Rep. Nancy Mace Calls for Lindsay Clancy's Public Execution

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) told TMZ this week that Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother whose murder trial ended in a mistrial two weeks ago, should be publicly executed. Mace is not a commentator or a cable news guest. She is a sitting member of the United States Congress, and she said it on camera, repeatedly, without hedging.

"Her children are dead. She should be dead, too," Mace said in the interview, posted by TMZ on September 14, 2026.

What she said

TMZ's interviewer pressed Mace on the specifics, and she kept going.

"She should get the death penalty. It should be public. It should be a public execution."

Asked directly whether Clancy deserves a public execution, Mace did not soften the answer.

"Oh, absolutely. She killed her kids. She deserves nothing less."

She named a method.

"It could be by a firearm, it could be electric chair, I don't really care."

Then she expanded the demand into a public spectacle with a message attached.

"She should get the electric chair. She should get the death penalty. It should be public. It should be a warning to women everywhere. You don't kill your kids."

The interviewer noted that Clancy's trial produced "an 11-to-1 jury" and that she "was nearly off," a reference to the actual outcome: a hung jury, not a conviction. Mace was also asked whether public execution is out of bounds as a punishment.

"Absolutely not. Child rapists, too. Add them to the list of public executions, yes."

Mace then widened her point into a broader claim about crime and the justice system.

"Look at the crime we have in this country. If people can get away with murdering children, what else can they do? There are no rules. There are no laws."

She closed with an aside about her own fitness to sit on a jury.

"I will tell you, nobody ever wants me on a jury."

The facts

Lindsay Clancy is a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts. In January 2023, during what her defense described as severe postpartum psychosis, she killed her three young children and then attempted to take her own life, an attempt that left her paralyzed. She was charged with murder. Her defense argued she lacked criminal responsibility because of severe postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder.

Her trial began in July 2026. On September 4 and 5, 2026, the jury deadlocked 11 to 1, with the lone holdout refusing to return a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial. Clancy has not been convicted of anything. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not said whether he will seek a retrial. Her next court date is September 29, 2026. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, has publicly asked President Trump for a pardon, a request with no legal basis since this is a state case, not a federal one.

Mace did not mention any of that context in the interview. She called for Clancy's execution, by name, before any jury had convicted her of anything.

Why it matters

Nancy Mace represents South Carolina's First Congressional District, a seat she holds through January 2027. She lost the June 2026 Republican gubernatorial primary after President Trump declined to endorse her, finished fifth, and chose not to run for re-election to her House seat. She is, in the plain language of the job, a lame-duck member of Congress.

That does not make what she said any less consequential. A sitting U.S. Representative used a national outlet to call for the public execution, by firearm or electric chair, of a woman who has not been convicted of a crime, whose case ended in a hung jury, and whose defense centered on a documented psychiatric collapse after childbirth. Mace framed it as a "warning to women everywhere." It is, at minimum, a warning about what an elected official is willing to say on the record.

Source: TMZ interview, Sept. 14, 2026