2023 ruling sharply limited the federal government's authority to police water pollution in certain wetlands. It boosted property rights over concerns about clean water in a ruling in favor of Michael and Chantell Sackett, an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near a lake.
The new rule, once made final, will cut "bureaucratic red tape" and protect water quality while "recognizing that states and tribes are best positioned to manage their own water resources," the EPA said.
The rule will provide greater predictability for landowners, farmers, ranchers, energy producers, the technology sector, developers and small businesses, the agency said. The measure will focus on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, such as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, along with wetlands that are directly connected to such bodies of water.
"The EPA's goal is a durable WOTUS definition that follows the law and ends burdensome regulatory uncertainty," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.
White House website debuts 5 retro arcade video games that promote Trump's agenda
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House website on Thursday unveiled Arcade, a collection of five low-resolution video games that promote different aspects of President Donald Trump's agenda.
"Build the Wall" is a "Tetris" knockoff that transforms the classic game into an effort to "Protect the border from the coming horde." In "Rio Run," which resembles the mobile favorite "Snake," an icon resembling Trump runs around gathering potential border crossers.
In "Supply Line," which looks like a condensed version of the arcade game "Tapper," food moves along an assembly line and you must reject items that don't meet "Make America Healthy Again" standards.
Two of the games take place over the skies of the nation's capital. In "Flappy Bill," an eagle carries a bill across the National Mall. In "Trump Savings Tycoon," your goal is to collect money flying through the air to "Fill your kids' Trump Accounts," the administration savings plan that offers $1,000 to every child born during Trump's term.
In a statement Friday, The Tetris Company said it "was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall' and did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property for the game."
Pointing out that the object of the original game is to avoid building a wall, the company said, "For more than 40 years, Tetris has brought people together across generations and cultures through play and joy." It added, "We are currently reviewing the matter."
The White House announced Arcade on social media with a series of animations parodying Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo loading screens. In one such post, the Sega logo turns into "MAGA," as in Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
ICE officer pleads not guilty to lying about shooting and is released from custody
McALLEN, Texas (AP) -- A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was released from federal custody Friday after pleading not guilty to lying to investigators about the circumstances that led to the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Minnesota immigration crackdown last winter.
The federal indictment accuses Christian Castro of falsely telling investigators that he was attacked with a broom and shovel before he opened fire, injuring Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in January.
Castro was shackled at his wrists, waist and feet during a brief hearing in the federal court in McAllen after he turned himself into authorities Thursday evening. The judge ordered him released on a $75,000 unsecured bond and with a GPS ankle monitor.
It's the first Justice Department prosecution of a federal officer for actions taken during this year's massive Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of agents to the Twin Cities and led to sweeping protests, arrests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers.
The allegations in the federal indictment mirror those brought by Minnesota officials, who have separately charged Castro with assault and false reporting of a crime related to the nonfatal shooting of Sosa-Celis.
According to the federal indictment, Castro told an FBI agent that a man grabbed a red broom off a front porch and began hitting him with it while Castro was trying to detain another man outside a Minneapolis home. Castro also claimed that another man hit him with a snow shovel and that he opened fire while on the ground as the men ran away.
The indictment alleges that Castro had a short "physical interaction" with Sosa-Celis and another man, before the two ran into a home with a 1-year-old child inside. Castro then fired a shot through the front door while standing as the men began to close it, hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg, the indictment says.
"No person struck" Castro "with a broom as he described, and no persons wielded the broom and snow shovel as he described," the indictment says.
An attorney for Castro urged the public not to rush to judgment and to let his client "have his day in court." Castro served in the military before becoming a federal immigration officer, the lawyer, David Lindenmuth, said after the hearing.
"His life has been that of public service to our country and to our nation, either through its military or protecting its borders and enforcing its laws," Lindenmuth said.
Federal prosecutors had initially charged Sosa-Celis and the other man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, with assault but dropped the charges after video evidence showed the officer may have lied about the encounter. Castro was suspended from ICE in February while authorities pursued an investigation.
The federal charges follow Castro's release from jail last week after Texas' governor refused to immediately sign an extradition warrant to hand him over to Minnesota authorities.