The lone juror who refused to join 11 others in finding Lindsay Clancy not criminally responsible for killing her three children is now reportedly dealing with an ugly consequence of doing exactly what jurors are supposed to do: reaching his own conclusion.
The Massachusetts murder trial ended in a mistrial on September 4 after more than 36 hours of deliberations across seven days. The final split was 11-1. Eleven jurors favored finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, while the lone holdout supported a murder conviction.
Now the unidentified juror and his family have reportedly gone into hiding as people angry about the outcome attempt to track them down.
“My family cannot leave the house,” the juror’s brother said. “They are leaving notes at my mother’s house. They won’t leave us alone and we don’t know anything.”
“People have been calling me like crazy. It’s crazy,” he added.
Whatever anyone thinks about the holdout’s decision, harassing his relatives because he refused to vote with the other 11 jurors is a disturbing response to a fundamental part of the American justice system. Jury deliberations require 12 individual citizens to examine the evidence, follow the judge’s instructions and reach their own conclusions. It is not supposed to be majority rule with the last person pressured into surrendering his vote.
The juror’s brother said that is precisely what his relative did.
“He looked at the case, and he made the call,” the brother said. “I don’t think religion had anything to do with it.”
That second point became an issue because the juror reportedly comes from a Catholic Haitian immigrant family and was described by acquaintances as a regular churchgoer. Apparently, even attending church can become evidence for the amateur detective squad once a jury produces an unpopular result.
Fellow juror Paula Devlin described the holdout as a Black man in his 30s and said the panel initially entered deliberations more divided. According to her account, the jury eventually moved to an 11-1 split. Devlin suggested the holdout may have become increasingly entrenched after feeling attacked by other jurors.
Other members of the panel have criticized him, arguing that he failed to properly apply the reasonable-doubt standard and could not identify evidence supporting his position.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington even asked Judge William Sullivan to remove the holdout after the foreperson reported that one juror had acknowledged having reasonable doubt but refused to apply it. Sullivan declined to remove him and instead repeated the applicable legal instructions to the entire jury.
The deadlock remained.
At the center of the case is a tragedy almost impossible to comprehend. Clancy admitted killing her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan, inside the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023. Her defense argued that postpartum psychosis prevented her from understanding the wrongfulness of her actions. Prosecutors maintained that she planned the killings and understood right from wrong.
The holdout’s personal history has also been pulled into public discussion. Court records showed that he faced a domestic assault and battery charge following a 2021 allegation involving his then-wife. He pleaded not guilty, and the charge was later dismissed. A dismissed charge is not a conviction, regardless of how convenient it might be for people searching for another reason to attack him.
The reported harassment has now become serious enough that the identities of jurors have been ordered sealed indefinitely because of safety concerns.
People are free to believe the holdout was wrong. They are free to believe the other 11 jurors were wrong. That disagreement is part of having a jury system in the first place.
Showing up at relatives’ homes and bombarding a family with calls is something else entirely. If serving on a jury means risking having an angry crowd hunt down your mother because strangers dislike your vote, finding citizens willing to perform their civic duty is going to become considerably harder.
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