A female juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has defended the lone male holdout – admitting that he “was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side.”
The woman, who spoke to WBZ-TV on condition of anonymity, served as juror No. 5 in the high-profile Massachusetts trial, which ended Friday in a hung jury with an 11-1 split.
She said from the start of deliberations the majority of jurors – made up of nine women and three men – were trying to convince the lone holdout to change his vote.
“The majority of the people, it doesn’t matter what side it was on, was very firm in their like stance and their beliefs kind of from the beginning,” she said.
“The stand-alone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side. So, I’m going to kind of defend that individual in a sense. There were some big personalities in that room. But at the end of the day, I feel like it just came down to an inability to kind of move past your convictions.”
The unnamed female juror admitted she initially believed Clancy should face justice for the deaths of her three children, Dawson, 3; Cora, 5; and Callan, 8, who she strangled with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023 at the family home in Duxbury.
“Originally I felt as though she is guilty and she is criminally responsible for it,” she said.
“And maybe I still believe that in a certain way. I think that this was a woman who, you know she was not mentally healthy. She was someone that was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis.”
In the waning days of the weekslong trial, the jury sent three impasse notes to the court indicating they were deadlocked 11-1, in one instance, they claimed the holdout juror wasn’t following the letter of the law on reasonable doubt.
However the judge declined the defense’s request to replace or even grill the sole dissenter and ultimately declared a mistrial on the seventh day of deliberations.
Despite the judge’s decision, Clancy, 36, faces a lengthy stay in a state psychiatric facility. Her next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.
“At the end of the day, there was so much doubt,” the juror said following the exhausting deliberations.
“The prosecution didn’t have a figurative smoking gun. There was not a single moment throughout the presentation of that case where you could say ‘Yup, 100% I’m certain she did it’ or that she didn’t do it. There was too much gray area.”
The juror ended up siding with defense attorney Kevin Reddington’s argument that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not be held criminally responsible for the killings.
Prosecutors had claimed she planned the killings and made up hearing the voice and experiencing a psychotic break to avoid culpability.
“Eventually I just felt like the only way to get justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan, and Patrick [Clancy] and her parents and anyone else that was close to this was to get her the help that she desperately needed — and there’s no way she’s getting that help in prison,” the juror explained.
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