The defense lawyer for Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children to death, went on national television to ask President Trump for a pardon, even though the president has no authority over state murder charges.

Kevin Reddington, Clancy's attorney, appeared on Good Morning America Tuesday morning and made a direct appeal to the president days after a judge declared a mistrial in the case. The jury had failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy premeditated the killings of her three children, ages five, three, and eight months old, whom she strangled with exercise bands in the basement of her home.

The request landed with a thud among legal experts, who pointed out what Reddington surely already knew: the president's pardon power extends only to federal offenses. Clancy faces three state charges of first-degree murder. No federal mechanism exists for Trump to intervene.

So why make the ask at all? The answer, according to multiple legal analysts, has nothing to do with clemency and everything to do with leverage.

Reddington's real target: a Republican district attorney

Reddington told Good Morning America he hoped Trump would "consider this young lady and the person she is, what she's been through, and consider a pardon." But in separate remarks reported by National Review, the attorney revealed a more calculated aim. He suggested that Trump could use his political influence to pressure Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz, a fellow Republican, into declining to retry Clancy.

"I'm sure that, were he hypothetically to reach out to Tim Cruz, you know, they're both Republicans, and I don't know, maybe that will be something that Tim would listen to and consider."

That framing strips away any pretense that the Good Morning America appearance was a sincere legal petition. It was a public-pressure campaign dressed up as a pardon request, an attempt to turn the president of the United States into a back channel for plea negotiations in a state triple-murder case.

Attorney Mark Bederow, commenting on the move, told Fox News flatly that a pardon was off the table.

"There isn't going to be a pardon for the simple reason there is no mechanism by law which would allow said pardon."

Another attorney, Josh Ritter, offered a blunter read of Reddington's motives: "I think he knows that this will publicly agitate this entire case and perhaps be beneficial to him in plea negotiations with the district attorney."

Trump called the killings 'a horrible, horrible thing'

President Trump addressed the Clancy case Friday after the judge declared the mistrial. His remarks, while brief, left little room for the kind of sympathy Reddington was hoping to cultivate.

"She did a horrible, horrible thing. Can't be worse. But you'll find out what the price to pay is. There will be a price. It's going to be a mental institution or jail or something."

Trump also called the situation "a shame" and "a horrible tragedy," but his language pointed toward continued accountability, not toward the kind of executive mercy Reddington sought on television three days later. The Daily Caller reported that it reached out to the White House for comment on the pardon request. No response was included in the report.

Trump's use of his pardon power has drawn attention throughout his presidency, but every clemency action he has taken has involved federal convictions, the only category the Constitution places within his reach.

The New York Post reported that the White House appeared to be caught off guard by Reddington's public appeal, which had no legal basis in federal executive authority. National Review's account echoed that characterization, noting Trump showed no inclination to intervene and seemed to expect another trial to proceed.

An 11-1 jury split ended in mistrial

The mistrial came after the jury deadlocked, with one juror refusing to join the other eleven. That lone holdout prevented a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy had premeditated the murders of her children. Clancy pleaded not guilty to all three counts of first-degree murder and claimed she had suffered from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings.

Whether prosecutors will retry the case remains an open question. The Daily Caller's report did not include any statement from the Plymouth County DA's office on its plans. But Trump's own words, "I assume there's going to be another trial", suggest the White House expects the state to move forward.

Reddington's gambit, then, looks less like a legal strategy and more like a media strategy. By putting the pardon request on national television, he inserted the president's name into a state criminal proceeding where the executive branch has no jurisdiction. The move created headlines, put DA Tim Cruz's name in front of a national audience, and framed any future prosecution as potentially at odds with a popular Republican president's sympathies, sympathies Trump has not actually expressed.

Legal experts warned the stunt could backfire. Fox News noted that the appeal could hurt Reddington's credibility if the case goes back to trial, since a jury might view the media campaign as an attempt to circumvent the legal process rather than work within it.

Three children are dead, and the system has yet to deliver a verdict

Lost in the legal maneuvering are the three victims, a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and an eight-month-old baby. They were strangled with exercise bands by their own mother in the basement of their home. No verdict has been reached. No one has been held accountable.

The pardon request, whatever its tactical purpose, asks the public to shift its focus from those facts to the defendant's suffering. Reddington urged the president to consider "the person she is" and "what she's been through." He did not, in his televised remarks, dwell on what three children went through in the final moments of their lives.

Pardons are a serious exercise of executive power. Trump has used that power in cases ranging from Clean Air Act convictions to military cases, and the question of who deserves clemency is always contested. But every one of those cases involved a federal conviction, a finished legal proceeding where a sentence had been imposed and the president chose to set it aside.

Clancy has not been convicted of anything. Her trial ended without a verdict. The state has not announced whether it will retry her. Asking for a presidential pardon before the legal system has even finished its work, and in a jurisdiction where the president has no authority, is not a legal argument. It is a publicity play.

The spectacle also raises a broader question about the growing tendency to treat the presidency as a one-stop fix for every grievance, legal or otherwise. High-profile figures have increasingly turned to public appeals for presidential clemency, sometimes before exhausting, or even entering, the legal channels designed to handle their cases.

When a defense attorney goes on morning television to ask the president to lean on a local prosecutor in a state murder case involving three dead children, the system is not working the way it is supposed to. The courtroom, not the greenroom, is where accountability belongs.